Amid news reports that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is moving to prohibit Comcast from throttling BitTorrent traffic on its broadband network, a Comcast official said the agency has provided no guidance on how to deal with network congestion. The Associated Press reported Friday that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will recommend that Comcast be reprimanded for slowing peer-to-peer BitTorrent traffic. Comcast says it throttles the P-to-P traffic only during times of peak congestion, but Martin and a study from the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Germany have contended that Comcast blocks BitTorrent traffic during off-peak hours as well.
Martin told The Associated Press that Comcast's actions have violated FCC principles intended to protect Internet users by arbitrarily blocking some traffic and not telling its customers. The so-called net neutrality principles say ISPs (Internet service providers) shouldn't block or impair legal applications unless the blocking is part of "reasonable network management." Comcast does not block any Internet traffic, and only slows a small percentage of P-to-P uploads, said Sena Fitzmaurice, Comcast's senior director of corporate communications and government affairs. In most cases, the upload begins within a minute, she added.
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