Comcast Plans Major Shift in Approach to “Network Management” - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:

Comcast, in a joint statement with BitTorrent, announced plans for a significant change in the way it responds to network congestion. As noted in a recent post , revelations last year that Comcast sometimes interferes with its subscribers’ P2P upload traffic sparked fears that carriers might play favorites and prompted complaints that led to a pending FCC proceeding on the question of “network management.” CDT isn’t eager to have the FCC adopt formal rules on network management, but having carriers affirmatively degrade selected traffic poses real risks to innovation and competition.

The Comcast/BitTorrent announcement is therefore a welcome development. Comcast now says by the end of the year it will “migrate” to congestion management techniques that are “protocol agnostic.” This sounds a lot like what CDT suggested in its comments to the FCC — namely, that network management practices involving any form of traffic degradation should be evenly applied, rather than singling out specific services or applications. It also sounds like a real departure from the technique Comcast described in its comments, which had Comcast targeting specific P2P applications that had been identified as causing congestion problems in the past.
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(Read Original Article - Via CDT - PolicyBeta.)