dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
-Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghost Busters
In what may be a direct result of last month's FCC hearing on network management, a.k.a. Network Neutrality, Comcast and BitTorrent have announced their intention to collaborate. Previous to that hearing, Comcast had been interfering with BitTorrent traffic bud had denied doing so. Now it says that by the end of 2008 it will adopt a protocol-agnostic technique of managing network capacity. For its part, BitTorrent has acknowledged the need for network management and will offer suggestions for better ways of doing so.
Part of the problem has been that while BitTorrent's protocol is peer-to-peer, the topology of most cable networks causes all traffic to flow through the head end, even if is intended for a nearby node, and BitTorrent's algorithms don't recognize traffic that could be local to a given cable operator but instead are likely to route such traffic over the Internet backbone. As they develop better techniques, the parties say they intend to share them with the larger Internet community.
I expect Comcast is relieved to dodge the regulatory bullet and as the joint press release states work out the issues "through private business discussions without the need for government intervention" but somehow I don't think this would have happened without the public pressure in front of the FCC.
True, but I suspect that the recent P4P announcements from Verizon may also have put some fear of God into Comcast. Verizon is showing a pleasantly rational attitude towards P2P apps, focusing on making them work better on their network. The implication is that, if Comcast spends too much time pushing the rope of fighting *against* P2P, they could wind up lapped by Verizon.
So I think this is a case of enlightened self-interest on Comcast's part. The hearings were probably a useful wake-up call for them, but they were going to have to move in this direction pretty soon anyway...
Posted by: Mark Waks | 28 March 2008 at 12:17 PM
I suspect part of Verizon's enlightened attitude stems from the advantage they have with their faster, more modern network. They can let Comcast twist in the breeze while bragging that their FTTH topology is so fast that they don't need to stoop to Comcast's tactics.
Posted by: Christopher Herot | 28 March 2008 at 02:09 PM