[Hidden-tech] Streaming video -- and uploading

[Jeff Rutherford]

David,

Comcast recently got caught by the Associated Press throttling  
BitTorrent files. I think they're throttling lots of other high  
bandwidth apps. My brother was using Comcast to play War of Wacraft -  
an online game - and we would talk to each other via Skype while  
playing. And, he ended up having to switch from Comcast. He  
constantly was disconnected from Skype and the game. I suspect it was  
Comcast's network management doing that, because he replaced his  
router and did lots of other changes to his setup, and the result was  
the same.

November 2, 2007
Comcast Again Denies P2P Throttling
By Andy Patrizio

Cable giant Comcast is once again denying it throttles BitTorrent and  
other peer-to-peer traffic just as an alliance of consumer groups are  
asking the Federal Communications Commission to stop Comcast from  
interfering with the traffic and U.S. senators are threatening  
investigations.

In a statement released late Thursday, Comcast Executive Vice  
President David Cohen said, "Comcast does not, has not, and will not  
block any Web sites or online applications, including peer-to-peer  
services, and no one has demonstrated otherwise. We engage in  
reasonable network management to provide all of our customers with a  
good Internet experience, and we do so consistently with FCC policy."

Ben Scott, policy director of the advocacy group Free Press,  
disagrees. "Comcast's defense is bogus," he said in a statement. "The  
FCC needs to take immediate action to put an end to this harmful  
practice. Comcast's blatant and deceptive BitTorrent blocking is  
exactly the type of problem advocates warned would occur without Net  
Neutrality laws."

Free Press is asking the FCC to permanently bar Comcast from blocking  
P2P traffic and fine the company $195,000-- $97,500 for  
discrimination and $97,500 for deception—for each consumer affected  
by the problem. With more almost 13 million Comcast customers, that  
could add up.

The issue blew up last month when the Associated Press, through a  
series of tests, determined that Comcast was throttling uploads of  
completed files exchanged on the BitTorrent network. Comcast received  
a second black eye when an internal memo of talking points on how to  
handle the situation was leaked to a blog called The Consumerist.

This prompted Senators Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R- 
Maine, to send a letter to Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, the chairman of  
the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, requesting  
an investigation into this incident and an unrelated incident  
involving Verizon and an abortion-rights group.

"The phone and cable companies have previously stated that they would  
never use their market power to operate as content gatekeepers and  
have called efforts to put rules in place to protect consumers 'a  
solution in search of a problem,'" they wrote in the letter.


Jeff Rutherford
jeff at jeffrutherford.com
413 369-4128 - phone
866 677-4108 - fax
Skype: JeffRutherford
AIM: jeffreyrutherfrd



On Nov 7, 2007, at 9:56 PM, David Spound wrote:

>    ** The author of this post was a Good Dobee.
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>
> Hi all,
>
> I am looking for recommendations for sites that will host and  
> stream video files. These files are about 1 hour in length and are  
> about 200 to 400 megabytes in size. I can be flexible in terms of  
> file formats. Right now I am experimenting with Flash video.
>
> A related issue: I have difficulty in uploading such files to my  
> own web site host. The upload starts quickly enough, but then slows  
> down more an more. It never seems to quite finish. My computer is a  
> MacBook Pro running OS X 10.4.10. My FTP software is Transmit. I  
> have Comcast Cable for Internet service. I am wondering if the  
> Comcast service includes some sort of limitation that effectively  
> prevents the uploading of large files.
>
> Any recommendations will be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
> ++++++++++
>
> David Spound, M.Ed.
> Valley Mindfulness
>
> (413) 219-0654
> david at valleymindfulness.com
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>
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