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Monday, June 9, 2008 12:00 AM

Comcast censors criticisms of itself and Rep. Carney

The telecom and cable operator rejects an ad, run by numerous other stations and newspapers, bringing to light its lawbreaking and the actions of a congressman who receives substantial donations from Comcast.

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  • Monday, June 9, 2008 01:45 PM

    One of the side effects of net neutrality

    Is that it has a tendency to quash the rollout of VoIP services, aka internet phones. The more enforced neutrality you have the worse it is for VoIP. Why? Because it becomes impossible to sell packet prioritization and VoIP is extremely sensitive to QoS (Quality of Service) isochronous packet priority ordering. The technical workaround is to deploy more expensive gear on the customer end to deliver uplink QoS but that's only a partial fix as the downlink side tends to get highly congested at the DSLAM. Anyone who tries to run a Bitorrent on the same link as a VoIP will immediately understand the latency issues that create a huge falloff in VoIP quality and reliability.

    Again, it has to do with neutrality translating into a legal block on being able to sell prioritization since a packet is a packet is a packet as far all the lower and middle layers are concerned. Carriers can't tell them apart unless you force that and as soon as you do you're violating the terms of neutrality.

    We now return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

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