In order to help its broadband flow better the network operator, O2 has announced that it will be slower the access speeds of Newsgroups, BitTorrent and a number of other Peer-to-Peer (P2P) sites.

The introduction of new traffic management protocols that will come into effect during peak times in order to ensure that e-mail, streaming video and other services considered vital can be accessed by all customers was recently announced by O2 Broadband, a leading provider of broadband and mobile services to businesses and consumers throughout the UK.

Newsgroups and P2P programs that “some people run on their computers all day and night” are being blamed for making it “much slower” for others attempting to perform more basic tasks over their broadband connection, which is why during peak traffic hours of 8-11PM it plans to throttle these programs.

In a recent press release O2 advised “We want everyone to get the most from their broadband, whatever they use it for. That’s why we’ve introduced this policy. To help your broadband flow better.”

The list of site include P2P and Newsgroup sites like Gnutella, BitTorrent, KaZaA, eDonkey, Nodezilla, NetNews, NNTP, DDI, NAS and many others. The full list of sites that will be throttle during these times are available on the O2 website so that customers are aware which services will be running at reduced speed.

Although this latest announcement isn’t a cause for concern for many file-sharers what will worry them is whether this is just the first of many changes that will be made by internet providers and whether O2 may move from throttling access to P2P at peak hours and decide to throttle this type of traffic throughout the day.

Source – Zero Paid