Comcast, BitTorrent in Talks; ISP to Ease P2P Throttling

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 27, 2008 - 9:37am.

Philadelphia - Comcast (NASD: CMCSA), currently the subject of an FCC probe and target of a lawsuit related to its practice of throttling peer-to-peer traffic, announced on Thursday a collaboration with peer-to-peer software firm BitTorrent, to address issues with network traffic management. One result of the talks is that Comcast has agreed to migrate to a "protocol agnostic" network management system -- which would not single out BitTorrent, as its current system does -- by the end of 2008.

"We have been discussing this migration and its effects with leaders in the Internet community for the last several months, and we will refine, adjust, and publish the technique based upon feedback and initial trial results," said Tony Werner, Comcast Cable's chief technology officer.

"While we think there were other management techniques that could have been deployed, we understand why Comcast and other ISPs adopted the approach that they did initially," said BitTorrent co-founder and president Ashwin Navin.

The two companies also said they will work with other ISPs and technology firms to "explore and develop a new distribution architecture for the efficient delivery of rich media content," and added they believe these issues can be sorted out through private business discussions without the need for government intervention.