Just weeks after announcements of an agreement with
BitTorrent and an end to its policy of “data discrimination,” Comcast unfolded
plans for a peer-to-peer “Bill of Rights” together with content-delivery
firm Pando Networks. The two also announced plans to meet with a number of
other ISPs, as well as other P2P firms and industry experts, to draw up specific
rules clarifying how users can use P2P applications, and how ISPs can manage
that use without overwhelming their networks.
Specifically, the “Bill of Rights” seeks to define what kind
of control ISPs have to manage P2P data travelling over their networks, with the
outcome set to find agreed-upon industry practices.
The announcement comes amidst what seems to be a general
panic amongst ISPs, many of which claim to be overwhelmed by P2P traffic. With
traffic surveys reporting figures that are literally all over the place – depending
on the survey, P2P traffic comprises of anywhere from 25% to 90% of all
internet traffic globally – many ISPs chose to implement systems to control and
manage P2P traffic flow.
Last year, Comcast was called out by the Associated
Press and forum users at DSLReports.com,
who found the company using an aggressive
form of traffic management that actively prevented or delayed users’ P2P
activity. After the resulting
FCC fiasco, late last month Comcast promised to stop the practice, announcing
plans to work with BitTorrent, Inc. to make P2P more efficient.
Comcast says it will deploy a test installation of Pando’s
Network Aware technology on Comcast’ s fiber-optic backend, in order to better
gauge and analyze P2P traffic. Pando says it will conduct similar tests with several
other ISPs as well, and while it didn’t give specific names it did say that testing
would cover cable, DSL, fiber, and wireless internet providers.
“We hope to get other industry experts, ISPs and P2P
companies together this spring and publish the 'P2P Bill of Rights and
Responsibilities' later this year,” said Comcast CTO Tony Werner.
Pando CEO Robert Levitan said he hopes to share the gleamed data with ISPs and the P2P community, in order to “learn how to more
efficiently deliver digital content.”
While the announcement gathered heavy support from trade
groups like the Distributed Computing Industry Association, which represents
P2P and social-networking companies, and the National Cable and
Telecommunications Association, a number of advocacy groups expressed
discontent.
“Slick press releases by a dishonest would-be gatekeeper do
nothing to protect consumers,” said Marvin Ammori, who serves as the
general counsel for media-reform group Free Press. A P2P Bill of Rights works
against progress towards true network neutrality, the need of which “remains
urgent.” Comcast’s announcement is “little more than the fox telling the
farmer, 'I'll guard the henhouse, you can go home.' And that's all the
attention it deserves,” he said.
“The The FCC should do its job to uphold the existing bill
of rights for consumers and should do so quickly.”
Gigi Sohn, co-founder and president of advocacy group Public
Knowledge, called a Comcast-Pando deal “ludicrous,”
before noting that Comcast should solve its other problems before it “starts
pretending to solve the problems of the internet that it helped to cause.”