Comcast to test new way to manage Internet jams

[Brian Warkoczeski]

Comcast to test new way to manage Internet jams

By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer, www.yahoo.com

June 3, 2008

NEW YORK - Comcast Corp., under fire for the way it treats subscriber 
Internet traffic, will start tests this week to see if it can avoid 
traffic jams by targeting neighborhood bandwidth hogs rather than 
file-sharing programs.

The tests will be conducted in Chambersburg, Pa., and Warrenton, Va., 
starting Thursday, and later this summer in Colorado Springs, Colo., a 
Comcast spokesman said Tuesday.

The Federal Communications Commission is looking into complaints that 
the company, which has 14.1 million Internet subscribers, is blocking or 
delaying some forms of file-sharing traffic. Consumer advocates and 
legal scholars say the practice amounts to Comcast deciding what works 
and what doesn't on the Internet.

Comcast has said the practice was necessary to keep the file-sharing 
traffic of a minority of users from overwhelming and slowing more 
conventional uses of the Internet, like Web surfing and e-mail.

All the same, Comcast said in March that by the end of the year, it 
would switch to a method of traffic management that doesn't target 
specific applications. The tests in the three markets this summer will 
help it settle on the specific method to use. The tests will run for a 
month each.

A small minority of Internet users in the test markets who use large 
amounts of bandwidth for long periods may find their traffic slowed down 
during periods of congestion, Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said.

"The approach will focus on individual users, regardless of what they're 
doing with their bandwidth," Douglas said.

Comcast enveloped its past traffic management practices in secrecy, for 
fear that users would circumvent them. It described its methods only in 
the most general terms until user reports and an investigation by The 
Associated Press drew the attention of regulators.

This time, the company is posting notices on its Web site about the 
trials and e-mailing customers in the affected areas. The goal is also 
to "fully, transparently" describe to customers the management technique 
that is eventually adopted nationwide by the end of the year, Douglas said.