Vuze calls FCC to Probe Cox's Net Traffic Wrangling

Vuze is at it again it appears--this time going after Cox Cable, seeking an FCC Probe into the way that Cox manages customer bandwidth.

Vuze, the media company that some of you may remember going after Comcast’s peer-to-peer throttling practices is now targeting Cox Cable. Cox apparently made themselves a prime target for Vuze with their announcement in late January over how they will classify P2P traffic as being “tolerant of delay”.

Jay Monahan, attorney for Vuze, speaks out on his blog, saying:

“That (P2P Traffic) includes all bittorrent applications, including our Vuze application. We take that personally, and think you should too. While Cox may consider our content and business to be unimportant or of lower priority, all of the content we deliver through the Vuze HD Network is delivered using our bittorrent-protocol-based technology. Suffice it to say, our 10 million users who access over a petabyte of Vuze HD Network content every month care about ‘delay’ of their content.”

This is obviously the first and foremost reason that Vuze is taking all of this traffic management stuff seriously, as the way it deliver its content appears to fall directly into the criteria for ‘tolerant of delay’ traffic as set forth by Cox Cable. However, Cox has not yet put this new practice into full effect everywhere as of current. According to Cox, it's just ‘testing’ these methods starting this month.

Applications that are classified as ‘tolerant of delay’ will also include FTP, Usenet, and Software Updates. When Cox’s network becomes saturated with traffic the new management technology will give priority to 'more important traffic' such as the obvious Web browsing and traffic like voice calls, streaming videos and on-line gaming.

“Although Cox is investing a significant amount of time and money to test this new method of congestion management, we won’t know if changes are warranted until the results of this trial are complete.” – Cox Cable added.

Vuze says that the troubling aspect of this investigation is that unlike Comcast, Cox will not just be measuring congestion, it will be putting focus on specific applications. Vuze expresses that it's are not very reassured by Cox’s insistence that delays will be “very brief and likely not noticeable to customers.”