Cox Communications has finished testing a new congestion management technique but has not yet decided to implement it, according to an update posted on its policy blog.
Traffic management continues to be a sore issue. Although there’s a general agreement in the industry, and in the government, that service providers have a legitimate reason to manage traffic on their networks, some consumer groups are wrapping the issue in the cloak of network neutrality, and some companies that provide peer-to-peer (P2P) applications object. Among those companies, Vuze has complained most strenuously against network management practices.
Cox was short on the particulars but said the trial looked only at upstream traffic. It also said: “Our past practices were based on traffic prioritization and protocol filtering. This new technique is based on the time-sensitive nature of the Internet traffic itself, and we believe it will lead to a smoother Internet experience with fewer delays.”
People expect Web pages to load quickly; Web traffic is thus a time-sensitive priority. Loading files to an FTP site, for example, is not time sensitive, Cox explained.
