Comcast has agreed to stop throttling BitTorrent traffic. Well, kind of. What Comcast is really promising is to develop a "capacity management technique that is protocol agnostic." In other words, Comcast still reserves the right to limit your downloads, but hopes to develop a method that will do this whether you're using a web browser, FTP client, or BitTorrent software. Gee, that makes us feel better.
Another interesting note is that BitTorrent is both a protocol and the name of a particular company. Comcast has been in discussions with BitTorrent Inc, but we honestly don't know that many folks who actually use BitTorent Inc's software. So while the company has pledged to develop BitTorrent client software optimized for "a new broadband network architecture," the agreement won't matter much unless other popular BitTorrent clients like Azureus
In case you're wondering what led to Comcast's change of heart (if that's what it is), we're going to go out on a limb and assume it might have had something to do with an FCC investigation that may or may not have eventually cost the company billions, or even trillions of dollars.
[via GigaOm]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-27-2008 @ 5:12PM
keeves said...
"unless other popular BitTorrent clients like µTorrent also adopt the technology."
I thought that BitTorrent bought µTorrent about 6 months ago
Reply
3-27-2008 @ 5:13PM
Brad Linder said...
Actually more like a year and a half ago. I totally forgot about that. Thanks for catching it. I've amended the post.