[Geo]

http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9769645-46.html

Within the last few weeks, there have been a number of reports by Comcast customers claiming that their BitTorrent downloads and uploads have been capped--or worse, blocked. TorrentFreak recently reported that Comcast, a major U.S. cable company, is using an application from Sandvine to throttle such connections.

/me waits for Digi to explode messily on this thread.

[AlphaWolf]

Unlimited downloads, as long as you never try to use it.

[digitalwanderer]

It hasn't affected me at all, and I've been watching.

You can get around it by tunnelling, btw...

EDITED BITS: Also, if you're using the default listening port for whatever torrent client you're using you're a bit of a thicky.

[threepac3]

I haven't had any problems either. I run as low as 35kbps and as high as 2.2mbps with no major issues.

[epicstruggle]

Originally Posted by Geo

/me waits for Digi to explode messily on this thread.

Its going to be interesting to see where ISPs go with people who use much of their (the ISPs) bandwidth for p2p traffic. Digg recently had an article where German ISPs said that 90+% of their bandwidth had been used for p2p, I assume its much the same for their US counterparts.

Comcast isnt the only one doing this type of thing, just the biggest so far. I believe time warner has been doing something similar but starting on a smaller scale. What I think will happen is much of the people that are/will be effected will move to ISPs that cater to high usage users. I wonder if their business models will hold up under the strain.

epic

[nutball]

Originally Posted by epicstruggle

Its going to be interesting to see where ISPs go with people who use much of their (the ISPs) bandwidth for p2p traffic.

Why should the ISPs have a say in what uses their customers make of the bandwidth they've paid money for?

If you pay for a 20Mb unlimited service, you should get a 20Mb unlimited service. If ISPs can't deliver an unlimited 20Mb service, they shouldn't sell an unlimited 20Mb service. If you go to McDonalds and buy a half-pounder with cheese, you expect a half-pounder with cheese. You wouldn't be happy to get a quarter-pounder without any cheese but pay the same price (because they're low on burgers and someone else has eaten this weeks supply of cheese, unexpectedly).

If the ISPs surprised by the demand and it screws up their contention ratio projections, they should fire the person who made those projections, not take it out on their paying customers.

[vazel]

Well I'm sure you know about the oversubscribe business model. It's the only way we can get our connections at the price we do. What I would like to see is the bandwidth abusers singled out for throttling that way we all don't have to suffer under universal capping/throttling. It's ridiculous how some people are, they download anything that even remotely interests them off p2p and store it on DVD-R and won't even use it for months if at all.

[Geo]

Originally Posted by epicstruggle

Its going to be interesting to see where ISPs go with people who use much of their (the ISPs) bandwidth for p2p traffic. Digg recently had an article where German ISPs said that 90+% of their bandwidth had been used for p2p, I assume its much the same for their US counterparts.

There's a linked article in the link I provided: http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-t...-traffic-myth/ It suggests 33% of all internet traffic. But that article is from 2004. . . and from my observation, that's actually *before* P2P really exploded for TV, movies and youtube (which is, of course, incredibly more bw intensive than music).

Comcast isnt the only one doing this type of thing, just the biggest so far. I believe time warner has been doing something similar but starting on a smaller scale. What I think will happen is much of the people that are/will be effected will move to ISPs that cater to high usage users. I wonder if their business models will hold up under the strain.

It seems to me that a large part of the problem here is that the ISPs can't get their marketing departments and their technical/infrastructure departments to talk to each other. Don't advertise what you don't offer, and probably a lot of this goes away. If they want to have tiered pricing for total monthly bw used offerings, that is their right. Advertise them clearly and price them competitively and people can make their choices.

[nutball]

Originally Posted by vazel

Well I'm sure you know about the oversubscribe business model.

Yes I'm well aware of it. Hence my point that if they get it wrong, it should be on their heads not ours. They should know their market better. They advertise a tiered product, you get more bandwidth the more money you pay. Or they shouldn't advertise it as unlimited. It shouldn't be down to us to suck it up when they get their maths wrong.

[digitalwanderer]

The problem I have is there is no alternative to Comcast for me for fatty bandwidth, the next best would be DSL at like 1Mb/300Kb/s.

I'll stick with Comcast until they force me off.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

AFAICR Comcast is killing off seeding. If you are only seeding (ie no download), then Comcast has bought in some technology that pretends to be the downloader (which is where it is contentious because they are imitating someone else) and sending you a RST reset packet on the session, so you can no longer seed.

The best way around it (if you have a decent router) is to set up IPTables to drop any RST packets incoming on your Bittorrent port, but you'll need to google for details.

[ERP]

I've seen this reported previously, and I've watched torrents while seeding and have yet to see the issue. I'm not saying it's not happening, but I have yet to see any evidence of it in my area.

[digitalwanderer]

Colour me curious BZB, what would I google to find out how to do that under XP?

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by digitalwanderer

Colour me curious BZB, what would I google to find out how to do that under XP?

I don't think you'd do it under XP, ideally you'd do it in your router running one of the flavours of embedded linux, or in a linux OS on a PC.

If you google for "iptables comcast drop" you'll probably find threads and forums of people dealing with the problem. It's not something I've looked into much as it's not an issue for me, but here is a start.

Slyck.com also has links as they've been reporting the various stories on this. The spoiler tech is called Sandvine.

[digitalwanderer]

Many thanks BZB, off to research!

I want to be ready, in case....

[Sobek]

Heh, I recently switched ISP's here and i've found that after about 2 days, whatever port I use for my torrent client (Azereus) suddenly starts spitting out "NAT Error?" on the main UI display, and my active torrent crawls. I switch the port and apply, and everything's tickety-boo. My initial thoughts are that they're blocking/throttling/something-ing these ports for whatever reason... When I was with my previous ISP this never happened, but only started the INSTANT I switched. I download all of my demos via torrent too, since it's beyond impossible to find GOOD mirrors to download multi-Gb files over here upon launch (but with torrents for things like this there's usually some great seeders I can get through too). So it's not like these things are 'wrong' and worthy of being stopped.

Either that or it's a super-coincidental fault that's occured out of the the blue on the exact instant I switched ISP's.

[Rainbow Man]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.

If you are only seeding (ie no download), then Comcast has bought in some technology that pretends to be the downloader (which is where it is contentious because they are imitating someone else) and sending you a RST reset packet on the session, so you can no longer seed.

That soundsa lot like computer sabotage to me.

What, in their end-user contracts/service agreement do they base this behavior on?

Is it even legal? I would think not. It could certainly interfere with private networks, say you set up a torrent for your friends with password protection. Bam comes the ISP along and kills your seed.

In any case regardless of legality it's certainly scummy behavior. It's not up to the ISP to decide how the users use the bandwidth they're paying for.

Peace.

[digitalwanderer]

I'm still a bit miffed at the whole "invisible bandwidth cap" Comcast has. They advertise unlimited, but they're booting people for over-useage without saying what per month useage limits. are.

[Richard]

Personally, I'm all for customers to complain if they feel wronged and sue if they feel they have a case but the mind boggles when people point out their contractual, legal right to unlimited traffic only to use that traffic for illegal downloading.

Btw, that's not neccessarily a slight on anyone posting here, it's just something I'm reminded whenever this type of ISP problem is uncovered.

[epicstruggle]

Originally Posted by Richard

Personally, I'm all for customers to complain if they feel wronged and sue if they feel they have a case but the mind boggles when people point out their contractual, legal right to unlimited traffic only to use that traffic for illegal downloading.

Btw, that's not neccessarily a slight on anyone posting here, it's just something I'm reminded whenever this type of ISP problem is uncovered.

Post of the year.

[Geo]

Ignoring the implication that all heavy users must be scofflaws, and assuming for the sake of argument one specific fictional user who fits Richard's proposed profile. . . . So if you're going 5mph over the speed limit when a negligent flaw in your vehicle causes you to die, your estate shouldn't be able to sue over it because you were breaking the law at the time?

[Sxotty]

Originally Posted by Richard

Personally, I'm all for customers to complain if they feel wronged and sue if they feel they have a case but the mind boggles when people point out their contractual, legal right to unlimited traffic only to use that traffic for illegal downloading.

Btw, that's not neccessarily a slight on anyone posting here, it's just something I'm reminded whenever this type of ISP problem is uncovered.

The providers of bandwidth should not do this. They should have caps that they publicize and just say that is the amount you get per month, pay more and get more. It is not their place to monitor traffic and by trying to get into that game they step into liability for what their customers do. The RIAA has a case in other words if they prove comcast knows what is being downloaded. Thus it is in comcast's interest to actually insulate itself from knowledge of what it's customers are actually doing.

[Geo]

What's that Sxotty? Surely you understand that Comcast isn't doing this because of their selfish financial interests? They must be trying to make their own modest contribution to the fight against piracy, right? Just like growers in the American Southwest fight illegal immigration by paying the workers less than minimum wage to disincentivize them from coming to the US. Oh, hmm, maybe I better think that one out again. . .

I wonder how many users out there get Comcast or their other cable brethren rather than DSL because of torrent speed considerations? You think Comcast has some idea of that number? I tend to think they do.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by Sxotty

The providers of bandwidth should not do this. They should have caps that they publicize and just say that is the amount you get per month, pay more and get more. It is not their place to monitor traffic and by trying to get into that game they step into liability for what their customers do. The RIAA has a case in other words if they prove comcast knows what is being downloaded. Thus it is in comcast's interest to actually insulate itself from knowledge of what it's customers are actually doing.

Comcast will basically say that they are maintaining their common carrier status because they are not actually looking at what is being shared, merely controlling one type of traffic on their network that they do not have the capacity for.

Of course the media cartels want to get the ISPs to control stuff like that more formally (or legally) so that they can claim ISPs have given up their common carrier status and thus should be liable for all data that moves across their network. Something that would be impossible, but the media cartels would quite like to close down the internet on that basis anyway.

Where it gets contentious is that Comcast are not transparently and publicly disabling torrents and seeding, they are effectively committing a man-in-the-middle attack on the sly, where they pretend to each end of a torrent connection that they are the other side sending a reset to kill the connection.


Fact is, monolithic telcos/cablecos turned ISPs have long been using an oversubscribed traffic planning model for years, often creaming off the most profitable customers while doing the minimum. They've pushed and encouraged ever more use of bandwidth, and now that the demand for applications that require larger and larger amounts of bandwidth direct to the desktop has grown, they are whining that they cannot keep up.

My ISP has been increasing levels of bandwidth for years for marketing purposes in and order to charge more for this increased service, but then they whine when people actually use their bandwidth at the wrong time or for too long. Of course if people ever gave up everything but a bit of browsing or email, you can guarentee that the ISPs would lose a load of money as everyone went back to 256 kbit for the lowest price available.

[Sxotty]

Originally Posted by Geo

What's that Sxotty? Surely you understand that Comcast isn't doing this because of their selfish financial interests? They must be trying to make their own modest contribution to the fight against piracy, right? Just like growers in the American Southwest fight illegal immigration by paying the workers less than minimum wage to disincentivize them from coming to the US. Oh, hmm, maybe I better think that one out again. . .

I wonder how many users out there get Comcast or their other cable brethren rather than DSL because of torrent speed considerations? You think Comcast has some idea of that number? I tend to think they do.

I fully realize that is why they are doing it Geo, my point was that they are stepping into a minefield without realizing it. They would be better off to simply have a cap on bandwidth. I understand they think they can get away with this b/c those they are screwing are most likely doing something illegal, but not all are.