No offense taken. Its the opinions from all, that allows us to reconsider a
better balanced perspective.
I may have been a "bit over the top" on my previous statements, but none the
less, I do not agree with Comcast's position on this topic.
It doesn't sit right with me, and I don't think it will sit right with the
consumers.
Apparently, some others agree, or the News arcticle would not have been
written, and caught significant media attention in other publications as
well.
Only time watching the situation will determine whether most consumers will
agree or disagree with that type of methods.
My opinion stems deep from one core principle....
Monopolies "exclusive franchises that subsidize their broadband product"
should not have the same rights as independant ISPs.
When someone is a Monopoly the arguement "Its my network, I have the right
to do what ever I want" doesn't really apply, as the Monopoly network is
also the primary sometimes only network to serve the majority public in an
area, and therefore the "people's" only network in practicality. True
competition does not yet exist for all consumers. These exclusive franchise
rights have been extended by the county or state to the provider, and the
Government works for the people. Therefore the people should have some say
in what practices their monopoly provider practices. Comcast is a monopoly
or as near it as a company can possibly be. One company should not be able
to make the decision of what is and is not acceptable for consumers use on
the Public Internet. And I consider Comcast part of the "public Internet".
There is an obligation by these Broadband monopolies to live by example, and
deal with these topics in the absolute most ethical way. Because if they
can't do it, at their volume, no one can. I am not convinced that Comcast
has found the most ethical way to handle the p2p issue. I do believe they
are exploring to find it, and testing the waters of what consumers feel is
ethical, and everyone else will learn from it.
Side note: Your arguement on comparing smtp tarpiting to p2p blocking does
have merit, but depending on how stringent it is configured. What
thresholds for max connections is acceptable to consider something an attack
versus a legitimate high volume communication? And are the tarpiting rules
treating different senders differently? What if Comcast's tarpit was set to
allow 1 Email an hour from ISPX, and argue 2 messages an hour was abuse,
would that be ethical at those thresholds? If ATT did the same thing, and
said it would allow up to 2 simultaneous connectiosn from Sprint customers
but 50 connections from a TimeWarner customer in an effort to drive
custoemrs from Sprint, would it be ethical? Should an end user not be
allowed to do ANY p2p, or what max number of sessions is an OK number?
I am biased on these issues because I am daily competing against these guys.
I loose business to them on some occasions because they quote their "6mbps
unlimited access", winning over my "1mbps access". Yet, my customers may be
able to outperform Comcast with Voip or Keeping their IPOD updated with
songs (p2p), because of our more liberal non-blocking policies. For me the
big issue is disclosure, so consumers can make decissions considering all
factors. I don;t see any of Comcast's sales literature exposing their
methods? Sure there are acceptable use policies, but do end users really
understand what they are reading? Do they have a choice if they don't like
what they read?
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: "Butch Evans" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2007 1:32 AM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] Look how ComCast deals with P2P
On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Tom DeReggi wrote:
Interesting arcticle.
Certainly it was. It was well written BS!
My belief is that any ISP has the right to control usage of their network.
But this arcticle was most interesting because it was addressing what are
the ethical ways to accomplish that. The last
We are in agreement on your first sentence, but the second begins the
"issue" I have with what appears to be a stance that I would disagree
with.
few sentances summarizing of the arcticle homing in on the issue.
Basically bringing out that Comcast's action are unscrupulous because the
actions are happening behind the scenes, hiding that
This part I agree with, too. If they are attempting to "hide" the fact
that they are doing it, then that is, in my opinion, a poor decision.
These days, you can't get away with that sort of thing.
they are the cause blocking the peer to peer trafic. They are
misrepresenting their identity on the PCs (identity Fraud). But
This is an inaccurate assumption and application of the term "identity
fraud". What they are (most likely) doing is sending a TCP reset packet,
which is the best way to accomplish the task.
most importantly, they are intercepting someone else's data communication
stream and barging in on the conversation (Invasion of Privacy).
Get real. Invasion of privacy? You are serious? This is in NO WAY close
to invasion of privacy. They are simply interrupting a communication that
they do no wish to transport on their network. If they were capturing the
data, parsing it and looking to see who was talking to who and what they
are saying, then I'd be more inclined to agree. Is running a proxy server
on your network an invasion of privacy? Log files from a squid server get
closer to permitting a true invasion of privacy that what Comcast is
doing.
For example, simply blocking a BitTorrent or slowing iut down would be OK,
as you aren't joining the conversation, just blocking it. But jumping in
on the conversation and sending back false information across someone
else's Bittorrent conversation is clearly a violation of privacy.
That is is a "violation of privacy" is not so clear to me. In fact, I
can't even stretch and say that I think it is remotely similar to invasion
of privacy. This is simply a "non-issue", unless they are parsing the
data of an individual subscriber, which they MAY be doing, but it is
another topic that is not related to their handling of Bittorrent.
Wait until they decide its a good idea to apply the same principle to
Email delivery. Scary.
Hmmm...I have done something similar with email as well. Mail destined
for my mail server where the rate of new connections exceeds a threshold
from a single IP will get you in an address list of folks that will see
nothing but tarpit responses from my firewall. Does this qualify as
scary?
I think you are WAY over the top on this one, Tom. I generally appreciate
your reasoned responses, but this, IMHO, is a bit too much. I did not
intend to be offensive in my responses, and I would ask that you accept my
apologies offered in advance if they come across that way.
These are the things I hate most. Companies blocking, but not being man
enough to step up to the plate and tell their client base how they are
blocking it. They are deceiving their clients. But yet,
If they are deceiving customers, then the market will discover this and
they will pay. I am not so certain that they don't disclose this to new
customers. For me, we always notified our customers that running a server
on the network was not allowed, and even included a reference to fileshare
apps in that paragraph of the AUP. Any changes I made to the network usage
policy, could (in some cases) require an update to the AUP, which was
available online and was made available to new subs. I did not, however,
inform customers when this policy was updated.
consumers are jumping to sign up, not being aware how they may be limited
once they do.
Most users don't understand the issue at all. Many of them are completely
unaware of the harm they are doing to the network, and are, generally,
understanding once it is explained to them. Comcast is simply turning off
the ability for users to UPLOAD via bittorrent. This will affect a small
number (percentage) of users, and is well within their rights to do. If
they pay a price in attrition, then it will prove to be a bad choice, but
I, for one, think they will gain rather than lose as a result of this
choice.
--
Butch Evans
Network Engineering and Security Consulting
573-276-2879
http://www.butchevans.com/
My calendar: http://tinyurl.com/y24ad6
Training Partners: http://tinyurl.com/smfkf
Mikrotik Certified Consultant
http://www.mikrotik.com/consultants.html
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