Cox Caught Throttling BitTorrent Traffic, Report Claims
The ongoing soap opera between Internet service providers and peer-to-peer file sharing services like BitTorrent continues to rage and evolve as new allegations surface that claim to prove Comcast and now Cox Communications are blocking peer-to-peer traffic on their networks.
Computer researchers in Germany at The Max Planck Institute performed testing on Internet service providers to determine if peer-to-peer traffic is being blocked or throttled and allegedly found Comcast and Cox block Web traffic associated with BitTorrent at all hours of the day and not just during peak times.
Comcast's BitTorrent traffic shaping policy has been getting a lot of attention and is the center of a federal investigation. Cox, on the other hand, has been out of the scrutiny spotlight. According to The Max Planck Institute of the Cox subscribers examined for its tests 54 percent were blocked.
(Map above plots the geographic location of places that ran the BitTorrent tests. BitTorrent transfers being blocked are marked in red.)
Are You Being Blocked? Here's What You Can Do About ItThere are ways to participate in the Max Planck Institute study still by simply visiting a Web site to test whether your own ISP is blocking you. If your ISP is blocking you there are also ways to try to elude your ISP's BitTorrent blockade.
One could have thought the traffic blocking would be coming to an end as Comcast has been searching for other methods to address the file sharers, but this report proves otherwise.
For the record Comcast has stated: "Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any websites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services like BitTorrent. We have acknowledged that we manage peer-to-peer traffic in a limited manner to minimize network congestion."
Cox told the Associated Press it takes such steps "to ensure the best possible online experience for our customers." Cox denied, to the AP its "protocol filtering amounts to discrimination of any specific services.".
Today @ PC World Cox Caught Throttling BitTorrent Traffic, Report Claims
No comments:
Post a Comment