It’s not throttling, it’s Cox blocking

Robert Hallock 4 Feb, 2009 at 3:08pm ET Article published in Tech

On Monday we reported that Cox was preparing to trial congestion management techniques in its Kansas and Arkansas markets. Less than a week later, we’re receiving word that Cox may be up to more than throttling traffic.

Icrontic reader Samuel Devoran tells us that Cox Communications may be outrightly filtering select protocols:

Legal bit torrent no longer works at all through Cox Communications. I started a legal download 7 hours ago. So far no data has transferred. Just to be sure I found several other heavily seeded legal torrents to test. Not one single byte of data has come through. Uploading is also dead in the water. As someone involved with web development this is a major, major problem. Uploading and downloading from SVN, Sourceforge, Apt repositories and YaST repositories (at least) has been completely crippled.

What Cox has done is not throttling. Cox has completely shut down bit torrent traffic, at least for the time being here in Northwest Arkansas. The WalMart Headquarters is only a mile away. At least WalMart will be affected as well, but they can just throw piles of money at the problem. This is one hell of a start to Cox’s new “throttling” policy: No bandwidth for developers..

Can other users from Arkansas or Kansas weigh in on Mr. Devoran’s experience? Is your traffic being filtered?

UPDATE @ 3:18 PM EST:

Vuze has joined the internet watchdog group Free Press in petitioning the FCC for scrutiny over Cox Communication’s new management policies.

Vuze General Counsel Jay Monahan has taken issue with the new system, and says that Vuze is being treated like a “second class” citizen. “It would appear that under the new Cox regime YouTube and Hulu (and of course Cox services) are high priority, while Vuze’s similar services are relegated to the back of the bus,” he said. “We join Free Press and others in calling for close scrutiny by the FCC of Cox’s activities affecting peer-to-peer traffic.”

Their claim may stand on some ground, as the brouhaha over Comcast’s past indescretion prompted the FCC to demand that all congestion management techniques be open for review. As of yet, no public information has been released regarding Cox’s approach to their new policy.

Comments

4 Feb 2009 ~ 4:10pm MiracleManS I predict 1 of 2 things, or both really.

1) Cox says "lolit was borked, sorry guyz!"
2) Cox Says "well k maybe we don't want you to be able to do that!"

Honestly, this is the problem I see stemming from a lack of net neutrality. Sure, we can believe the consumer will dictate what happens, but when ALL of them are doing it, what does a customer do?
4 Feb 2009 ~ 5:36pm Winfrey Best. Headline. Ever.
4 Feb 2009 ~ 5:46pm Ryder ^^ This x 1000
4 Feb 2009 ~ 6:48pm csimon Fortunately Cox will have fiberoptics to compete with in my neck of the woods. I see fiberoptics in my future.
4 Feb 2009 ~ 10:18pm Komete Ah man. I have cox. Will my cox get blocked?
5 Feb 2009 ~ 11:58am Khaos

csimon wrote:

Fortunately Cox will have fiberoptics to compete with in my neck of the woods. I see fiberoptics in my future.

Gotta love the flexibility afforded by detachable Cox.

Unfortunately for many, they are attached to their Cox. This abuse by Cox is intolerable; a slap in the face to all paying customers. I am writing my senator to demand that Cox be put on a leash.
21 Dec 2013 ~ 1:43am jeremy Years later (now dec 2013) still same issue in area code 85248, arizona. Cox customer service says it's a recent issue (at first she lied and said she never heard of this). Recent-my butt- years. Change your DNS to 68.2.16.30, and 68.2.16.25. Youtube works fine now