Wednesday, October 24, 2007
OK, Now do we have a problem???
The drum beat of the ISPs opposed to Net Neutrality has always been: "why try to fix it if it's not broken" ..... "let the open market control it" ..... "let's wait till we have a problem."
Guess what, we have a problem.
Comcast has been caught and admits to engage in "traffic shaping" that discriminates against Bittorrent ... and oh as an unfortunate side effect .. Lotus Notes as well.
BitTorrent gets a bad rap because of it's use in pirating copyrighted materials but there are legitimate uses as well. I use BitTorrent to download things like LINUX distros and video podcasts as well as other very large files. All legal downloads. I can't swear to it but I don't think I've ever downloaded a copyrighted work using BitTorrent.
I like BitTorrent for two reasons:
First, it can be faster than downloading a large file from a single source. The nature of BitTorrent is to download parts of the same file from many sources at once. So in essence, many hands make light work.
Second, bandwidth costs money ... as much as the telcos and now cable companies I suppose ... would like you to think ... nobody is getting a "free ride." A lot of web providers charge by the gigabyte .... so a few downloads of a 100MB file could easily blow your budget .... not to mention hundreds or even thousands of downloads!! BitTorrent is a way to provide content and allow the community to share the burden of hosting it. For example, after I download a distro I'll usually have BitTorrent running on my machine for a few days in an effort to "give back" something. It's not free .... while I'm sharing that file my upload bandwidth, which I've paid for, is being used for this rather than something else I could be doing with it.
As far as letting the market decide .... I can't go anywhere else. No DSL, No Fios, NADDA! So how is the open market going to help me???
Ok so now, can we all agree we have a problem and do something about this.
Ars Technica -> Comcast shooting itself in the foot with traffic shaping "explanations"
#posted by Rob Roschewsk @ 8:01 AM
Comments:
That's not the only problem with Comcast. They've been charging $1000 (+$750/month) to set up wiretaps (of questionable legality). They're your all-around great ISP.
Verizon has been heating up the market lately, introducing the first symmetrical residential service: 20/20 over FIOS. Even if they're not available in your area, this puts pressure on other ISPs. Maybe the U.S.A will start rising from it's current (twelfth) position in broadband.
The Internet is significantly more important than many people understand. It's the last truly democratic environment. When net neutrality ends, so does democracy.
