The Federal Communications Commission topped 3 million net neutrality comments before last night's deadline.

The public comment period ended on Monday, but not before the FCC counted a record number of comments from consumers, advocates, companies, and lawmakers.

"We have passed the 3 million mark for #OpenInternet comments received. We are still receiving & processing comments. More updates to come," FCC spokeswoman Kim Hart tweeted yesterday afternoon.

Later on Tuesday, Hart reported that the FCC received approximately 3.7 million Open Internet comments in total as of midnight on Monday.

The news comes four months after a divided FCC voted to proceed with an open Internet rulemaking that - after some controversy - was largely open-ended and asked stakeholders for their feedback on what should and should not be included in rules approved by the commission. Two public comment periods officially ended on Sept. 15, leaving the FCC with a massive number of opinions to peruse.

The FCC came under fire this spring when Chairman Tom Wheeler circulated a proposal that would allow for paid prioritization on the Web under special circumstances. Given that that's the exact opposite of what net neutrality sets out to accomplish, backers were immediately up in arms. Wheeler repeatedly insisted that the FCC would not allow for Internet fast lanes and would closely monitor any attempts at paid prioritization. But the backlash ultimately prompted the FCC to remove any sort of set rules from its proposal and to instead ask the public what they think about paid prioritization and how the FCC should handle it.

The only reason the FCC is once again addressing this topic, though, is that an appeals court earlier this year struck down the current rules, forcing the commission to return to the drawing board.

Internet advocates are certainly passionate about the topic: feedback twice crashed the agency's website and required extended comment deadlines.

Among the industry heavyweights and political bigwigs supporting net neutrality are Amazon, Google, Twitter, Sen. Al Franken, and even President Barack Obama, who said last month that "we should be trying to maintain an open Internet." On Sept. 10, firms like Netflix and Etsy adorned their websites with the symbols of Internet slowdowns - the buffering wheel of death - to indicate what they believed the Web could be like if paid prioritization was allowed.

For a peek at the submitted comments, take a look at the 1.4GB worth of net neutrality comments released by the FCC this summer. The six XML files total 2.5 times the amount of plain-text data found in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Moving forward, the Federal Communication Commission will host six open Internet roundtable discussions, starting today; the next five are scheduled through Oct. 7, all are set to convene in the Commission Meeting Room at 445 12th St., in Washington, D.C. Discussions will be webcast on the FCC's website, and anyone in the U.S. will be able to post questions online.

For more, see Net Neutrality: What's Really Happening?

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 6 p.m. ET with the final tally from the FCC.

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