Bottom Of The Barrel

IP throttling, is it real?

There have been several reports on the net of Internet Providers throttling bandwidth, also know as Traffic Shaping, for their customers depending on their activity.

"More than 99.99 percent of our customers use the residential high-speed Internet service as intended, which includes downloading and sharing video, photos and other rich media," Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said. "But Comcast has a responsibility to provide these customers with a superior experience, and to address any excessive or abusive activities usage issues that may adversely impact that experience." But is Comcast shaping or not? Should they be?

It makes sense that is a single account send 13 million e-mails or upload 250,000 photos or downloads 30,000 songs a month, this would hit the overall bandwidth of the IP infrastructure [and probably is a spammer or high-end Torrent lover] but is it right? Not sure if "power users" of the service should be penalized so that the company can remain at status quo.

I hope this doesn't lead to an ACLU lawsuit over censorship.

posted by TheWino @ 11:35 AM