I looked in the mailing list but there seem at least not to been any discussion about this. If there been my apologies.
As some of you might know there is a petition turned over to the FCC that relates to net neutrality. Vuze, Inc is a video content provider whom utilizes bittorrent protocol to deliver their content to the end user. Due to the recent articles and discoveries where Comcast seems to either be blocking peer to peer traffic or as they claim bandwidth manage it (but according to end users and some tests) to a point where it's impossible to get any data through Vuze, Inc have filed a petition asking FCC to rule about the bandwidth management handling. If they get their way and FCC rules in their favor as I see it this could be a major problem for anyone in the ISP market especially the small players. If you throttle or block peer to peer traffic in any way then this could potentially have a huge impact on you and your network. The reason most ISP's are throttle this traffic is to prevent abuse of your network and control the impact these fileshare applications can have on the network which can/will cause problems for other customers that try to use the internet interactively while the fileshare (ab)user more then likely is not even at their computer. For many ISPs internet bandwidth can cost them anywhere from $100 to $1000 per megabit and many times access is sold for $30-$60 for 512k-1.5Mbit. So what could the result be of this petition if you ask me. Considerable increase of service fees to the customers which might mean that they leave for a larger ISP (cable co, phone co) because their cost for access is generally far less and they can be more competitive. In markets where you compete with these carriers I feel that one of the way you can compete is by selling similar service level at similar prices but manage the bandwidth better to avoid abuse of your network and this way level the market more. So read the petition. I urge all WISP's to comment on this petition. Explain why you feel not being allowed to manage this traffic would be a bad thing and what the economical impact could be. I would love to see the big guys be prohibited from bandwidth manage peer to peer traffic but still allow the smaller players to continue to manage this traffic. Personally I think it's wrong to blatantly block it unless your in an extreme rural area and bandwidth is an extreme problem. Ie some providers in for example Alaska are limited to satellite feeds that are not very fast and costs an incredible amount or where the highest feed they can get is a T1 or two at outrageous price and the infrastructure behind the T1 can not handle large amount of traffic. Below is a link to the Petition filed by Vuze, Inc to FCC. <http://www.vistaprint.com/vp/gateway.aspx?S=5176697856> http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf <http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_docume nt=6519811711> &id_document=6519811711 / Eje WISP-Router, Inc. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
