Cox to experiment its web traffic regulation model

   Print    Email

Email To		[Close]
		You must make entries in all fields
Your Email
Your Name
Send to Email
		Send

Cox Communications, a US Based digital cable service provider backing the concept of net neutrality, has found a new way to minimise internet congestion in the near future. According to officials, the company has decided to run an experimental filter system in the states of Arkansas and Kansas starting February 9, 2009. Under the filter model, internet traffic will be given priority on the basis of content. Web page viewing and other time bound activities will be given importance over other downloads and updates with lesser properties of timeliness.

USA’s third largest cable company, Cox, has based its internet traffic filtering system on the ComCast Corp.’s model of regulating the internet traffic to minimise congestion in web data transfer. Although ComCast’s method of secretly scrutinising and prioritising traffic was booked in the court for its improper actions, Cox has kept mum over the nature of its regulatory model claiming that evaluations on the basis of ComCast’s court case have already been made.

In spite of tests, conducted by Max Plank Institute for Software Systems in Germany, showing that Cox was already using a method to manage network traffic with differentiations made on the basis of importance of content, Cox has labelled its experiment as a totally new technique to check increasing congestion in Web networks.

While the decision of limiting and regulating internet traffic isn’t totally vested in service providers’ hands, Cox plans to apply maximum possible methods of its model by year end once the experimental procedure proves its worth in Kansas and Arkansas. On the other hand, the support for the concept of net neutrality by a web giant like Google Inc has also raked in positive feedbacks for the functioning of Cox’s internet trafficking technique.

Although the effectiveness and ethical objectivity of Cox’s plans to regulate internet traffic are still to be tested and approved by the web community, an ideal adaptation of the proposed model would mean smoother web traffic and faster data transfer in the future.