PBS's Bob Cringely can't get his fax machine working with his Vonage VoIP and 8Mbps Comcast cable connection, therefore he concludes that Comcast is violating network neutrality, despite the lack of any evidence. In the process of ranting, he discovers the non-news that yes, many ISPs do offer various levels of prioritization in order to give preference to their own business or VoIP services:

"I used to work at Time-Warner Cable's Road Runner High Speed HQ," wrote one reader, "and as of 2005, TWC marked all VoIP packets with the TOS bit turned to 1. TWC has 5 levels of priority, VoIP having the highest, router tables second, commercial services 3rd, Road Runner consumer 4th and everything else is classified as 'best effort.'"

After a brief hiatus, the network neutrality debate has flared up again today. While Cringely is wrongly blaming Comcast for his own misunderstanding of fax technology, Comcast execs are busy wrongly blaming Google for trying to stop them from making a living:

"Comcast executive vice president David Cohen said that although net-neutrality proponents claim that Internet regulation is needed to assist 'the next Google,' they really intend to stop high-speed-data-network owners like cable and phone companies from making reasonable returns on their heavy capital investments."

This new Comcast attack runs parallel to a new offensive being launched by incumbents via paid spokespeople such as Sonia Arrison. The PR push is apparently in response to a pro-neutrality campaign launched by a selection of rock and rollers (and Democrats) several weeks ago, which worried incumbents or PR gurus like Arrison wouldn't reference it.

Somewhere amidst all this noise there's the occasional nugget of truth to be found, but by and large the network neutrality debate at this point has devolved into a white noise wash of screeching, distortion and finger pointing.