Cogent admits to QoSing down streaming

Thu Nov 6 17:02:25 UTC 2014

I noticed that Cogent has a Net Neutrality statement. If I understand what they disclosed on the M-Lab list it does not seem to jive with this. The second sentence seems like what they said they are doing, right?

http://www.cogentco.com/en/component/content/article/82

"Cogent practices net neutrality. We do not prioritize packet transmissions on the basis of the content of the packet, the customer or network that is the source of the packet, or the customer or network that is the recipient of the packet.

It is Cogent's belief that both the customer and the Internet as a whole are best served if the application layer remains independent from the network. Innovation in the development of new applications is fueled by the individual's ability to reach as many people as possible without regard to complicated gating factors such as tiered pricing or bandwidth structures used by legacy service providers.

Applications proliferate in a free market economy which is the Internet today."

- JL

On 11/6/14, 11:12 AM, "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick at ianai.net<mailto:patrick at ianai.net>> wrote:

<http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/11/cogent-now-admits-slowed-netflixs-traffic-creating-fast-lane-slow-lane.html>

This is interesting. And it will be detrimental to network neutrality supporters. Cogent admits that while they were publicly complaining about other networks congesting links, they were using QoS to make the problem look worse.

One of the problems in "tech" is most people do not realize tone is important, not just substance. There was - still is! - congestion in many places where consumers have one or at most two choice of providers. Even in places where there are two providers, both are frequently congested. Instead of discussing the fact there is no functioning market, no choice for the average end user, and how to fix it, we will now spend a ton of time arguing whether anything is wrong at all because Cogent did this.

Wouldn't you rather be discussing whether 4 Mbps is really broadband? (Anyone else have flashbacks to "640K is enough for anyone!"?) Or how many people have more than one choice at 25 Mbps? Or whether a company with a terminating access monopoly can intentionally congest its edge to charge monopoly rents on the content providers their paying customers are trying to access? I know I would.

Instead, we'll be talking about how things are not really bad, Cogent just made it look bad on purpose. The subtlety of "it _IS_ bad, Cogent just shifted some of the burden from VoIP to streaming" is not something that plays well in a 30 second sound bite, or at congressional hearings.

It's enough to make one consider giving up the idea of having a functioning, useful Internet.

--
TTFN,
patrick