The same person to bust Comcast’s blocking of BitTorrent traffic was called upon to test Cox’s system, and sure enough, he concluded with "conclusive proof" that eDonkey was getting the same treatment.

Cox issued a statement, describing it not as "discrimination" against traffic, but "management":

To ensure the best possible online experience for our customers, Cox actively manages network traffic through a variety of methods including traffic prioritization and protocol filtering. Cox does not prohibit the use of file-sharing services for uploads or downloads, or discriminate against any specific services in any way.

Nevertheless, Net Neutrality advocates will be filing the incident away in their arsenal to support the necessity of regulation of telecommunication and cable companies to prevent them from interfering with the public’s open use of the Internet. 

This report was coupled with another blogger who claimed something similar happened on Sunday afternoon. Christer Edwards, the author of the blog, then went on an elegant tear about how his torrent difficulties were another step toward the dreaded "tiered Internet":

The way I see it this is the first step toward a Tiered Internet, whether or not any such thing is approved in Legislation or by the consumers. Comcast doesn’t care. They are simply cutting off access to part of the Internet, plain and simple.

I would not be surprised at all to soon hear that Comcast will allow bittorrent traffic, for an additional fee. If you *really* want to use that protocol you can pay us more, but otherwise we don’t deem it as part of “normal internet usage”. Once that starts what is to stop the avalanche that will happen next?

“You want access to YouTube? It really uses a lot of bandwidth and we weren’t expecting most people to use more than casual browsing and email. That’ll be $5/mo additional.”

Indeed, and that is what AT&T has made clear they want in the past, while denying there was any problem at the same time.

Speaking of denial, a Comcast representative denied that his company was filtering or shaping traffic on his network, an assertion that lit another fire under TorrentFreak’s Ernesto, who begs to differ, with a little technical support from a commentator at Silicon Alley:

With Wireshark in the background run your BitTorrent application. Wait until completed and watch Wireshark, notice when it finishes seeding Comcast servers send out a reset command every second to your computer noted by the highlighted red line in Wireshark. It is 8:30 pm Monday pst and Comcast is still resting my BitTorrent connections. Maybe the PR guy didn’t get the email from the VP of Networking.

TorrentFreak also has video.

While Comcast’s PR guy (Charlie Douglas) is talking to the VP of Networking, he should also look for ways to distance the company from AT&T rock band censorship and their latest packet-sniffing developments as well.

He should also talk Christer Edwards into not switching to a slower DSL connection, as that furthers arguments that there is a competition crisis in the broadband space.

And he should also get all the PR reps from the other broadband companies together (shouldn’t be hard, there’s only a handful of them) so they can get their technical staffs on the same page as the spin-staffs.

After all, too much proof of concept stuff out there means a straight path to some nasty legislation they won’t like, so they need to be on their best behavior.

They call it "packet shaping," though, which is en route to be one of the hottest topics in the realm. In the States, ISPs argue in favor of packet shaping by saying there is a limited amount of bandwidth, a point others dispute as bandwidth increases exponentially and becomes cheaper by the day.

But also, like the British ISPs appear to be doing, they insinuate that online providers and subscribers are not already paying healthy bandwidth premiums – up to 40 times costs on the consumer side. From the provider side, ISPs are far more blatant, accusing content providers of piggybacking for free, which is patently untrue.

Like I said, I’m not sure how things work in England, but the situation sounds familiar.

Packet shaping is also a key issue in the Net Neutrality debate stateside. ISPs have argued they wouldn’t abuse their power (and assumed right) to prioritize, redirect, slow down, or block content, yet even as they make those assurances, Pearl Jam’s political speech is muted, government spies (NSA) are given carte blanche access, and competing services are degraded.

Packet shaping, like government power then, is a practice ripe for abuse, as those dictating the use of bandwidth, and the tolls placed upon it, assume the right to control content.