SAN FRANCISCO - Comcast said on Thursday that it will take a more equitable approach to managing the expanding Web traffic on its network.
The Philadelphia-based cable company has been under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission and public interest groups since media reports announced in 2007 that it was blocking some Internet traffic of customers who used online software based on the popular peer-to-peer BitTorrent protocol.
Comcast said it will alter its approach to policing its Internet traffic. Instead of interfering with specific online applications, the company said it will manage traffic by slowing the Internet speeds of users occupying the most bandwidth when traffic is busiest.
"In the event of congestion, the half-percent of people who are overutilizing an excessive amount of capacity will be slowed down subtly until capacity is restored," said Tony G. Werner, chief technology officer of Comcast. "For the other 99.5 percent, their performance will be maintained exactly as they expect it."
Werner said he hopes to have the new system in place by the end of this year.
Comcast and BitTorrent announced that they have been working together for the past year to find ways to optimize BitTorrent applications for the Comcast network. They would publish their findings to Web forums and standards groups so that other software-makers, peer-to-peer services and Internet service providers could adopt them.
"What we really want is not only for Comcast to be a better network, but for all networks to be better," said Ashwin Navin, president of BitTorrent.
Comcast and BitTorrent said their collaboration showed the corrective power of the market and eliminated the need for further federal oversight. However, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin vowed continued scrutiny and expressed concern that the old filtering practice would continue at least through the end of the year.
Since its network-management practices came to light, Comcast has taken a beating from the public. Consumer groups filed a complaint with the FCC, seeking for Comcast to be declared in violation of the commission's network-management principles.
Comcast's practices were subjected to additional scrutiny at an FCC hearing in Cambridge, Mass., in February. Another hearing will be held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., in April.
Marvin Ammori, general counsel for Free Press, one of the public interest groups that petitioned the FCC, urged the commission to continue pursuing the matter.
"The only reason Comcast came to the table and made a deal with BitTorrent is because of the unrelenting pressure," he said.
Many proponents of network neutrality, which would require ISPs to treat all Internet packets equally, oppose any sort of filtering and urged Comcast and its rivals to invest in adding bandwidth instead.
