Earlier this month outgoing FCC Commisioner Kevin Martin wrote to COMCAST about their policy of hindering competitive VOIP traffic while exempting their own service. That followed a Fall censure to COMCAST for restricting bandwidth for P2P file sharing sites like BitTorrent. COX recently announced a test to manage traffic on its Kansas and Arkansas networks which will give a lower priority to file uploads and P2P transfers.
Information Week writes that Google Is Riding To The Rescue (cue the music).
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says “The phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest.” And he’s building a measurement tool to make it easier to catch ‘em red-handed.
The Measurement Lab will provide ‘netizens will a yardstick to measure Internet speed and compare performance degradation. Backed by Google, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium and others, it offers network diagnostic tools to determine how fast or slow your connection is and if your ISP is doing anything to degrade it or block access to P2P sites. The site also hopes to offer comparative information so users have a benchmark as to what they should be getting compared to what they are receiving.
Sources: Information Week, Google