Just days after the Federal Communications Commission asked for public input on whether certain broadband service providers are degrading peer-to-peer traffic, dozens of users have filed their comments. They identify Comcast as the culprit, and call for the cable giant to be honest about its broadband management practices.

"As a comcast home user I have seen my P2P traffic interfered with," one network administrator wrote to the FCC today. "I see connection throughput rate DROP after a short period of full speed. Even during off hours. Comcast is clearly selling me 2 Mb/s of networking at their discretion. They and all other ISP's should be forced to sell a real CIR (committed information rate) and to advertise ONLY that number."

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks rely on users to share files, rather than concentrating the data on a few large servers. Comcast has been accused of degrading access to popular P2P sites like BitTorrent and Gnutella. In October of last year, Associated Press reported that the news company's own investigation found that in some instances Comcast "hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent."

The cable firm says it has delayed access when usage was high, but has not deliberately singled any sites or services out. Nonetheless, Free Press and other groups have petitioned the FCC to issue a declaratory ruling on whether the practices with which Comcast and others have been charged violate the FCC's Internet policy statement.

That ruling, issued in August of 2005, said that the FCC "has jurisdiction necessary to ensure that providers of telecommunications for Internet access or Internet Protocol-enabled (IP-enabled) services are operated in a neutral manner."

Almost all the Comcast related comments filed over the last few days cry foul. None of them have been generated by interest group Web forms.

"If you so much as open a BitTorrent client on a computer on the Comcast network, your entire connection drops to almost a crawl," one filer explains. "Comcast is throttling my connection speed when I am transferring files from work to home," another reports. "They are also interrupting my connections."

Some filers offer theories as to why they think Comcast is degrading P2P traffic. "Comcast's reason for doing this is simple," a computer programmer writes.

"The Bittorrent protocol is designed to make efficient use of available bandwidth to distribute files to a large number of people across the internet. With Bittorrent, Comcast certainly sees much higher bandwidth usage. In some cases, they may be near or at capacity. Comcast wants to block, or at least throttle, Bittorrent traffic in order keep demand for bandwidth from reaching capacity. If demand is below capacity, they can continue to sell their service to more customers without upgrading their infrastructure to handle more demand. They can also sell and advertise connection packages with faster speeds without having to increase capacity."

Others complain that the problem is especially vexing because they have limited choices for broadband access.

"Comcast is one of only two broadband Internet choices I have, where I live," one commenter writes. "I chose Comcast because of supposed, advertised bandwidth speeds and a good promotional price (which I no longer receive), which is no longer valid."

"My Comcast service began having issues almost immediately and continued through the five years of my business with them," an IT support expert explains. "I only stayed with them because there were no better offerings for comparable speed when it did work."

Not every filing has been critical of Comcast. One ISP owner expressed sympathy with what he described as the company's dilemma.

"It is known that any ISP network can be brought to its knees by the widespread unchecked use of P2P services on their network," he wrote. "That being said it is entirely possible that a law prohibiting the ability to throttle P2P network traffic will cause all consumers to lose in the end because of the additional network resources which will obviously cost more, Those costs will be passed to the consumer."

But most commenters so far want Comcast to, at minimum, be up front with the public about what they will really get for their monthly broadband charge.

"I do not ask you to require Comcast or any other provider to change their policies," a filer explains, "but I would ask that the FCC would require them to be fully honest and disclose to consumers what they allow on their network, and not have any hidden restrictions or rate caps. This will allow the consumer to vote with their money and choose a different provider when they can, without adding additional regulations."

The public can send comments to the FCC on this matter through February 13th and reply to comments through the 28th. Comcast has not yet filed a reply. The docket number for the proceeding is 07-52.