Comcast, StarHub
Throttling BitTorrent
To more than half their subscribers, claims expert. By Commsday
May 19, 2008

Comcast routinely cuts the BitTorrent connections of more than half of the cable company's broadband subscribers, despite claiming otherwise, it was claimed in testimony before the US Federal Communications Commission.

So says the Max Planck Institute, which yesterday published the results of its international probe of torrent connectivity.

The organization said deployment of a traffic analysis tool across 8,175 nodes discovered Comcast impedes P2P traffic in 62% of cases.

The blocking effort is largely uniform no matter the hour, a fact the Institute said runs counter to Comcast claims it only employs traffic shaping in response to peak network conditions.

Comcast rival Cox Communications and Singapore ISP StarHub were also identified as major offenders with each throttling at least half of their torrent traffic. StarHub blocks 57% of such links while Cox hampers fully half, according to Institute figures.

“We found widespread blocking of BitTorrent transfers only in the US and Singapore. Interestingly, even within these countries, most of the hosts that observed blocking belonged to a few large ISPs,” the Institute said in its report.

"Both in the US and in Singapore, all hosts that suffered Bit- Torrent blocking are located in cable ISPs. We did not see any blocking of BitTorrent transfers from DSL hosts in these countries.

"Most (573 of 599) US hosts that observed blocking are located in Comcast and Cox networks. In Singapore, all blocked hosts are connected using the StarHub network.”

Free Press policy director, Ben Scott, said the tests showed that cable operators remain untrustworthy even in the face of federal investigation. “Consumers have no reason left to trust their cable company,” he said.

“This independent study confirms that Comcast is still blocking its customers from using popular applications - despite the FCC's investigation and widespread public outrage. And worse, the harmful practice appears to be spreading through the marketplace." Comcast declined to comment on the report.

COMCAST BUYS PLAXO: Comcast has snapped up social network partner Plaxo.

The US cable operator is believed to have paid up to $170 million for the company, which already serves as a universal address book for Comcast SmartZone subscribers and which could serve as the basis for a mainstream social network accessed via members’ televisions.

Comcast has aggressively moved on the Internet space in the last year, acquiring interactive movie listings service Fandango and TV portal Fancast. The company will operate Plaxo as an independent unit within its Interactive Media division.

“Comcast has an exciting vision to bring the social media experience to mainstream consumers,” Plaxo enthused in a blog post.

“Together, we will be able to help users connect with all the people they care about, across all of the devices they use, with all the media they love to consume, create, and share.

"This is also great news for the Internet industry at large, where Plaxo has been - and will continue to be - a strong advocate for opening up the social Web.”

http://web20.telecomtv.com/pages/?newsid=43185&id=e9381817-0593-417a-8639-c4c53e2a2a10&view=news

To understand what BitTorrent is, refers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)