Vuze Targets Cox Cable for Traffic Management
After last year Vuze hit the headlines for proving ISPs guilty of traffic shaping the company is back in the news this time asking for an investigation of Cox Cable's new P2P delaying network management test.
Vuze has put Cox Cable in the crosshairs, due to the latter’s announcement last month that it will classify P2P traffic in Kansas and Arkansas as "Non-Time Sensitive," and thus "tolerant of delay." P2POn covered the story.
Arstechnica reported about the impact Cox’s system will have on Vuze, and also published Vuze’s attorney Jay Monahan’s statements with respect to the company’s intentions:
Vuze is a bit sensitive to these practices because practically all the streaming content that it delivers comes via the kind of apps Cox says it will deprioritize. "While Cox may consider our content and business to be unimportant or of lower priority, all of the content we deliver through the Vuze HD Network is delivered using our bittorrent-protocol-based technology," Monahan writes. "Suffice it to say, our 10 million users who access over a petabyte of Vuze HD Network content every month care about 'delay' of their content."
Cox said that as of February it will only begin testing the method (for now).
"Although Cox is investing a significant amount of time and money to test this new method of congestion management, we won't know if changes are warranted until the results of this trial are complete," explained the company.
Freepress has joined Vuze in its demand for an investigation on Cox as the future practices of the company will include discriminatory treatment of BitTorrent applications.
"We are loath to trust the judgments of a network operator about what does or does not hurt our business, particularly when they too are in the content business," Monahan responds, adding that, "It remains to be seen whether Cox's techniques will withstand FCC scrutiny, particularly under a new FCC Chairman to be appointed by President Obama, a known supporter of net neutrality."
