Happily ever after for Comcast and BitTorrent?

Update 7:57 AM PDT: Comcast and BitTorrent have made it official, announcing that they are working together "and with the broader Internet and ISP community" to address issues of rich media and network management. One specific result of the talks: Comcast says that, by the end of 2008, it will have adopted a "capacity management technique that is protocol agnostic."

Are Comcast and BitTorrent secretly an old married couple, prone to bickering over their peccadilloes and never quite comfortable together in public, but still joined tightly by an abiding sense of union and shared purpose?

So it would seem. The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reports a deal in the works between the cable provider and the file-sharing company that would have the pair collaborating on ways to make their technologies more compatible. Comcast, of course, has been on the hot seat in recent weeks over its practice of stymieing the peer-to-peer traffic of BitTorrent users.

Top executives at the two companies told the newspaper that Comcast will look for better ways to manage peak traffic on its network, slowing things down for those users who consume the most bandwidth, rather than by types of applications, such as BitTorrent. The new policy, which would also factor in additional data capacity, could take effect by the end of the year--if lab tests show it to be feasible.

The talks are also aimed at helping Comcast shore up video traffic on its network.

Public disputes aside, collaboration between the companies is nothing new, as CNET News.com's Marguerite Reardon reported recently. Her Q&A earlier this month with BitTorrent CEO Doug Walker, "BitTorrent to Comcast: Let's be friends," offers a wealth of detail and insight about the relationship, Comcast's issues with Internet video, and potential solutions.

"We have reached out to them. Actually, Tony Werner, who is the CTO of Comcast, is an adviser to BitTorrent," Walker told News.com. "And very few people know that."

Walker goes on: "We are continuing to have a dialogue. I am hopeful that we are going to be able to work together in the future as this whole thing works itself out and takes its natural course. If there is anyway we can help Comcast make its network more efficient, we'd like to be a part of that solution."

And that's in spite of the fact that the Q&A starts out with Walker saying that Comcast had unfairly singled out BitTorrent.

[Leland2008]

What happend to the FCC ruling?

I don't think it matters if Comcast and Bittorrent are helping each other now. FCC still has to resolve the issue about future issues like the current one for other ISP's to know that they are not playing Police on the NET.

[McPlot]

No ruling yet

There hasn't been an FCC ruling. Just hearing. And you have it wrong with ISP's "Policing" the interet. They have no want to do so. They want to keep that idiot who is transferring extremely large files, which just happen to be copy protected content like movie, all day long, all night long. I stand behing any ISP that is doing this. Rather you want to admit it or not, the people doing this are not sending legal material. They are not even at their computers. They are letting others steal what they already stolen themselves. I would rather my legal activity on the internet not be hampered.

[zaznet]

No they don't!

Comcast does NOT need to wait for the FCC to slap their hand to change their strategy. The new strategy of traffic shaping would likely fall out of the scope of any upcoming ruling from the FCC and mean Comcast could be in compliance before they found out they are out of compliance.

You are complaining that they didn't get a slap yet or that they might avoid the slap by being proactive?

[smarty_pantz]

talks of fixing TCP protocol

I was reading George Ou's article.
"Fixing the unfairness of TCP congestion control"
(http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=1078)

In a nutshell, it discusses a protocol from the Bittorrent guys that would allow the 'heavy' load of P2P to be polite and step out of the way when a "mom & pop" websurfer requests a page, and then to step back in when that page has been transferred to mom & pop.

The theory is that this would:
1) not affect the download times of long running p2p apps
2) allow the non-p2p people to have fast response times and enjoyable surfing
3) be protocol agnostic
4) remove ISPs from the evils of playing god
5) allow a win-win situation for both casual surfers and p2p users

What's the incentive for p2p users to change protocols you say?
1) ISPs would probably allow 'unregulated' surfing with this new "polite" protocol
2) I believe most p2p users are polite and don't mind stepping out of the way for a few seconds if mom & pop want to grab a webpage, AS LONG AS they can have their p2p connections unregulated (which is the suggestion)...so win-win.

If you've never read anything about p2p before, read this one; it's the most interesting suggestion I've heard in 5 years.

Cheers

[T-Guy]

good article

Thanks for the link. That's definitely one of the more interesting & informative articles I've read on the topic in a while. Also one of only a handful of links from reader comments on this site that I think are truly relevant and useful as a discussion piece for the topic at hand.

One thing I noticed was the similarity between the weighted TCP idea and the note here of Comcast's "slowing things down for those users who consume the most bandwidth, rather than by types of applications." It sounds like Comcast is basically thinking of a network-imposed weighting instead of a client-side weighting as mentioned in the linked article. A step in the right direction, it would seem.

[mikalg]

Traffic Hogs

This is actually quite funny to me. Comcast singles out bittorrent users/traffic because they find users use a great deal of bandwidth. Comcast then gets into trouble because shaping traffic by protocol ie: torrents may be unfair to that particular customer base. If, in fact, torrent users on Comcast's network use a vast amount of bandwidth....is the "new" policy any better? Do we not have the same problem/solution in shaping without actually naming the beast?

If some California oranges from XYZ co. (largest grower in CA.) were found to be infected with the ecoli virus...and the solution was to limit or ban the shipping of these oranges.. which plan would you consider:

A. California oranges from XYZ inc. are to be blocked from shipment. (Actual NAME and product)

B.All orange, round, citrus produce is to be banned from shipping from the largest orange grower in California.

C. All of the above...results are the same.

[Public Knowledge]

Still Trouble

Whatever this deal means, it does not mean that Comcast is out of the throttling business. We at Public Knowledge are still pushing forward with our petition to the FCC to demand that Comcast abide by the FCC principles of network management. More information about our petition can be found at:

http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1485