Is the FCC closing the barn door too early?

The FCC has decided Comcast illegally disrupted peer-to-peer traffic by using deep packet inspection technology. According to The Washington Post, the decision affirms the FCC’s right to regulate how Internet companies manage network traffic.

I’m concerned here that the FCC might be ready to step in to solve a problem that the ISP community could well solve on its own and in the process create greater problems for consumers and ISPs than exist today. If the FCC decides it holds the greater wisdom in determining how technology such as DPI can be used to make networks run more efficiently and provide fair treatment to all Internet traffic, we could be in for a bumpy ride.

There is general acknowledgement that Comcast’s use of DPI to throttle BitTorrent traffic was wrong on several levels. Comcast has even acknowledged problems and sought to address them in cooperation with BitTorrent.

If the FCC is merely firing a warning shot across the bows of other ISPs, which might be tempted to use DPI in a way that doesn’t just protect non-P2P traffic but actually blocks some traffic, that’s fine. Insisting ISPs disclose their traffic management policies to consumers also is important, and enforcing that kind of policy makes sense.

But if federal regulators are tempted to go further, major dangers loom. There is nothing inherently wrong with DPI and, in fact, as networks get more congested — and they will — the need for an intelligent, software-based approach to managing myriad IP applications will be essential to the success of those apps, ISPs and their services.

It is possible to use DPI in a pro-consumer way, as U.K. ISP PlusNet is proving. The FCC needs to take note.