Internet providers have been demoted to dumb tubes with the advent of services like Netflix, iTunes, Spotify and others, which is not where they want to be. Agawi, which has spent the past few years building its cloud gaming infrastructure, is now pursuing its plans of making that tech, code named VG36, commercially available to ISPs, with a ready-to-roll white label solution they can pass on to… → Read More
Pando Networks is releasing new data today about American broadband speeds, taken from over 10 million downloads facilitated by the company’s consumer-facing software throughout the course of 2011. The study’s goal was to discover which cities in the U.S. had the fastest average download speeds, and not surprisingly, major tech hotspots like San Francisco, Austin, Seattle and New York all led the… → Read More
So let’s say you walk into a Best Buy looking for a new tablet. You walk up to the guy in the blue polo and tell him what you’re looking for. After taking you to the tablet section, he whips out a handkerchief and blindfolds you. “They’re all really good!” he promises. “The one on the left is $499, the one in the middle is $549, and the one on the right is an even $600. Which can I wrap up… → Read More
Comcast is about to nationally roll out its 105Mbps (!) Internet service. The ISP hopes to have the service in several of its top markets, including Boston, Chicago, Denver, and Miami, bringing the total number of potential subscribers up to 40 million. Considering so much of legitimate media consumption these days is based on streaming, having a super fast Internet connection will only help to a… → Read More
Lately, Verizon has been attacked by cable companies for its aversion to contract-free services. To combat those statements, today, Verizon has announced a contract-free bundle that includes FiOS TV, internet and voice services for $99 a month. This new price will be guaranteed for one whole year. Previously, customers had to pay an extra $20 per month to be contract-free.
Keep reading to see if… → Read More
The Digital Economy Act passed in the UK, as you know, and it’s pretty terrible. One of the more spicy sections of the law involved peer-to-peer use, and how it basically makes ISPs responsible for what their customers download. So if HBO finds that you’ve been download “The Pacific,” (really good show, by the way, much to my surprise) it can contact your ISP, who’s then responsible for… → Read More
Do you have Comcast stock? Are you concerned with all the money the company has in its coffers? Yes, that sounds ludicrous, being concerned that a company has a lot of money on hand, but the fear is that Comcast could be ramping up for a big media buy, something no one wants to see. → Read More
There’s two ways to look at the story that many of the country’s biggest ISPs have refused government stimulus money for broadband infrastructure investment. One, the ISPs patently don’t need the money, and are more than capable of delivering broadband to as many Americans as possible with their own capital. Two, the ISPs could use the money, but they’d prefer not to accept it lest they be… → Read More
Game on! Cablevision, a cable company that serves the suburbs of New York City, and whose ISP, OptimumOnline, I use, recently announced that it will offer the fastest broadband in America starting next month. Speeds will top out at 101 megabits per second down, 15 megabits per second up. (That translates to around 12.6 megabytes per second down, 1.8 megabytes per second up. BitTorrent seeding just… → Read More
The RIAA received some rare “good press” a few months ago when it announced that it would no longer go after individual file sharers. But then, approximately 27 seconds later, we began hating it again when it emerged that, instead of going after individual file shares, it would work with ISPs to weed out file sharers. A distinction without meaning, I say. Anyhow, AT&T is the first big ISP… → Read More
An Irish ISP has apparently buckled under the pressure of The Man, and will now block access to any and every site The Man asks it to. Think The Pirate Bay and related sites. Let’s put on our outrage hats, everyone. → Read More
Here’s one for you tin foil-wearing privacy advocates. (God bless you, but constantly being attuned to The Man watching your every move must be exhausting.) The Federal Trade Commission has set up a whole slew of new suggestions—not quite regulations, then—for Web sites in order to make their privacy policies more clear, and to regulate (without actually regulating) how they gather… → Read More
The RIAA’s new scheme to fight music piracy doesn’t sit well with small ISPs. Under the plan, rather than file lawsuit after lawsuit against John and Jane Doe, who may or may not even exist, the RIAA wants ISPs to cooperate with it by, ultimately, cutting people off from the Internet. That’s not going to happen easily → Read More
Gotta have an ominous-looking photo to accompany stories like this Do you remember how, earlier in the year, New York’s attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, set his sights on ISPs that provided Usenet access to their users? Cuomo argued that Usenet is a safe haven for child pornography and that it’s up to ISPs to shut off the spicket. We’ve discussed this at length, but now… → Read More
Oh, AFP That DNS flaw that we mentioned a few days ago has been discovered by “hackers,” and is currently being “weaponized,” says a top Internet security expert. The attack makes use of cache poisoning to re-direct traffic. Worst case scenario, you try going to yourbank.com, but instead are taken to a hacker’s phishing site. You put in your account details and bam, they now have… → Read More
Good news for P2P fans! It seems ISPs were touting their new bandwidth control methods at a recent Las Vegas convention! Most seemed to have distanced themselves from Comcast’s scorched earth policy of traffic management, though. For example, several companies discussed “Smart” routing technology, which works by routing your requests to the closest physical location. So… → Read More
Google will develop tools that allow people to determine if their Internet connection is being tampered with by their ISP. Net Neutrality, filthy customers, and so on. The comments here? The name-calling, the “I’m smarter than you,” the “Net Neutrality is good, Neutrality is evil!” back-and-forth… wow, I can’t stand that. Go plant a tree or something. → Read More
Is this the beginning of the end for Usenet as we know it? Wouldn’t surprise me. It broke last week that New York’s attorney general had targeted Usenet because of the existence of child pornography. Fair enough, no one wants that. But the reaction by several ISPs could set a dangerous precedent, and could threaten the way Usenet works. Time Warner, my ISP (for the time being), will no… → Read More
Your connection on Time Warner. This test will tell you if your ISP is throttling your BitTorrent traffic. So many people are taking it right now that it might be down, but TorrentFreak reports that 10 ISPs in the US are shaping traffic — non named yet, though. Keep trying and let us know if your ISP is keeping you from downloading The Slip legally. → Read More
Those crazy Comcast folks. What will they think of next? They’re offering a screaming fast internet connection, aimed at small businesses and, I’m assuming, rich individuals. That’s six times faster than their previously fastest option. They say “At 50 million bits per second, a 4-gigabyte Hollywood movie can be downloaded from the Internet in less than 10 minutes.”… → Read More
[photopress:japanisp.jpg,full,right] Japan joins France and the UK in threatening file sharers with being kicked off the Internet. The relevant industries have been pressuring Japanese ISPs for some time now to do something about the rampant, awful problem of online piracy. The ISPs have agreed and will now ban nefarious users from their networks if they detect, using “special detection… → Read More
[photopress:ausxxx.jpg,full,center] Despite the fact that previously attempted ISP-level filtering technology failed, the Australian government will go ahead with a plan to implement such filtering, starting with a trial in Tasmania. The Government will spend $89 million to deploy the filtering system in hopes of protecting youngsters from accessing X-rated material. (For illustrative purposes… → Read More
[photopress:ccastt.jpg,full,center] More Comcast fallout for your Wednesday afternoon. The ISP told the FCC yesterday that, yes, it does slow down Internet traffic for the greater good. The corp recently updated its TOS to reflect the fact that it shapes traffic. So that, in and of itself, isn’t new or exciting. The blowback that’s developing is, however. A bill will be introduced to… → Read More
[photopress:ukparl.jpg,full,center] From Wikipedia “We will move to legislate to require internet service providers to take action on illegal file-sharing.” So begins the proposed piece of legislation that will implement a “three strikes” rule in the UK. Simply, if you’re caught three times illegally downloading copyrighted material, your Internet connection will be… → Read More
[photopress:peaceeee.jpg,full,center] Despite what U2′s manager original story titlesaid the other day, the RIAA doesn’t want ISPs to have to sniff your Internet connection for pirated content. It doesn’t want the government telling ISPs what to do, in other words. That said, the RIAA has no problem with what AT&T wants to do, to voluntarily filter your Internet connection in… → Read More
[photopress:ecj.jpg,full,center] Via Le Wikipedia “Hooray for the European Court of Justice,” Europirates exclaimed today. The EU’s top court ruled that European ISPs don’t have to release the identities of downloaders even if industry groups (like Euro versions of the RIAA) demand the information. That’s the good news. The bad news, sorta, is that the Court also said… → Read More
We all knew this time would come, and last week’s disturbing news that Time Warner would be testing bandwidth caps in Texas came as no surprise. But we never thought the limits would be so low. Granted, 5GB is the bottom of their estimates as to where they might place caps, but they shouldn’t even be thinking at that level. That amount of data would be gone in a snap for any heavy… → Read More
I’ll be damned, they’re actually doing it. Time Warner will be testing out a pay-for-what-you-use program for its high speed Internet service in Beaumont, Texas. This, based on findings that about 5 percent of the network’s users account for more than half the bandwidth. Here’s the problem, though. What happens when all the high-bandwidth users leave for the nearest… → Read More
I’ve been a Bellsouth DSL subscriber for about 10 years now. It has at times been a tumultuous relationship. In the beginning I gamed quite a bit and there were issues, but after a year of complaining everything balanced out. It’s been great since then. Over the years I’ve upgraded consistently to the highest package available. I currently subscribe to the DSL Xtreme 6.0 package. → Read More
Since I’m not Canadian, I’m a little out of the loop on what Rogers has been up to. According to TorrentFreak, the ISP banned BitTorrent traffic due to excessive bandwidth consumption. Enter encryption and for the next year, everyone is safe. Now in an effort to curb encrypted Bit Torrent traffic, Rogers has started to throttle all encrypted transfers. That means your secure e-mail… → Read More
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