Comcast’s TCP Resets – Have You Noticed?

I’m a Comcast customer, and a techie to boot, but I haven’t noticed any trouble with my internet traffic. I’ll grant you I don’t use BitTorrent, and do very little p2p file sharing. I also tend to blame any slowdown on “this Blanking Old Machine” But, others have noticed – and the issue continues to heat up.

Depending on which article you read, from which point of view, it seems that there is no doubt that Comcast has been adjusting TCP/IP protocols based on traffic. The questions seem to be

1. Is the practice discriminatory?
2. Against whom?

The answers seem to be (in my opinion)

1. Yes, since Comcast targeted a particular type of application and by association, a particular type of client (one that uses lots of bandwidth, whose users have a reputation, deserved or not, for sharing copyrighted materials.)
2. Against BitTorrent and its users.

People should get the bandwidth they pay for. Yet Comcast does admit to “traffic shaping.” (for a technical, but readable, explanation of exactly what Comcast has been doing, see Susan Crawford‘s blog)

However Comcast is dealing with what they see as traffic overload has been questionable enough to get the FCC interested. And, the publicity has them concerned enough to have (according to the AP) hired “seat warmers” at a February 28th hearing hosted by Harvard’s Berkman Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It seems broader legal issues are at stake. If Comcast provides a public utility, like phone service or electricity, then they are obligated to provide the service to any credit-worthy customer. If they are not a public utility, what are they? And, if they have issues with the legal status of the packets transmitted by their service, to what degree are they willing to take responsibility for that and police all of their customers? What does that do to our privacy? Is there any reasonable expectation of privacy when sending information by the Web?

This one is worth watching. However things play out, presidents will be set.