Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

In what has to be the most galling of lies, Comcast has been caught again. But first lets set the stage for why. Comcast in a informational filing before the Commission made the statement that they only block P2P traffic when conditions warrant the necessity –

As described in detail below, Comcast manages the use of certain P2P protocols in a
minimally intrusive way, and only when necessary, based on purely objective criteria; these management techniques are not based on the content of the files users are sharing or the identity of the users who are doing the sharing. More specifically, Comcast’s network management practices (1) only affect the protocols that have a demonstrated history of generating excessive burdens on the network; (2) only manage those protocols during periods of heavy network traffic; (3) only manage uploads; (4) only manage uploads when the customer is not simultaneously downloading (i.e., when the customer’s computer is most likely unattended) (“unidirectional sessions” or “unidirectional uploads”); and (5) only delay those protocols until such time as usage drops below an established threshold of simultaneous unidirectional sessions. These network management practices are fully consistent with the Internet Policy Statement.

Comcast is asserting that they do this on an as needed basis. But hold on a moment. Germany’s equivalent of MIT, Max Planck Institute conducted a study in may that both Cox and Comcast blocked P2P traffic at all hours generally without let up. –

The Max Planck Institute collected data between March 18 and May 15 from 8,175 unique hosts that ran its BitTorrent tests. Participating hosts were in 90 countries, connected through 1,224 ISPs, and ran the ‘Glasnost’ testing tool.

The only locations where cable ISPs blocked BitTorrent traffic to a significant extent were in the United States (Comcast and Cox) and Singapore (Starhub).

Tests showed that Comcast blocked at least 30 per cent of BitTorrent upload attempts and, during most hours, Comcast blocked between 50 to 80 percent of BitTorrent traffic. Cox blocked at least 20 per cent of BitTorrent uploads (except for one period at 3 AM where one request wasn’t blocked) and, during most hours, Cox blocked between 50 to 100 per cent of all BitTorrent traffic.

Puts the lie to their Commission filing. Personally, if Comcast wants to manage traffic it would be fine with me provided there were alternatives for customers. Sadly in many locations that is not the case. You have Comcast for broadband or dialup. But what should not stand is the Commission doing nothing. Comcast committed the equivalent of perjury and in my view they ought to be slapped with a $10m fine because of their duplicity.

The twist on the old saw — “The omission was more costly than the crime.”, comes to mind.

Linky.