Alissa Cooper

It can be difficult to predict when and why particular technologies will attract attention from policymakers. A few years ago, it seemed like around every policy corner — whether it be privacy, Internet neutrality, copyright enforcement, or cybersecurity — lurked deep packet inspection, a technical capability that allowed ISPs to gain increased visibility into the [...]

It has been two whole weeks since the FCC issued its Internet openness rules, and with holiday celebrations out of the way there has been some time for the details to start to sink in. Some observers seem to be perpetuating a high-level debate about whether the FCC went too far or not far enough, [...]

Today is the last day to file comments for the net neutrality consultation that Ofcom, the UK telecom regulator, is conducting. As I was reading the consultation document and reflecting about the state of traffic management in the UK — where different ISPs target different applications for throttling or prioritization at different times of day [...]

It’s been awhile since I last surveyed the traffic management policies of some of the largest UK retail ISPs. The chart below is up-to-date as of this week. ISP Has traffic management policy? Hours of application Takes application-specific action? Apps/protocols targeted AOL Broadband Yes Typically applies in the “evenings” Unclear because policy lacks details BT [...]

While soccer fans across the globe have been captivated with the excitement of the World Cup during the last month, vendors of DPI-based technologies have been casting their focus there as well. I recently came across a number of different vendor reports and musings (from Arbor, Allot, and Sandvine) about the impact of World Cup [...]

DPI has been a hot topic in a number of different policy circles in recent years. In the privacy arena, ISPs’ use of DPI has drawn scathing criticism despite the fact that other kinds of service providers (like content delivery networks and web-based service providers) are capable of conducting content inspection. In a guest essay [...]

Note: This was originally posted on the Center for Democracy & Technology blog. From the iPhone’s very first days, legions of avid smartphone users have awaited the day when Apple would announce support for “multitasking” – the ability to keep multiple iPhone applications running at once. In yesterday’s preview of the latest iPhone operating system, [...]

Note: This was originally posted on the Center for Democracy & Technology blog. One aspect of the FCC’s proposed “Open Internet” rules that has received significant attention is the notion that the rules be subject to a “reasonable network management” exception. The network management provision would allow network operators to implement management schemes to control [...]

Note: This was originally posted on the Center for Democracy & Technology blog. In advance of Facebook’s annual developer conference next month, reports have begun to materialize about a seminal new feature that the social networking service may roll out: location sharing. Although there’s no official word from the company yet, the speculation is that [...]

I’ve heard for some time now that most if not all broadband ISPs in the UK have implemented some sort of congestion management on their networks (beyond what TCP itself provides) and that in many cases these management policies are targeting specific application types. But in my search for a comprehensive resource documenting these policies, [...]