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Correction: This story misstated a quote from Tom Tauke, executive vice president of public affairs and policy for Verizon. Tauke said that it was in the best interest for the FCC to make a decision on the Comcast/BitTorrent case. He did not say that it was in the best interest for the FCC to make a decision against Comcast.

LAS VEGAS--Executives from AT&T and Verizon Communications said Tuesday that it's important for the Federal Communications Commission to take action in the Comcast debate over slowing down certain forms of peer-to-peer traffic in order to prove that legislation is not necessary when it comes to Net neutrality.

Jim Cicconi of AT&T (left) and Tom Tauke of Verizon (right) appeared on a panel together at the NxtComm trade show Tuesday.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET Networks)

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S., has been under fire for months after it was discovered the company had been slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. The company claimed it had singled out peer-to-peer, file-sharing traffic, because it was eating up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which caused degradation across the rest of its customers.

Consumer groups were incensed by the tactic, and the blogosphere filled with criticism. And as a result the FCC has been examining whether Comcast violated any of the agency's Net neutrality principles. A hearing was held earlier this year, and the FCC is expected to make a ruling on the matter sometime this summer.

Jim Cicconi, senior executive and vice president for legislative affairs for AT&T, and Tom Tauke, executive vice president of public affairs and policy for Verizon, told an audience at the NxtComm trade show here that it's important for the FCC to make a decision in this case to show that the agency's Net neutrality principles are enough to keep service providers honest.

"It's in the best interest of the industry for the FCC to make a judgment on the Comcast/BitTorrent case," Tauke said. "None of us want to be in a world where there is a sense that nobody is watching what is going on. We have the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission, which have authority to enforce some policies in this area. And if they do their jobs properly, they can make positive contributions on how the Internet develops."

Cicconi agreed, saying that the FCC has the opportunity to prove to Net neutrality supporters and Congress that it can enforce its own policies and keep the Internet open.

"The Comcast case has brought the debate over Net neutrality into specifics," Cicconi said. He added that this is important because up until now the discussion has centered on hypothetical problems. And creating new laws to deal with problems that haven't yet occurred could be disastrous for the industry.

Comcast will start testing a new method for managing traffic on its network this week that targets heavy Internet users.

Starting Thursday, Comcast will test a new system that will throttle back or slow down traffic during times of congestion for heavy bandwidth users. The initial tests will be conducted in Chambersburg, Pa. and Warrenton, Va. Later this summer the company plans to expand testing to Colorado Springs, Colo.

Comcast, the largest cable provider in the U.S., has been under fire for months after it was discovered the company had been slowing down peer-to-peer traffic on its network. The company claimed it had singled out peer-to-peer, file-sharing traffic, because it was eating up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which caused degradation across the rest of its customers.

Consumer groups were incensed by the tactic, and the blogosphere filled with criticism. The Federal Communications Commission is currently looking into the situation to see if Comcast has violated any of its Net neutrality principles.

Comcast has since begun working with peer-to-peer providers and has said that it will not target specific applications on its network. But the company contends that it still must find a way to better manage traffic on its network. And these latest tests, which will run in each market for a month, are meant to help the company figure out the best method for managing its network.

This latest approach is focused on individual users and does not target a specific application. If the network is congested, Comcast will slow down traffic for customers who are using over a certain threshold of bandwidth, regardless the applications they are running.

Comcast isn't the only cable operator struggling to keep up with bandwidth on its network. Time Warner Cable, the second largest operator in the U.S., has expressed similar concerns. The company said earlier this week that it will begin testing a new metering system in Beaumont, Texas.

The way it works is that subscribers who go over their limit for uploading and downloading material will be charged $1 per gigabyte. The test will only apply to new customers in the test region. The tiered pricing will work this way for the Internet portion of subscription packages that also include phone or video use: At the low end, users will pay $29.95 per month for service at a speed of 768 kilobits per second, with a 5GB monthly cap. At the high end, users will pay $54.90 per month for service at 15 megabits per second, with a 40GB cap.

It will be interesting to see how customers react to the both tests. Will the Comcast broadband hogs even notice their traffic has been slowed? And will Time Warner's customers take a beating if they go over their limits? I guess we'll know more when these tests are completed. Until then, if you're a customer in either of these tests, please let me know how it's going. You can reach me at maggie.reardon@cnet.com or feel free to post your comments on this blog.

Updated 3:20 p.m. PDT with comment from MediaDefender and to clarify that individual movie and recording studios, and not RIAA and MPAA, are clients of MediaDefender, and that Dmitri Villard is CEO of MediaDefender parent ArtistDirect and not MediaDefender.

Revision3 has investigated the denial of service attack that kept it offline over the Memorial Day weekend and has concluded that antipiracy group MediaDefender is to blame.

In a blog post on Thursday morning, Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback writes that much of the traffic that bombarded the Web TV network was traced back to MediaDefender. The group has a history of launching DOS attacks against distributors of what they believe to be copyrighted content, he alleges. MediaDefender's clients include all the major recording label and movie studio, but not the RIAA or MPAA.

Revision3 says this is a photo of their equipment responding to the DOS attack.

(Credit: Revision3)

Louderback says he called MediaDefender and was told that it had indeed been injecting spoof files into the Revision3 network without permission for months as part of its antipiracy efforts to dilute the pool of pirated content online, but MediaDefender denied responsibility for the DOS attack.

It appears that Revision3's servers were overwhelmed by backed up traffic when the company closed a back door that MediaDefender had been using into the network, Louderback speculates.

"Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3's servers for their own purposes--quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender's servers freaked out, and went into attack mode," he writes.

He notes that DOS attacks are illegal in the U.S. under 12 different statutes and that Revision3 suffered "measurable harm" to its business as it was unable to serve videos and ads through much of the weekend and into Tuesday, and its internal e-mail servers were even shut down.

The FBI is looking into the matter, he adds.

MediaDefender Chief Executive Randy Saaf told CNET News.com later on Thursday that the firm did nothing illegal, did not target Revision3 specifically, and was merely posting spoof files to what it saw as a public torrent index server that had pirated content on it just like anyone can post files to a torrent network.

"We're fans of Revision3," he said. "We didn't know they were running" the index server.

Dimitri Villard, chief executive of MediaDefender parent ArtistDirect, did not immediately return calls or respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Comcast is befriending another peer-to-peer software company in the hopes of finding a way to harness the power of P2P without choking its network.

On Monday, Comcast, the largest cable operator in the U.S., said it was entering a strategic relationship with the start-up GridNetworks, a company that makes software to manage peer-to-peer video traffic.

Comcast also said it has invested in the company's $9.5 million first round of funding, which was led by Panorama Capital. Cisco Systems also invested in this round of funding. Specific financial details of the funding have not been disclosed.

Comcast has become very interested in peer-to-peer companies after the company was accused last year of blocking or slowing down peer-to-peer traffic. The cable company argued that it was simply trying to manage its network, which has been overrun by customers using peer-to-peer applications. But the Federal Communications Commission and several consumer groups didn't buy the argument. After public pressure, Comcast said it would stop singling out specific kinds of traffic.

Other reports have recently surfaced that another cable operator has also been slowing down or blocking peer-to-peer traffic. Cox Communications was accused last week of slowing down BitTorrent traffic.

Peer-to-peer software can be both a curse and a blessing to service providers like Comcast and Cox. It distributes bandwidth-intensive content more economically than the traditional client-server model because it uses computers throughout a network to distribute pieces of the content. But even though the peer-to-peer model can dramatically cut costs for content distributors, it still uses an inordinate amount of bandwidth, which can choke some networks.

Companies, such as GridNetworks and BitTorrent, which invented a very popular peer-to-peer protocol, say they can help service providers harness the economic advantages inherent in the peer-to-peer protocol and help them run their networks more efficiently.

Comcast has already struck strategic partnerships to work with BitTorrent and Pando Networks.

"We are interested in the application of P2P concepts in a manner that puts the quality of the consumer experience first, and enables lawful distribution of copyrighted content while also efficiently utilizing the network," Tony Werner, Comcast chief technology officer, said in a statement.

Comcast hasn't said for certain which peer-to-peer technology it will use. But GridNetworks believes its software is uniquely designed to handle video distribution. And as cable operators distribute more high-definition content, they will need even more efficient means of distributing that content.

WASHINGTON--Federal regulators may be probing Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent filesharing traffic, but can they actually take action, if they choose, against the company or any other broadband provider on Net neutrality grounds?

The answer may not be simple. And if the FCC and other regulators are really powerless--in other words, if they need Congress to enact new laws--it means that any threats to take action against Comcast, based on alleged violations of the law today, are merely empty ones.

That's the issue that former staffers and officials from the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission took up at an event here on Thursday.

Both the FCC and the FTC have said in the past that they believe they already have ample authority to go after allegations of network operators blocking, degrading, or prioritizing Internet content. They've used that stance to argue against the need for new regulations sought by Google, Amazon.com, and a wide swath of consumer advocacy groups.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, for his part, recently reasserted the position, in the context of the Comcast investigation, that his agency can act against complaints of unreasonable network management. Comcast, however, has publicly disagreed, prompting some to speculate that the issue might ultimately get fought out in court--perhaps even the same court that unceremoniously told the FCC it did not have the authority to impose the so-called broadcast flag.

Panelists speaking at Thursday's event also cast doubts on how much power the FCC really has.

The reasons they gave lie in a labyrinthine legal history of how broadband is regulated. Several years ago, the FCC decided to take an increasingly hands-off approach to broadband, or "information," services--a move that the Supreme Court upheld in a 2005 decision. In doing so, the FCC consciously separated those services from telephone services, which have traditionally been heavily regulated and are required to abide by certain nondiscrimination rules.

Although the agency subsequently adopted four broadband "principles" that say consumers have the right to access the lawful content, applications, and services of their choosing and connect devices as they please, those aren't hard-and-fast rules that can be enforced, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus.

Combine that with a series of recent court decisions that knocked the FCC for overstepping its boundaries--including the one over the broadcast flag--and "there's a very high risk that the commission would be not found to have the jurisdiction to go forward and do something that would constrain wireless companies, cable companies, phone companies from managing their traffic," said Arbogast, who previously served as chief of the telecommunications division of the FCC's International Bureau.

Kyle Dixon, a partner with the law firm Kamlet Shepherd who once served as a legal adviser to former FCC chairman Michael Powell, said the FCC may have the authority to write and enforce Net neutrality rules, but most likely only in a limited sense.

The FCC's Martin has indicated in the Comcast-BitTorrent debate, for instance, that he would like to force broadband operators to disclose more fully to their customers how they manage their networks. If the FCC decides to require ISPs to make such disclosures, such a move is arguably narrow enough to hold up in court because the agency could argue transparency is essential to helping the free market function, Dixon said. (Free-market economists would argue, on the other hand, that no government intervention is required at all.)

But, based on its previous reactions to some FCC rules, Dixon said an appeals court would most likely balk at the agency's attempts to do anything more dramatic--such as writing rules prohibiting ISPs from charging content companies for premium placement, as Net neutrality advocates support.

Former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth, an economist, said it's difficult to predict whether the FCC could get away with writing stricter Net neutrality rules or enforcing its policy statement.

"I've always been amazed at the amazing arsenal of legal authority the commission has claimed to have," he said. "I don't always agree with it."

And what about other government agencies? The FTC, for its part, concluded in a report last summer that it already has sufficient authority to investigate alleged misconduct by Internet service providers through its shared antitrust oversight responsibilities with the Department of Justice and through existing consumer protection laws barring unfair and deceptive practices.

Dan Caprio, a private consultant who served as former FTC Commissioner Orson Swindle's chief of staff for more than six years, suggested the report speaks for itself: that the FTC can take action against allegedly anticompetitive or deceptive activities by ISPs.

The FTC may well have those powers, but it doesn't mean they'll actually be relevant to resolving complaints about alleged Net neutrality violations, said former FTC Commissioner Christine Varney.

For example, the FTC could theoretically require ISPs to disclose their network management practices more transparently as a result of a complaint. But, practically speaking, such disclosures may not be all that useful to the average consumer who just wants to surf the Web and doesn't understand the technical underpinnings, suggested Varney, who is now the head of the Internet practice at the law firm Hogan & Hartson. She also questioned the relevance of antitrust law in the Net neutrality debate.

"It's not clear to me there's anything inherently anticompetitive, from an antitrust standpoint, about the concept of prioritization," Varney said. "The tools are there...can they be used effectively? I don't know."

News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report

Cox is the latest Internet service provider to have been found blocking peer-to-peer traffic on its network.

The Max Planck Institute for Software Systems released a survey Thursday showing that 54 percent of Cox subscribers reported having their connections blocked when they tried to share files over the Internet. Comcast has been castigated for a similar practice, but apparently it wasn't the only company engaging in such action, according to the Associated Press.

The blocked connections occurred when Cox subscribers used BitTorrent to download or upload files, according to the results of the survey. Cox has acknowledged a practice called "protocol filtering," but says that's not the equivalent of creating different standards for handling content traveling across its networks.

The survey results will provide another log for the fire started by Net neutrality activists pushing for rules that would prohibit ISPs from enacting different standards for different types of content. The AP said the Federal Communications Commission would look into the matter "expeditiously."

AT&T on Friday denied using forged reset packets to interfere with network connections of Vuze file-sharing platform users, as Comcast has been accused of doing with BitTorrent traffic.

The statement came in response to a report released earlier this week (PDF) by Vuze, which offers a BitTorrent-based client primarily used for distributing video. The start-up has asked the Federal Communications Commission to impose regulations prohibiting broadband operators from blocking or degrading peer-to-peer traffic.

Vuze's report claimed to document the median reset rates experienced by more than 1,200 "autonomous system numbers," which are unique identifiers for individual IP networks and routers, as monitored using a plug-in Vuze began offering last month. (It tracks all possible network interruptions, not just ones related to the Vuze platform.)

According to Vuze's data, a number of Comcast connections recorded the most frequent interruptions, but the top 20 highest reset rates also included users with Cablevision, BellSouth (an AT&T property), and AOL subscriptions.

Vuze said it planned to ask those Internet service providers to be more transparent about the cause of those reset packets and disclose whether they are using a "false reset message" technique. Meanwhile, it filed its preliminary report with the FCC, acknowledging that its results weren't definitive and that the documented disruptions could have occurred for a multitude of reasons.

AT&T bit back on Friday, denying using "false reset messages" to manage its network and arguing that Vuze's measurements were "misleading."

Here's a snippet from the letter:

In response to your specific question about AT&T's network management practices, AT&T does not use "false reset messages" to manage its network. We agree with Vuze that the use of the Vuze Plug-In to measure network traffic has numerous limitations and deficiencies, and does not demonstrate whether any particular network providers or their customers are using TCP Reset messages for network management purposes. Given that Vuze itself has recognized these problems with the measurements generated by its Plug-In, we believe that Vuze should not have published these misleading measurements, nor filed them with the FCC. Moreover, as Vuze and others have acknowledged, TCP resets are generated for many reasons wholly unrelated to the network management practices of broadband network providers, which explains why resets may appear on networks of companies such as AT&T who do not use TCP resets for network management.

Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa sent CNET News.com the following response to AT&T's letter on Friday afternoon:

"Our data suggests that the reset rates for Bell South, which is owned by AT&T, were higher than for many other ISPs. Our data collection was credible and transparent, but not conclusive. Therefore, we decided that it was best to simply ask AT&T and others if they use reset messages as a network management technique. AT&T has now answered that they do not. We appreciate their response and hope all network operators will be as forthcoming. It is easy to debate methodology, but, given the shortage of facts and the gravity of the issues to our user base, it is difficult to criticize the asking of a fair question--what network management practices are you using?"

Comcast, of course, has admitted to delaying "excessive" peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic at "peak hours" of network congestion in the name of keeping the network running smoothly for all its users. In a report last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation said it had conducted tests confirming that the company was using forged reset packets to throttle certain BitTorrent and Gnutella sessions.

Under fire from consumer advocates and investigation by the FCC, the cable operator has since pledged to migrate to a "protocol agnostic" network management technique by the end of the year.

WASHINGTON--Net neutrality has returned to Capitol Hill.

The saga of Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent file-sharing traffic--and intense interest from the Federal Communications Commission, including a hearing at Stanford University last week--has appended the topic onto at least some politicians' to-do list.

At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing entitled "The Future of the Internet" on Tuesday, Democratic politicians argued for passage of a law designed to prohibit broadband operators from creating a "fast lane" for certain Internet content and applications. Their stance drew familiar criticism from the cable industry, their Republican counterparts, and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who said there's no demonstrated need for new rules, at this point.

Much of the discussion revolved around whether the FCC already has sufficient authority to take action against network operators found to be interfering unreasonably with their customers' Internet use. Comcast, for its part, has argued that the federal agency doesn't--and the Democrats present said their legislation is necessary to clarify the FCC's enforcement role.

"To whatever degree people were alleging that this was a solution in search of a problem, it has found its problem," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). "We have an obligation to try and guarantee that the same freedom and the same creativity that was able to bring us to where we are today continues, going forward."

Kerry is one of the backers of a bill called the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, chiefly sponsored by North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan and Maine Republican Olympia Snowe, which resurfaced at the beginning of 2007 but has gotten little attention since. A similar measure failed in a divided Commerce Committee and in the House of Representatives nearly two years ago.

Chairman Martin told the committee that he continues to believe that the FCC doesn't need to write new regulations because it already has the authority to enforce its existing broadband connectivity principles, which say consumers have the right to access the lawful Internet content and applications of their choice.

He acknowledged, however, that based on Comcast's interpretation, his agency could face litigation if it opts to act on a complaint against the cable operator's throttling of peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic, which he characterized on Tuesday as "a relatively inexpensive, blunt means to reduce peer-to-peer traffic by blocking certain traffic completely."

Martin said the agency hadn't yet reached a conclusion about whether those actions violated its principles. Comcast, for its part, reiterated in a statement Tuesday that it "does not, has not, and will not block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services," and it repeated its plans to migrate to a "protocol-agnostic" way of managing data flows by the end of the year.

With the threat of litigation looming, a number of Democrats questioned why Martin isn't asking Congress to grant the FCC new authority (or, perhaps, to clarify its existing authority) by rewriting the law.

"I believe what you are saying is that you believe you need authority to take action on these areas, and one of the biggest content providers says you don't have that authority, so shouldn't you be asking us to do something, in the event this is unclear, and you spend the next three to four years in court?" Dorgan asked.

Martin said he wasn't deterred by Comcast's implicit legal threat. He repeatedly cited the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 Brand X decision that, in his judgment, stated that the FCC has legal authority to "adopt any rules we deem necessary to adequately protect consumers' broadband rights."

"Almost every action the Commission takes, we get taken to court," he told the committee. "That's probably why I'm not as hesitant, in that sense."

Kyle McSlarrow, president of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, argued against any new regulations, saying there's no evidence that any of his member companies have ever engaged in content blocking or "anticompetitive conduct." He added that the NCTA, which counts Comcast among its members, fully supports the FCC's broadband policy statement.

But as for whether the FCC can stop companies from violating those principles, "it's not even a close call; the answer is no," McSlarrow told the committee.

"You support (the principles) but don't think they should be enforceable?" Dorgan asked him.

McSlarrow said he believes that there are other rules on the books to combat any unfair or anticompetitive practices, should they arise.

Republican senators, for their part, said the public outcry over the Comcast-BitTorrent incident and the ongoing FCC probe further demonstrates that there's no need for Congress to intervene. Committee vice chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) called new rules "entirely unwarranted," contending that the Comcast situation "showed the system will right itself, if someone really tries to interfere with the fair access and right treatment of everyone using Internet systems."

A prominent representative of the entertainment industry disputed those assertions. Writers Guild of America West President Patric Verrone told the committee that without Net neutrality laws, the Internet will be "be turned into a walled garden of content control," making it harder for new voices to emerge and distribute their creations openly.

Stanford Law School Professor Larry Lessig, who also flew to Washington for the event, said politicians must enact laws that are as "minimal and (as) clear as possible." Without such measures in place, he said, Silicon Valley investors will be discouraged from devising applications because they won't know what the network will look like in five years. On the other hand, a future Congress can rewrite laws too.

First, it was a very public detente with BitTorrent.

Then, on Tuesday, Comcast continued its make-nice-with-P2P campaign by announcing a new collaboration with P2P software maker Pando Networks. Specifically, they're leading the development of a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities," driven by input from "industry experts, other ISPs and P2P companies, content providers and others."

"By having this framework in place, we will help P2P companies, ISPs and content owners find common ground to support consumers who want to use P2P applications to deliver legal content," Comcast Chief Technology Officer Tony Werner said in a statement.

The companies also plan to test Pando technology designed to capture and analyze the flow of P2P traffic on Comcast's fiber-optic network and other Internet service providers' networks. The idea is to publish the results of the tests--which will measure "performance, speed, distance and geography as well as bandwidth consumption impact to the ISP"--so that other ISPs can learn how P2P applications might be optimized on their networks.

Pando, for its part, has already worked with Verizon and Yale University researchers to test "smarter" P2P routing techniques that have been found to drastically reduce network utilization and speed up downloads for subscribers.

a screen shot of Pando's P2P software

(Credit: Pando Networks)

Comcast drew public criticism and a Federal Communications Commission probe after reports that it was delaying uploads of peer-to-peer file-sharing traffic on the BitTorrent protocol. Comcast has defended the move as necessary to keep its network running smoothly at peak hours for all users. But there have been allegations, including from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, that the company didn't do enough to inform its users about those activities.

The subject is likely to come up again this Thursday during a second FCC hearing at Stanford University, as well as at a U.S. Senate committee hearing on the "future of the Internet" scheduled for next week.

Kyle McSlarrow, president and CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association--the industry group of which Comcast is a member--called the announcement "further evidence that private sector collaboration, not government intervention, is the most appropriate way to address complicated technological issues."

Proponents of Net neutrality rules--that is, barring network operators from prioritizing Internet content based on its ownership or type--have asked the FCC to declare that Comcast's peer-to-peer traffic management is not reasonable and therefore off limits.

One such group, Public Knowledge, called the agreement "long on rhetoric," "short on detail," and "ludicrous." Another group, Free Press, was similarly unimpressed by the company's latest overtures, saying the need for Net neutrality rules "remains urgent."

"Slick press releases by a dishonest would-be gatekeeper do nothing to protect consumers," said Marvin Ammori, the group's general counsel. "Comcast's announcement is little more than the fox telling the farmer, 'I'll guard the henhouse, you can go home.' And that's all the attention it deserves."