Internet undergoes changes as online video demands rise

Font Size

Print

Feedback

Email

Discuss

Related Articles

Web addresses to get more leewayYahoo board to discuss Microsoft offerFoundation behind Wikipedia hires a felon as COOMicrosoft, Google, Yahoo to settle gambling claims

New York: In 1995, the first warning was raised: the throngs of people swarming to the Internet would overwhelm the system in 1996. For more than a decade, that fear has proven untrue.

Until right about now. The growing popularity of video on the Net has driven a traffic increase that’s putting strains on service providers, particularly cable companies. To deal with it, they have had to change the way they convey Internet data.

And they’ve done this in secret, raising concerns - by Web companies, consumer groups and the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission - that the nature of the Internet is being altered in ways that are difficult to divine.

But as traffic grows, there are signs that these subtle and secret controls are insufficient, and will give way to more overt measures. For instance, we could find ourselves paying not just for the speed of our connection, but for how much we download. Already, some ISPs are hindering file-sharing traffic, and AT&T is talking about blocking pirated content.

The issue is coming to a head this year, as the FCC is investigating complaints from consumer groups and legal scholars that Comcast Corp., the country’s largest cable ISP, secretly hampered file sharing by its subscribers.

File sharing, which allows Internet users to download movies, music and software among each other with software like BitTorrent and KaZaa, has been a haven for piracy, though legal uses are proliferating as well.

By interfering with traffic, the groups said, Comcast is determining what will and won’t work, violating the Internet’s unwritten tradition of “net neutrality”—the principle that traffic be treated equally.

The FCC has adopted a broad policy that Internet service providers can’t block specific applications. But its interpretation of that statement is not clear, because it hasn’t had to rule on a similar case. Crucially, the policy makes an exemption for “reasonable traffic management,” which Comcast says its practices fall under.