Neowin.net - Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked

Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked

Posted by recon13 on 16 May 2008 - 10:37 · 9 comments & 2932 views

Cox Communications appears to be interfering with file-sharing by its Internet subscribers in the same manner that has landed Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) in hot water with regulators, according to research obtained by The Associated Press. A study based on the participation of 8,175 Internet users around the world found conclusive signs of blocked file-sharing connections only at three Internet service providers: Comcast and Cox in the U.S. and StarHub in Singapore.

Of the 788 Comcast subscribers who participated in the study, 491, or 62 percent, had their connections blocked. At Cox, 82 out of 151 subscribers, or 54 percent, were blocked, according to Krishna Gummadi at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Saarbruecken, Germany.

Philadelphia-based Comcast is the country's second-largest ISP, with 14.1 million subscribers. Atlanta-based Cox Communications is the fourth-largest, with 3.8 million. It is part of privately held Cox Enterprises Inc. Comcast's practice of interfering with traffic was brought to light by user reports last year and confirmed by an AP investigation in October.

View: 9news.com

Hide additional information

About the Author
Full name: Unknown
Forum name: recon13
Contact: via forum PM
Submissions: Normal · Headline

Total votes: 1

Bookmark on del.icio.us

Advertisement

#1 Posted by Hum on 16 May 2008 - 11:44: Thankfully, Embarq DSL does not have such blocking.

(2 replies) #2 Posted by -Hiroshi- on 16 May 2008 - 11:49: Didn't Comcast stop blocking P2P traffic? They were adamant about it being open now that they nearly got owned by the regulators.

#3 Posted by jpcahn on 16 May 2008 - 13:16: As long as they don't block newsgroups it's cool with me
Newsleecher FTW!

#4 Posted by SOOPRcow on 16 May 2008 - 13:34: I've never had any problems downloading torrents on my cox connection. In fact I download torrents pretty damn fast.

#5 Posted by KoDeXeRo on 16 May 2008 - 13:52: Hehe.. Cox My boss has that as his home and complains all the time! Some stuff ISPs do are for the greater good and only annoy a few people but damn... I have comcast now and they don't seem to block or "shape" my traffic much but i know they do at other people's house i've been to.

Surely i'm using their network on a lease basis and they have a TOS but damn, when does it go from that to "you're not allowed to view pr0n on our networks" :shiftyninja: LOL. Since pr0n probably take up most of the internet bandwidth (well a good chunk i'm sure) when will they also start blocking other things that we consider "normal usage?"

#6 Posted by ANova on 17 May 2008 - 01:01: I have Cox and have not noticed any blockage at all. In fact my speeds are among the highest they've ever been, sometimes I download at over 1 MBps.

#7 Posted by asoldier on 19 May 2008 - 01:33: I used to have Cox, never had a problem with filesharing... I live in a different state and Suddenlink (formerly Cebridge) seems to have all kinds of issues. First off, I end up with bandwidth caps constantly. What the hell? I pay for 3mb/s. I never signed an agreement to what limit (and I read the agreements thoroughly). Further more, the node I'm on constantly "forgets" my modem during reprovisioning when a server goes down or the power goes out for whatever reason. If that's not the worst problem, I've had about 10 of those Ambit modems ( wish I was being sarcastic ) and they're all complete crap. I wish someone would investigate those guys.

[1]

Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!

Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.

Scroll to the Top