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4 edits | Why DSLReports Readers Gave Cox A Pass
Hi guys,
While I wasn't the first person to notice the interference on Comcast or Cox, I was the first person to analyze it sufficiently to determine that these two companies were using Sandvine to block P2P traffic. (With Cox, my findings were limited to ED2K because the BitTorrent traces at my disposal simply weren't good enough for me to put my reputation on the line.)
When I posted my first report about this back in May of 2007, the report was largely set aside. It wasn't so much that people disbelieved it altogether, it was more that people on DSLReports are networking experts, enthusiasts, and students and all off us -- at one time or another -- have either been troubled by or taken actions in response to the on-network behavior of somebody else. The story didn't take off until mid-August when it was covered by TorrentFreak.
Quite frankly, back in May 2007, Network Neutrality was such an immutable principle in my thinking that I didn't realize anyone thought it debatable. But we all know that the immutable principle had been violated before -- in tiny increments, with little to no backlash:
- ISPs blocked spam sources
- ISPs blocked certain incoming ports commonly attacked
- ISPs blocked certain outgoing ports commonly attacked
- ISPs blocked certain incoming service ports
- ISPs blocked spam based on message body attributes
So it seemed like a natural progression to DSLReports readers when it was revealed that ISPs had, for months, already been blocking P2P to some degree. Users in the Adelphia forum on DSLReports had discussed it at length and detail. Several here-and-there reports on other ISP forums indicated strange uploading issues or seeing RSTs where they weren't expected. As I was putting this all together, I found similar messages on the support forums ran by popular P2P applications.
I don't think DSLReports users gave it a pass. I think we're all fans of an open, standards-based Internet that provides the maximum amount of access to everyone. I just think that most users take it as an unfortunate fact that there are few choices among Broadband providers in most areas. Whether we like it or not, most of us have to take whatever they're willing to give us.
If ISPs have decided that P2P file-sharing was a scourge -- and even we as a reader base have been affected by it in one way or another -- it's easy to fail to look beyond the facts to the greater implications. We probably didn't overtly give it a "pass," we probably failed to take a position on whether such blocking is good or bad.
I'll say it again -- Comcast is not a bad ISP. They've been quite reluctant to do non-Neutral things like blocking outgoing port 25. So when I learned that they DO block P2P applications, it was pretty shocking to me (hence my report), but perhaps acceptable if they only "throttled back a little," or "only affected uploads," or "only did it during hours of congestion," (to name three assertions that I initially presumed that turned out to be ultimately untrue).
The GREAT NEWS is that RST is probably dead as a "Reasonable Network Management" method. Only Comcast and Cox were regularly using the method (the other MSOs apparently only tested it and declined). The FCC cannot possibly find that this was "Reasonable Network Management" and has no choice but to order the activity stopped.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
HTTP is the new Bandwidth Hog...
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