Gamers and file-sharers rejoice! Comcast agrees to net neutrality!

Avalith | March 27, 2008 | News | Company

Anyone with Comcast that uses file-sharing protocols will know that it dislikes net neutrality. Well, net neutrality has won a major victory today: Comcast has agreed to treat all Internet traffic equally, meaning that file-sharers and gamers that subscribe to one of the largest ISPs in the United States no longer have to fear being shorted because of filters at the domain level. Undoing the filters will take some time, obviously, but Comcast hopes to move to a system that treats traffic equally by the end of the year.

Why the sudden change of attitude? The communications behemoth has been under attack by consumer and net neutrality advocates ever since they started this practice and an investigation by the Associated Press confirmed the allegations of aggravated subscribers back in October.

Seemingly to make amends for their wrongdoing, Comcast is reportedly talking with BitTorrent Inc. to collaborate on better methods of transporting mass amounts of data via the Internet.

Comcast Corp., an Internet service provider under investigation for hampering online file-sharing by its subscribers, announced Thursday an about-face in its stance and said it will treat all types of Internet traffic equally.

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1 thumbs!
Akira_EX | March 28, 2008

Score one for the good guys.
0 thumbs!
chautemoc | March 28, 2008

I dont trust it still, but..if it's legit, awesome. Bittorrent is legal now anyway.
- 0 thumbs!
  Avalith | March 28, 2008
  
  BitTorrent technology has always been legal. It's how people choose to use the technology that lands them in trouble. If someone downloads a copyrighted work, that's their legal issue, not BitTorrent's or the tracker's.
0 thumbs!
Avalith | March 28, 2008

Agreed, Akira_EX. To celebrate, I'm going to be doing some heavy torrenting when I'm back home for summer vacation on my parents' Comcast connection if they've undone their filters by then.

They're all going to be legal, of course...
0 thumbs!
The Slayer | March 28, 2008

of course, I send you a link to something interesting, then 2 minutes later you post it up on GameGrep getting full credit to your self

But yes, this cool. When I move over the summer, I'll finally get a decent internet connection through comcast, so hopefully I can take full advantage of it!
0 thumbs!
Catboy14 | March 28, 2008

Wait, so what is non net neutrality then?
- 0 thumbs!
  Avalith | March 29, 2008
  
  Prioritizing and filtering Internet packets based on various protocols for transferring data, which Comcast has been guilty of for months.
  - 0 thumbs!
    Catboy14 | March 30, 2008
    
    Thanks...
    
    So how does this affect a Comcast customer (me)?
    - 0 thumbs!
      The Slayer | March 31, 2008
      
      It means that certain files will transfer faster then others. Like if you were downloading something that comcast supported, it would go at your normal download speed, but if you tried downloading something comcast was against (like file sharing), it would go at a slower rate.
    - 0 thumbs!
      Avalith | March 31, 2008
      
      Or in some cases, The Slayer, the transfer would be blocked entirely like many people have found out when trying to torrent files on a Comcast connection.
    - 0 thumbs!
      Catboy14 | April 03, 2008
      
      So now they are allowing everything and treating it equally?
    - 0 thumbs!
      Avalith | April 04, 2008
      
      To put it simply, yes. People have been complaining for quite a while and Comcast is eager to get the Associated Press off its back by admitting they're wrong. Of course, it's probably because of other things like them compressing existing HD channels to add more HD channels on the same bandwidth rather than increasing their bandwidth that they don't want an investigation to uncover that they decided to admit this, though