I’m sure you all remember the first time you actually got hooked up to the Internet and saw your first website (ok, maybe not, it’s been a while!).
I was just playing around with my IBM PS/2 and hooking into the Internet by modem over a dial up connection around 1992. I had a few BBS (Bulletin Board System) sites I frequented as I sought information for classes I was taking and also getting used to communicating through this new medium.
Later in the 90s we saw the advent of what we would recognize as websites today (although not as interactive as we see today) and people became more attuned to the idea of searching the web for information and using its resources.
I first used Mapquest in 1999 and really felt that this was a great idea and I liked how the Internet in general was evolving. During this time I worked at an ISP and helped get various websites up and running and provided assistance where necessary to ensure a good process for our customers. Whether people or organizations were selling different goods or services, pictures of themselves or others, or offering advice we tried to treat everyone fairly and felt that this was an arena where we wanted everyone to feel that they could have equal access to the bandwidth based on what they were paying for and what our network could support. It seemed like a simple concept and one that I thought was still being promoted even today.
Apparently not!
I just found out that Comcast is engaging in a practice where they are delaying the file transfers for peer to peer (P2P) traffic in order to lessen the traffic and make the network work faster for most people in general. This topic came up in a recent post on ZDnet and the author correctly points out, this would seem to open up other options for ISPs to manipulate data flow on the net in order to make things run smoothly (you don’t need to watch those Youtube videos about Britney Spears now do you!).
While Comcast is saying that these transfers are still taking place and that nothing is being cancelled on these types of requests, it has to make one wonder what might be happening down the road for the sake of speedy communications and web surfing. As a Comcast customer myself I will be watching things more carefully in the coming months to see if other tasks I do are starting to become affected.
I would liken this to the Federal Government making a law that only model year 2004 and later cars can be on the interstates between the hours of 8am – 5pm in order to facilitate overall traffic flow. I think many people would be outraged by this kind of ruling, yet Comcast has established a similar policy now and few people seem to know about this.
What say you on this interesting topic?