Recently I took part in a Technology Liberation Front podcast about the Comcast controversy, with Adam Thierer, Jerry Brito, Richard Bennett, and James L. Gattuso. There’s now a (slightly edited) transcript online.
Comcast Podcast
November 7, 2007 by
Why did this article have, on the front page, a link saying “3 comments” but that, when clicked, leads to “2 Responses to Comcast Podcast”? This inconsistency is bothersome. Is there a third comment I’ve somehow missed out on? I did shift-refresh the comment page in case I was seeing an old cached version of the comment page, but it still only showed two comments.
Bennet’s pseudo-technical arguments about congestion control, slow start, BT, “all firewalls doing resets,” etc, certainly sound bogus to me. I only had patience to read some of his stuff, but it’s enough for me to feel pretty confident. For different reasons I agree with Shum’s comments above: he sounds like an industry apologist to me.
1. Slow start is not “the way congestion control is done.” It’s just a tiny part of it. 2. His oft-mentioned analogy of firewalls reseting connections is not analogous to normal congestion control: firewalls’ goals are to cut off traffic, not control its volume. 3. Many apps open multiple TCP connections in parallel, including all browsers. That does not mean BT is abusing the network.
Money Quote by Richard Bennett: “Comcast does offer different tiers of service, and they don’t claim that any of them is unlimited.”
Is this guy a corporate shill, or what? So what if Comcast doesn’t claim that any of their services is unlimited. They don’t claim that they’re *not* unlimited. He goes on to say that every company has specific download maximums and upload maximums.
Really, where? I didn’t read it in their terms and conditions, or anywhere on their website. If he can quote a specific figure (Max MB per day, or per month) I would be glad to know.
What a nut. Get another corporate apologist on the line. One who can at least be slick, and spew out garbage like “We need to let the free market decide.” Classic.