Network Management Policy

Taylor Telephone Cooperative, Inc. provides this Policy in order to disclose its network management practices in accordance with the FCC’s Open Internet Rules. Information about Taylor Telephone’s other policies and practices concerning broadband are available at www.taylortel.net.

Taylor Telephone manages its network to ensure that all of its customers experience a safe and secure broadband Internet environment that is fast, reliable and affordable. Taylor Telephone wants its customers to indulge in all that the Internet has to offer, whether it is social networking, streaming videos and music, to communicating through email and videoconferencing.

Taylor Telephone manages its network for a number of reasons, including optimization, as well as congestion- and security-protocol-management. Taylor Telephone’s customers generally will not be impacted by the protocols and practices that Taylor Telephone uses to manage its network.

Taylor Telephone’s Network Management Practices

Taylor Telephone uses various tools and industry standard techniques to manage its network and deliver fast, secure and reliable Internet service. Such management tools and practices include the following:

I. Managing Congestion

Taylor Telephone monitors the connections on its network in the aggregate on a weekly basis to determine the rate of utilization. Taylor Telephone takes appropriate measures to address congestion when its utilization threshold reached a level of at least 85%. Taylor Telephone increased capacity on its network by deploying FTTH technology and current projects are underway to deploy more. Network equipment is also upgraded when feasible.

On Taylor Telephone’s network, all customers have access to all legal services, applications and content online and, in the event of congestion, most Internet activities will be unaffected. Some customers, however, may experience longer download or upload times, or slower surf speeds on the web if instances of congestion do occur on Taylor Telephone’s network.

Customers using conduct that abuses or threatens the Taylor Telephone network or which violates the company’s Acceptable Use Policy, Internet service Terms and Conditions, or the Internet Service Agreement will be asked to stop any such use immediately. A failure to respond or to cease any such conduct could result in service suspension or termination.

Taylor Telephone’s network and congestion management practices are ‘application-agnostic’, based on current network conditions, and are not implemented on the basis of customers’ online activities, protocols or applications. Taylor Telephone’s network management practices do not relate to any particular customer’s aggregate monthly data usage.

II. Network Security

Taylor Telephone knows the importance of securing its network and customers from network threats and annoyances. The company promotes the security of its network and patrons by providing resources to its customers for identifying and reporting such threats as spam, viruses, firewall issues, and phishing schemes. Taylor Telephone also deploys spam filters in order to divert spam from an online customer’s email inbox into a quarantine file while allowing the customer to control which emails are identified as spam. Customers may access the spam files through the email. Spam files are automatically deleted if not accessed within 14 days (this is a default setting but customer can change the number of days to the number they want).

As its normal practice, Taylor Telephone does not block any protocols, content or traffic for purposes of network management except that the company may block or limit such traffic as spam, viruses, malware, or denial of service attacks to protect network integrity and the security of our customers. Taylor Telephone also has a port filtering practice applied only to dynamic IP customers aimed at reducing the spread of computer-related viruses and protecting your computer from intruder access. Incoming mail is not filtered for any server. Outgoing mail server access can be requested. This is for spam/virus identification and filtering purposes only. No other filtering/shaping is done on Internet traffic.

III. Device Attachment Rules/Application-Specific Behaviors

Except as may be provided elsewhere herein, Taylor Telephone does not currently engage in any application-specific behaviors nor does it employ any device attachment rules for its network.

IV. Monitoring Schedule

Taylor Telephone monitors its network on a weekly basis in the aggregate to determine utilization on its network. When utilization reaches 85%, Taylor Telephone takes the appropriate measures to relieve congestion. Taylor Telephone also checks for abnormal traffic flows, network security breaches, malware, loss, and damage to the network. If a breach is detected or high volume users are brought to light by complaint, Taylor Telephone provides notification to the customer via email or phone. If a violation of Taylor Telephone’s policies has occurred and such violation is not remedied, Taylor Telephone will seek to suspend or terminate that customer’s service.

V. Network Management Technology

Taylor Telephone employs a variety of industry-standard tools, applications and devices to monitor, secure and maintain its network, including network graphing solutions.

VI. Service Descriptions

Taylor Telephone offers broadband service over ADSL and FTTH facilities. The Taylor Telephone service offerings and rates may be found by clicking the INTERNET button on the right. Although not guaranteed, generally, services having speeds of at least 3mb are suitable for real time applications such as video streaming.

VII. Network Performance

Taylor Telephone makes every effort to support advertised speeds and will dispatch repair technicians to customer sites to perform speed tests as needed to troubleshoot and resolve speed and application performance caused by Taylor Telephone’s network. Taylor Telephone measures availability, latency, and aggregate utilization on the network and strives to meet internal service level targets. However, customer’s service performance may also be affected by one or more of the following: (1) the particular websites being accessed; (2) capacity in the public Internet beyond Taylor Telephone’s network; (3) customer’s computer and equipment (including wireless router); and (4) inside wiring at customer’s premise.

In general, actual customer speeds are between 75%-100% of advertised speeds. Taylor measures latency at generally less than 20ms. Customers may request speed tests.