Internet traffic

It has been reported that U.S. consumers lost almost $8.5 billion dollars over the past two years to e-threats. In response to this, BitDefender has released its top ten tips to secure computers against spam, viruses, phishing and spyware.

1. Don't assume anything. Take some time to learn about securing your system.

2. Acquire and use a reliable antivirus (AV) program. Select one with a consistent track record. Checkmark, AV-Test.org and TuV are among the most respected independent testers of AV software.

Some of the most vicious Internet predators are hackers who infect thousands of PCs with special viruses and lash the machines together into "botnets" to pump out spam or attack other computers.

Now security researchers say cell phones, and not just PCs, are the next likely conscripts into the automated armies.

The mobile phone as zombie computer is one possibility envisioned by security researchers from Georgia Tech in a new report coming out Wednesday.

Britain is considering setting up a database of all phone and e-mail traffic in the country as part of a high-tech strategy to fight terrorism and crime, its top law-and-order official said Wednesday.

Opposition politicians and civil liberties groups immediately condemned the idea, and the country's terror-law ombudsman said the government must not be allowed to set up a vast "data warehouse."

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said Britain's police and security services need new ways to collect and store records of phone calls, e-mails and Internet traffic.

Comcast, which has been under scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission for how it allocates bandwidth for heavy users, submitted its formal broadband management plan on Friday.

Without notification and without posting a policy, Comcast had targeted users who employed peer-to-peer file sharing. Under the new plan, the company will slow speeds for the heaviest users when traffic congestion is the greatest. This will be accomplished by creating a slower lane of traffic for heavy users at those times, a lane that will have lower priority than traffic for other users.

Following a Federal Communications Commission ruling that Comcast blocked Internet traffic and ordering the company to submit a compliance plan about how it intends to stop "discriminatory management practices," Comcast is planning a new traffic-managing system.

Called Fair Share, the system is intended to limit the heaviest Internet users over short periods of time.

'Time-Out' Mechanism

NBC Universal is running an unprecedented 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage on television and the Internet, most of it live online, letting fans track their favorite sports in a way not possible even if they'd gone to Beijing.

Excited by the prospects, I set my alarm for 4:45 a.m. on Sunday to catch cycling, handball, archery and rowing events on NBCOlympics.com as they happen half a world away in China -- 12 hours ahead of New York.

A divided Federal Communications Commission has ruled that Comcast Corp. violated U.S. government policy when it blocked Internet traffic for some subscribers and has ordered the cable giant to change the way it manages its network.

In a precedent-setting move, the FCC by a 3-2 vote on Friday enforced a policy that guarantees customers open access to the Internet.

The commission did not assess a fine, but ordered the company to stop cutting off transfers of large data files among customers who use a special type of "file-sharing" software.

The Federal Communications Commission is reportedly ready to take enforcement action against cable-TV giant Comcast for blocking Internet traffic. An investigation began after complaints from the public-interest group Free Press.

Philadelphia-based Comcast is the country's second-largest Internet service provider, with 14.1 million subscribers.

Brocade Communications Systems Inc., dominant in an obscure corner of the data storage market, wants a piece of a bigger pie: Cisco Systems Inc.'s cash cow business of networking equipment that shuttles Internet traffic.

San Jose-based Brocade said Monday it has agreed to pay $3 billion to acquire one of Cisco's much-smaller competitors, Foundry Networks Inc., to try and make that happen.

In what may be an early test of enforcing open-access rules for the Internet, the head of the Federal Communications Commission said Thursday that he will seek to have Comcast punished for violating openness guarantees.

According to the Associated Press, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said his agency "has adopted a set of principles that protects customers' access to the Internet," and Comcast violated those principles. The FCC policy to which Martin refers is a 2005 set of principles.

'Arbitrarily' Blocked