---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Livingood, Jason" <Jason_Livingood@cable.comcast.com>
Date: Jun 24, 2015 9:35 AM
Subject: Re: [IP] Study: Major internet providers slowing traffic speeds for thousands across US
To: "dave@farber.net" <dave@farber.net>, "ip" <ip@listbox.com>, "lauren@vortex.com" <lauren@vortex.com>
Cc:

Dave – For IP if you wish.

It is hard to judge the merits of this “study” or “report”. I could find no report on the M-Lab site, the Free Press site, or the BattleForTheNet site. Everyone just linked to or tweeted a link to the Guardian article. When I emailed the writer asking for a pointer to the report so I could examine the technical methodology, data, and conclusions, I was told there was just a private Google Docs document. That doesn’t seem quite right — it makes it hard for engineers and researchers to independently assess this. 

But assuming a report is shared at some point in the future, if the data relies on tests that end users initiate, which it may, it is worth noting that such a measurement methodology was rejected by the FCC in their Measuring Broadband America report in favor of a system where the end measurement points are all homogenous. Apart from removing significant self-selection bias, it means the measurement is of the access network and not influenced by stuff like WiFi (2.4GHz vs 5GHz, distance from AP, etc.) and what other users on the LAN may be doing with the Internet connection (like using up 50% of the capacity doing a download which would render speed measurements invalid).


Jason Livingood
Comcast – Internet Services



On 24/06/15 12:58, J.C. DE MARTIN wrote:
Major internet providers slowing traffic speeds for thousands across US

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/22/major-internet-providers-slowing-traffic-speeds

    Major internet providers, including AT&T, Time Warner and
    Verizon, are slowing data from popular websites to thousands of
    US businesses and residential customers in dozens of cities
    across the country, according to a study released on Monday. The
    study, conducted by internet activists BattlefortheNet, looked at
    the results from 300,000 internet users and found significant
    degradations on the networks of the five largest internet service
    providers (ISPs), representing 75% of all wireline households
    across the US.