FCC vs. Comcast - let the spankings begin!

This is something I would normally wait for the fireworks to finish off before commenting too much... but now it's personal. The FCC has long declared that Internet service providers (ISPs) should not interfere with their customers' access to the Internet (something that, for most end-users, would fall under the category of DUH)... with the exception that they're allowed to exercise "reasonable network management" practices (gotta love vagueness, don't ya?). Of course, this "network neutrality" concept is something that concerned techies tried to get enshrined in law a year or so back, but the major ISPs opposed it, saying it was unnecessary, no problems had occurred to date, yadda yadda... and, having the campaign contributions, they won.

So, Comcast decides that "reasonable network management" involves more than monitoring and capping individual users' use of the Internet, and moves on to interfering with the normal operation of services that many customers never use, so most web-and-email users won't know or care, things like BitTorrent. Unfortunately for them, while doing so, they steadfastly maintain that they don't do anything like that, or, if they do, they only do so during peak traffic times. Independent research by the likes of the Associated Press shows otherwise. Here's a link to a more detailed FAQ.

Amazingly (to me at least... not much faith in government, as I've said before), the FCC may have finally decided that enough's enough. Friday, they vote on punishing Comcast for violating the FCC's network neutrality principle... with Comcast already making noises about how, since there's no specific law about network neutrality, they can't be punished, and the FCC claiming jurisdiction under their existing powers. Here's a link to the latest.

Frankly, I hope that Comcast gets hammered hard and forced, at a minimum, to reveal the extent of their "reasonable network management"... you see, like I said, it's personal now. I use a program called "secure shell" that I use to talk to the servers at work from home, and vice-versa. One thing I use this for is to transfer backups off-site in case of fire or what have you (yes, there are better ways, but it's a shoestring operation I work for, and my home security meets or exceeds what's available at work). I do so in a reasonable, responsible way... there's only one "large" file I have to deal with, which I schedule for early Sunday morning to minimize interference with anybody else, even though the maximum throughput is well less than what my home connection could take. Normally, the transfer finishes up before noon on Sunday... it's still trying to go through as I write this. Further, the size of the file on my home machine hasn't changed since yesterday afternoon, meaning that my server keeps trying to continue the transfer, only to be interrupted by some mysterious condition in between my home computers and the servers... what do you suppose that could be?

At any rate, Friday's the day the fun should begin, as that's when the FCC vote is scheduled to occur. Stay tuned for chuckles, howls of rage, or the like.