Comcast, BitTorrent decide to play nice together
28 March 2008
Comcast, BitTorrent decide to play nice together
US cable company Comcast has made a major U turn on its strategy for dealing with troublesome internet protocols, instead forging an agreement with peer to peer platform BitTorrent.
Until recently, Comcast and BitTorrent had been at each other's throats, after the cable operator started throttling BitTorrent traffic on its network.
But now the pair have buried the hatchet and are even undertaking a collaborative effort with one another and with the broader internet community to more effectively address issues associated with rich media content and network capacity management.
Scoring a coup for network neutrality, Comcast announced that by year-end 2008 it will migrate its network to a capacity management technique that is protocol agnostic. While BitTorrent has also agreed to work with other ISPs, other technology companies, and the Internet Engineering Task Force, to explore and develop a new distribution architecture for the efficient delivery of rich media content.
"While we think there were other management techniques that could have been deployed, we understand why Comcast and other ISPs adopted the approach that they did initially. Recognizing that the Web is richer and more bandwidth intensive than it has been historically, we are pleased that Comcast understands these changing traffic patterns and wants to collaborate with us to migrate to techniques that the Internet community will find to be more transparent," said Eric Klinker, BitTorrent's chief technology officer.
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