STUDY: Cox Communications Also Throttling BitTorrent
Date : 2008 05 21 Category : Web News
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Even interferes with BitTorrent traffic during mornings and weekends that are not usually "peak congestion" hours, meaning is probably more about permanently reclaiming bandwidth than simple network traffic management.
The Max Planck Institute for Software Systems recently released a study showing that another ISP, Cox Communications, routinely blocks or throttles BitTorrent traffic as part of its overall network traffic management plan. Even worse, it does so 24 hours a day 7 days a week and not just during periods of "peak congestion" in order to free up bandwidth as the company has claimed.
The study is based on the results of more than 8,000 users from around the world who used its online tool between March 18th and May 15th of this year to test whether their BitTorrent traffic is being manipulated.
What's also very interesting, perhaps even slightly disturbing, is that results also show that all the BitTorrent traffic interference encountered by users occurred in the US as shown below.