Cox Kansas throttles internet service

This story popped up on my Google Reader the other day claiming that Cox will be trying to control their network traffic by slowing down “non-time sensitive” content during peak congestion times.  They state things like file-transfers  aren’t as critical as on-demand content like loading web pages, online games, and streaming videos.

At home, I really don’t have a problem with this.  A majority of my time is spent surfing the net, or playing Guild Wars.  But at work the core of what I do relies heavily on file transfers.  I have over 10 hours of audio content that I have to transfer to our on-air computer in Hays, and a majority of that has to first be downloaded from another source.  At the present rate it takes about 20 minutes to transfer one hour of mp3 audio to Hays at a measly 40 k/s.  That’s ALREADY a P.I.T.A.  I certainly don’t need it to take even longer.

Lifehacker also recently published a link to a set of tools to test what (if anything) is being throttled by your provider.  I’m anxious to put this to the test and see what protocols exactly are being throttled and by how much.  And if it significantly impacts my work, you can bet they’ll hear from me…as futile as my cry may be.