Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

In spite of the headline the researcher noted that "Gummadi said the test did not conclusively show that Cox or Comcast 
were blocking traffic"   djf

________________________________________
From: Sunil Garg [sunil () sunilgarg com]
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 1:59 AM
To: David Farber
Subject: AP Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked

for IP, if you wish:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g4MtXwTvN9ReaZ5W76pwZxV3nhqAD90M3KS00
Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked

By PETER SVENSSON – 16 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — Cox Communications appears to be interfering with file-sharing by its Internet subscribers in the same 
manner that has landed Comcast Corp. in hot water with regulators, according to research obtained by The Associated 
Press.

A study based on the participation of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked 
file-sharing connections only at three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S. and StarHub in Singapore.

Of the 788 Comcast subscribers who participated in the study, 491, or 62 percent, had their connections blocked. At 
Cox, 82 out of 151 subscribers, or 54 percent, were blocked, according to Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute 
for Software Systems in Saarbruecken, Germany.

Philadelphia-based Comcast is the country's second-largest ISP, with 14.1 million subscribers. Atlanta-based Cox 
Communications is the fourth-largest, with 3.8 million. It is part of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc.

Comcast's practice of interfering with traffic was brought to light by user reports last year and confirmed by an AP 
investigation in October.

Consumer advocate groups and legal scholars criticized the interference, saying that letting an ISP selectively block 
some connections makes it a gatekeeper to the Internet. Their complaints prompted the Federal Communications Commission 
to launch an investigation, which is ongoing.

Legislation also has been introduced in Congress to guarantee "Net Neutrality," or equal treatment of traffic by 
Internet service providers.

Comcast maintained that the intervention was necessary to ensure that non-file-sharing traffic would not be impeded by 
a few heavy users of file-sharing programs like BitTorrent. But in February, it said it would stop selectively 
targeting file-sharing later this year.

Much of the FCC's attention to the matter has been focused on Comcast's secrecy — before the AP's investigation, it 
acknowledged only in the most general terms that it was managing traffic.

At least since 2006, Cox's subscriber agreement has noted that the company engages in "protocol filtering," which means 
that it treats different types of Internet traffic, like Web surfing, e-mail and file-sharing, differently.

"To ensure the best possible online experience for our customers, Cox actively manages network traffic through a 
variety of methods including traffic prioritization and protocol filtering," the company said it a written statement.

Cox denied that protocol filtering amounts to discrimination of any specific services.

The blocking observed by Gummadi's group occurs when a subscriber has downloaded a file using the BitTorrent 
application and tries to upload it, or share it with others, over the Internet connection. The main victims are the 
other Internet subscribers, who will not be able to download a file if a complete version is not available from someone 
else's computer.

Persistent attempts by file-sharing software to get through may yet succeed after several minutes, as experienced in 
the AP's test last year. Gummadi's test did not look at the duration of the traffic blocks. Comcast has said that it is 
"delaying" file transfers rather than blocking them.

Robb Topolski, a former Intel Corp. engineer who noticed blocking on his home Comcast connection last year and brought 
it to notice, said Gummadi's work was the most authoritative study so far of this type of traffic interference. The 
methodology "covered all the bases," he said.

BitTorrent is one of the most popular ways to trade files online. It's commonly used to illegally share copyright 
material, but companies have sprung up to use it and related technologies as a cheap way to spread legal files.

Gummadi said the test did not conclusively show that Cox or Comcast were blocking traffic, since neither company 
carried data all the way from their subscribers to his servers in Germany. In theory, intervening carriers could be 
disrupting the traffic, but there is no reason to believe that they're doing so.

Apart from Comcast and Cox, Gummadi found signs of interference at seven other U.S. ISPs, all of them cable companies. 
But the number of blocked connections was too low to conclusively say their subscribers are being targeted, and Gummadi 
withheld the names of the ISPs.

StarHub is Singapore's dominant cable company. It did not reply to an e-mail to its press office.

Gummadi, who is the head of the network systems research group at the German institute, found no signs of interference 
by phone companies. Their DSL connections aren't shared between neighbors the same way cable is, so they have less need 
to manage congestion.

The percentage of blocked connections for Comcast and Cox subscribers did not appear to correspond to periods of high 
congestion. Subscribers were roughly equally likely to be blocked at all times of day.

Gummadi's research is aimed at figuring out the workings of Internet service providers, who are generally reluctant to 
share details.

"When you go to the access systems, it's almost like they're black boxes," he said. That means that programmers 
developing software for these systems often don't know how well it will work, he added.

On the Net:

 *   Glasnost study at Max Planck Institute for Software Systems: 
http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency<http://www.google.com/url?q=http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency&usg=AFQjCNEEuDo9oBuGW-2-4pHqI-1aZEJsvQ>
 *   http://www.cox.net<http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.cox.net&usg=AFQjCNF5P8rUpc8Bi4x6bOJqoAEeu-Cz2Q>
 *   http://www.comcast.net<http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.comcast.net&usg=AFQjCNEp1PALGGGNtaJGaulU8nZZfiCJhQ>

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