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Cox May Also Be Blocking Internet Traffic

Posted on: Friday, 16 May 2008, 03:55 CDT

Cable operator Cox Communications may be blocking the file-sharing traffic of its Internet subscribers, according to research by the Max Planck Institute. The research suggests Cox may be interfering in the same way in which Comcast Corp. has come under recent regulatory scrutiny.

A study based of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked file-sharing connections at just three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S., and Singapore’s StarHub.

Of the 788 participants who were Comcast subscribers, 491, or 62 percent, experienced blocked connections. Of the 151 Cox subscribers,  82, or 54 percent, were blocked, according to Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Saarbruecken, Germany.

Gummadi’s research is aimed at determining how Internet service providers, who are often hesitant to provide details of their operations, work. 

"When you go to the access systems, it's almost like they're black boxes," Gummadi told the AP. 

“That means that programmers developing software for these systems often don't know how well it will work,” he said.

With its 14.1 million subscribers, Philadelphia-based Comcast is the  second-largest Internet service provider (ISP) in the United States. Atlanta-based Cox Communications is the fourth largest, with 3.8 million subscribers, and is part of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc.

Comcast's interference with file-sharing traffic was exposed by user reports last year, and confirmed by an AP investigation last fall.

Consumer advocate groups and legal scholars criticized the cable operator, saying its selective blocking amounted to the company acting as an Internet gatekeeper. The complaints drove the FCC to launch an ongoing investigation. 

In Congress, legislation has been introduced that would guarantee so-called “Net Neutrality”, which would mean equal treatment of all Internet traffic by ISPs. 
 
Comcast says their intervention was necessary to ensure that non-file-sharing traffic was not affected by a handful of heavy users of file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent. But in February the company announced it would stop the practice.

Prior to the AP investigation, much of the FCC's focus on the matter had been directed at Comcast’s secrecy. Until the investigation made the issue public, Comcast had only admitted to managing its traffic in the most general of terms.

But since at least 2006, Cox's subscriber agreement has stated that the cable operator engages in "protocol filtering", meaning it would treat different types of Internet traffic --such as e-mail, file sharing and Web surfing --differently.

"To ensure the best possible online experience for our customers, Cox actively manages network traffic through a variety of methods including traffic prioritization and protocol filtering," Cox said it a written statement, denying that protocol filtering amounts to discrimination of any specific services.

The blocking seen by Gummadi's group occurred when subscribers downloaded files using the BitTorrent application, and then attempted to upload the file or share it with other users over an Internet connection. File sharing interference would primarily affect other Internet subscribers who are then unable to download a file if a complete version is not available from another computer.

Although Gummadi's test did not examine the duration of the traffic blocks, the AP test found that persistent attempts by file-sharing software may still succeed after several minutes. Comcast claims it is "delaying" file transfers, not blocking them.

Robb Topolski, a former Intel Corp. (INTC) engineer and Comcast subscriber who made public the blocking on his home connection last year, told the AP Gummadi's work was the most authoritative research on the topic to date. The methodology, he said, "covered all the bases.”

BitTorrent is one of the most popular applications for online file transfers. Although often used to illegally to share copyrighted material, many companies use it as an inexpensive way to share legal files.

Gummadi said the test did not conclusively prove that Comcast or Cox was blocking traffic, since neither company carried data throughout the entire network route between subscribers and his servers in Germany. In theory, intervening carriers could be disrupting traffic, but there is no reason to think they are doing so.

Along with Comcast and Cox,  Gummadi found evidence of interference at seven other U.S. ISPs, all of them cable operators. But Gummadi did not identify the other ISPs, saying the number of blocked connections was too low to definitively say subscribers were being targeted.

StarHub, Singapore's leading cable company, did not reply to an Associated Press e-mail to its press office.

Gummadi, head of the network systems research group at the German institute, found no signs of interference by telecom firms, which primarily use DSL technology that is not shared between users, creating less need to manage network congestion.

The research into Cox and Comcast’s Internet traffic interference found that blocked connections did not seem to correlate to periods of high network congestion, and that subscribers were just as likely to be blocked at any given time of day.

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Glasnost study at Max Planck Institute for Software Systems can be viewed at http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency

Source: redOrbit staff and wire reports

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