Comcast testing new methods of throttling bandwidth

Paul Mah — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:00:09 -0400

In the wake of the furor over the way Comcast uses TCP reset flags to throttle BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic, the company is testing out a trio of protocol agnostic methods for controlling network congestion. The tests are being conducted in Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as a third one slated for Colorado Springs later this year. Different types of hardware and configurations will be utilized at every location, with Comcast tightlipped about the exact hardware or rules used to manage the flow of traffic.

Whatever it is, as Comcast has promised to drop its current practice of discriminating against P2P traffic by this year, it certainly will finalize on one method and get it rolled-out nation-wide before then.

For more Comcast:
- check out this The Register article

Cisco leans towards open source

Paul Mah — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:45:17 -0400

Cisco Systems has announced a new messaging protocol called Etch, designed to allow developers to integrate client/server applications without the overhead common to traditional protocols such as SOAP. It also was created to be language, platform and transport agnostic. Initial release will support both C# and Java, with implementations for Ruby, Python and C expected to be available in the near future. Integration into Microsoft's Visual Studio or the Eclipse project will be included.

The hidden gem in the announcement is that Etch will be open-sourced, though Cisco is still trying to decide which license to use. Coming from Cisco, this could well herald a new wave of open source projects spearheaded by traditional proprietary-systems vendors.

For more on Cisco's new messaging protocol:
- check out this CIO.com article

Protocol

Comcast testing new methods of throttling bandwidth

Cisco leans towards open source