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RoadRunner Blocking Use of Kazaa
An anonymous reader submits: "You should know that RoadRunner is quietly blocking the use of Kazaa in
certain markets. Particularly in Texas, they have some sort of port scanner
in place which scans for Kazaa activity and then disables use of that port,
rendering the program completely useless. Grokster, iMesh, and all other
FastTrack programs are similarly affected. Yet RoadRunner is not disclosing
the practice in any way. Not only that, I'm troubled by the possibility of
them arbitrarily choosing to block other programs in the future. If this
becomes more widespread, they will have many angry (and former) customers." The poster provides these four links to forum postings with more information: one;
two;
three;
four.
As a user of Roadrunner in Austin, I don't see that I have much choice. Yeah, I can dump them, but then who do I use for high-speed access? DSL is priced higher, has terrible performance in the area. In fact, most of the DSL users I know have switched to Roadrunner. On the other hand, if they start blocking all the programs that make high-speed access worthwhile, there's not much point in paying $40/month to use it.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
At what point of blocking a person's internet capability does this become a breach of contract? Once people realize that I can swap files using HTTP, will they remove my ability to browse the web?
I don't have a contract handy, so if it's covered so be it; But if it _is_ in your contract then maybe you should re-think who you pay $50 a month.
Alas, Babylon.
True, but they don't really care about losing file-sharing customers. They eat up a disproportionate amount of the bandwidth, and they probably lose money on most of these customers.
Now I'm not agreeing with this ISP - this action totally sucks for the reasons the original poster outlined. They need a more diplomatic solution... a slightly-higher priced service plan that allows use of such programs, or maybe they could just throttle traffic on those ports. And above all else though, they need to disclose this practice- otherwise it's completely unethical, PERIOD.
But the point is they really don't care about losing that kind of customer from a business sense.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is that they eat up a large amount of the upstream, which when is being maxed by a large number of customers will begin to have a negative effect on the downstream for other customers. Beyond this, you are not allowed to run a server with their residential service so if your sharing your violating your contract.
I guess if you get completely technical, it could be considered a breach of contract. Most ISPs have clauses against running servers of any kind on their networks. P2P programs could be considered servers since they "serve" content to other clients who want it. I'd say they are justified, but it still kinda sux...
Oh well, at least the RIAA didn't force it on them, they had the initiative to do it on their own...
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Napster was actually used legally by some people (albeit a far cry from the majority), I've never met anyone who's used Kazaa for anything but media piracy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The symptoms they describe (gradually decreasing download speeds) don't sound like RR activity to me. If I were an ISP and wanted to block a port it would be blocked. I can't imagine RR going to great lengths to effect a bandwidth fade when they can just shut the whole thing off.
--
E_NOSIG
Im not trying to troll or draw flames but by the letter of the law - trading copy-writed music is illegal. I'de rather have the music swapping services shut down then have the record companies try more wide-spread cd protection that would further limit legitimate fair use. Im not saying I agree with the way the system works now... but Im not going to cry when I can't use music-swappers illegally anymore.
Have a Happy.
Here in central Fort Worth (700,000 strong), within walking distance of a University (Texas Christian University) we have only two choices: dial-up or Charter cable modem. DSL is NOT available in this area, despite being within 4 miles of downtown. Charter has consistently downgraded serivce in the three years its been available, with two steps-down in speed (3Mbps -> 1 Mbs -> 128 kbps), changing from static IPs to DHCP, and going from unrestricted to port blocking (no mail servers, web servers, etc.) If they offered a higher class of service (static IP, ability to run servers are important to me, 128 kbps isn't a big problem) I'd jump on it. They keep talking about adding better service tiers, but never get around to it.
The discussions are the result of a single post saying it's not working. Most replies to the primary posts say that everything is working fine for them. Other provide technically inaccurate information such as Kazaa "slowing down" before it just completely stops and then attribute that to port blocking. How about some general skepticism here before ranting about some mega-corp stomping all over the end users rights. Here's one of the initial posts:
"The only way i can search is if i log off and on real fast on kazaa. Doing that i can get one search off. I resume downloads fine jus no searches. I'm running XP if that helps. Can anyone please help. Thanks"
Hmmm, XP, and it works for a couple seconds and then stops. Yeah, rights, there's somebody at the RR NOC sitting there watching all traffic and manually flipping a light switch that controls your port 1214.
The second post linked to in the article is of about the same quality only by a jumpy conspiracy theorist. I couldn't stand to read the other 2.
P2P is cool in theory; but in practice people are using it merely to move around huge pirated mp3s and mpegs and as a result a small number of users are consuming a grossly disproportionate amount of bandwidth. It's a tragedy of the commons. See previous /. stories on how this has already played out at college campuses across the US (and elsewhere).
I'm in Austin, and I've actually switched away from Road Runner to SBC ADSL. Why? Because, of course, the bandwidth I saw decreased dramatically over the years since I was an early adopter; and they were charging me too damn much money, anyway. I don't get a ton of bandwidth with my ADSL connection, but the service is more reliable, and it's less expensive. And so far, I've not seen any port blocking or scanning for servers -- something I've been hearing about from the cable side of the fence.
Honestly, I'm ambivalent about a lot of these issues as my idealistic and practical sides of my personality come into conflict. Ideally, I'd like the consumer's access to the internet to be pretty much like what it meant to be hooked up to the interent in the good old days before it became commoditized -- the internet was designed for hosts to be servers, not just clients or even peers. I should be able to run my own web server, my own smtp and pop/imap server, my own nntp server, my own streaming multimedia server, share my filesystem, run distributed applications, network games, P2P apps....whatever. To me, that's part of the whole point. On the other hand, as a practical matter, there still isn't enough bandwidth available for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to use their home internet connections this way. Yeah, there's a lot of dark fiber -- but none of it is the last mile connections. And some people are consuming far more networking resources than they are paying for. That's a legitimate problem, and it certainly can't be justified on the basis of a need to share files that are illegal in the first place.
There is a clause in the TOS restricting bandwidth, at least in the San Antonio RR TOS.
Subscriber acknowledges and agrees that Time Warner Cable shall have the right to monitor bandwidth utilization (i.e., volume of data transmitted) arising out of the Service provided hereunder at any time and on an on-going basis and to limit excessive use of bandwidth in order to effectuate these provisions and other terms hereof
Scary stuff. They, and only they, decide what "excessive use" really is.
Sounds like you have a virus of some sort, ace. I'm using RR in Orlando and have no problem. Not getting a context right-click menu for 7 seconds smacks of a java script (you should block those for any site you don't trust with your wallet, you know) preventing you from LEGAL operations. I'd get a virus scan done ASAP.... probably too late though. If RR tried to force scripts that blocked functionality of software that I was using, I'd sue in a heartbeat. They dont' have a right to interfere with my private systems. In fact, since I frequently work at home in addition to my regular schedule, they'd likely be sued by my employer (yes my employer is big enough to take on Time Warner in court.)
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Before I comment on this, I just want to be clear that I don't support blocking of ports etc. However, my use of Kazaa opened up some insight into how it works, and why ISP's would kill it.
I used Kazaa solidly for a couple of weeks, trying to get a few eps of MST3k. When I was done, I shut down Kazaa and moved on. When I went to go play Quake, I noticed I had low ping times, but I was still getting intermitting lagging that was ruining my game.
I figured out what happened. Kazaa users were constantly bombarding my IP address with requests. This was happening so often that my connection was getting lagged from it. If AT&T had switched over my IP address, some other user would have gotten all that garbage. It is very possible that this isn't about bandwidth at all, but it's affect on other customers.
Only the ISPs really know for sure, but it is understandable, tho regrettable.
Modern routers and layer-3 switches have Quality-of-Service, or QoS, features, which allow specified types of traffic to be policed at any desired rate.
So, if one can identify the ports/protocols used by the lusers in question, one can then use QoS features to rate-limit the appropriate ports so as to make file-swapping useless, -without- blocking the ports.
Come now... Most slashdotter's consider themselves to be elitest in one area or another in the realm of electronics, so it should be no big deal to simply use the ports that the ISP's HAVE to allow... or just use IRC.
:)
Anyways, where I live, people have been uncapping thier modems and I feel it becuase I am a gamer. I say GOOD FOR THE ISP! I remember one isp saying "1% of our customers use 20% of the bandwidth." If anything, kazaa needs to come with the settings set to NO UPLOADS ALLOWED becuase i'm sure most people that are quite ignorant are a majority in the bandwidth hogging. All in all, I just want a low ping to frag the rest of you in Q3... but isn't that what we all want? (aside from downloading resevoir dogs of course
How long before these types of services start streaming over port 80? Are they going to examine the actual packets to make sure they are valid web traffic, or do you think they would actually block all port 80 traffic?? Feel free to pick any port used by some other service instead of port 80 (or better yet, just stream valid html back and forth over port 80, with a web file sharing service gateway out on the net)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
...and I'm not sure why /. published this? The links are more are less free of any real substance. Timothy, some personal beef with RR?
.de's fastest EuroDOCSIS cable modem network - 2MBit up/2Mbit down
What does not make sense to me is:
-if they want a port blocked, it would be blocked (no short functionality, no slowdown of transfers but a termination of transfers)
- lots of people say kazaa and other p2p actually works for them, but browser http traffic on port 80 sucks big time
- blocking the port would send people to just use another one - continous scanning with a script is possible, but in that case it makes no sense to piss the customer off, they could just regulate that port down some kbytes
- from what the users say this more or less sounds like heavy load balancing problems, lack of bandwidth or routing problems. and some things the users describe sounds like an OS screaming to be reinstalled ("...rebooting seemed to solve the problems...")
sent from
+++ath0
Well, I hate to break it to you all, but TimeWarner/AOL probably is NOT reading these Slashdot posts. If you want to have an impact, "send feedback" to your local Road Runner service. I sent this message to the the Rochester Road Runner "Feedback" form:
2 37258&mode=thread&tid=153 ) that Road Runner is blocking certain ports which use file-sharing and other types of internet software in certain cities, particularly Texas. I am e-mailing you to express my disapproval of that, and to tell you that I will strongly consider changing services should Road Runner do such in Rochester. I am paying to get access to the internet and other internet users, not that portion of the net and other users which TimeWarner/AOL thinks appropriate. You should be in the business of providing a bandwidth service, not determining how your users use that bandwidth.
To whom it may concern:
I've heard on slashdot ( http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/07/14/0
Sly tricks like this and other forms of architectural control by ISP's is a sure way to severely anger customers. Other than blocking specific programs like KazaaLite, WinMX, or Gnutella clients, other despicable tactics would be providing faster access to sites which TimeWarner was affiliated with, slower access to sites of rivals (i.e., DSL home pages). What's next, is TW going to use its power over architecture to mandate that its users connect to RR with Windows/Mac through Internet explorer, and not on alternate OS' such as Linux, BeOS, etc, nor through alternate browsers like Mozilla (which I'm using now)?
These types of architectural controls are just the sort of nightmarish 1984 dystopia Lawrence Lessig described in "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace".
I urge you not to not to use such architectural controls here in Rochester, and to abandon those ill-sighted attempts elsewhere.
On a separate note, I'd also like to ask TW to start trying to build architectures which allow a dynamic ballance of upload/download bandwidth depending on what a user does. I.e., at any given time, if at any given time a user has access to up to 500 KB/s of bandwidht total (upload and download), why should it be split up into 400 KB/s download and 100KB/s upload always, even if the user is not downloading anything but uploading something? In other words, you should engineer architectures to adjust the download/upload bandwidth alotted depending on what the user is doing.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
When there is a monopoly, whether government sanctioned or driven by market forces, there has to be regulation or the consumer will be screwed.
In my county, Cox Communications has a monopoly because no other provider can envision a way to run a parallel service and get enough people to switch that it would be profitable. Most of the phones go through multiplexing equipment that makes DSL impossible.
The result? Horrendous problems with outages, packet loss, and latency. Service appointments for outages are typically five days or more after the report. The price recently jumped between 17% and 25% (25% for those of us who do not also subscribe to cable TV). Servers, which were permitted at the time I signed up, are now banned and port 80 has been blocked to prevent people from running web servers. I hear from reliable sources that more port blocking is on the way.
This is why "normal" utilities (phone, water, electricity, etc.) are regulated. The government realizes that the infrastructure costs make it virtually impossible for competitors to join the market and that without competition, the consumer will be the loser.
Here in Australia our often favourite Cable ISP, Optus@Home, has a nice descrete policiy of capping P2P bandwidth. That practice combined with their recent data caps put them definatly out of the good isp category. :(
Any Optus@home users wondering why they cant get more than 2k/sec on average in kazzaa? Now you know...
ps. This is not confirmed, i have a friend in the network centre that is what he claims...
Collusion of ISPs - Remember the story last month where the leading companies in the Cable internet Biz got together? Think the only thing they talked about was capping bandwidths lower? Call it the OPEC of the internet. A handfull of companies control the fastest growing, and only viable, highspeed internet access. They can either backbight each other or agree to sell under terms where everyone gets a profitable piece of the pie
Market consolidation. look to see even more consolidation in the industry. Bandwidth providers combining with connection providers and maybe even content providers. The market is unhealthy with all the instability on Wallstreet many companies are ripe for takover or ready to deal.
My friends, the days of the "good deals" are over. Cable internet providers know they own the future of internet access and are making sure that future is profitible to the max. Look at it this way, what choice do you have?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Cable companies complain that power users use too much bandwidth and thus drowns out normal to light users. So they impose restrictions such as this to curtail it.
Cable companies also said that cable itself would be free of commericals, however it's all i see now-a-days on the tv. Even premium channels like HBO et al promised in their beginnings that it would be commerical free. But even they have commercials. I mean, that was one of the big incentives to pay that premium price.
It wouldn't matter if its a handful of power-users who use kazaa or any other p2p, or those power-users who utilize cable modems for streaming media, such as music and video, which is WHY BROADBAND WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SO GOOD AT.
Thing is people, they designed a system, and promised you all you can eat for a flat fee per month. Around here at least it wasn't $x.xx per MEG/kbps, it was just like the 19.95 dialup ISP deals that is common place today outside of AOL, MSN and Earthlink.
What would the cable companies do if Broadband (totally legit) media took off with consumers, and people started really USING the bandwidth that is given to them? They'd start restricting just like their doing with Kazaa and other p2p's now. Same thing different usage.
I don't understand why they can't just cap their customers to X kbps and make sure everybody can reach that max and be done with it. At least then you have your limit, and you can utilize all of the bandwidth that is given to you.
I have Adelphia cable, and I use it well. However i am capped at around 60kbp or so, but every so often i can reach up to 90kbps to 120kbps depending on the time of day, in my case it's after midnight to the wee hours of the morning.
I haven't been sent any letters or anything to indicate that i'm a "bandwidth hog" (thank god) but I think differnet cable companies have different setups and polices.
Cable broadband I don't think has reached the commodity status yet. But I really dislike the "pay per meg/kbps" model.
I'd pay for the "a limit and all i can eat within that limit" model though. Just like dialup and the 19.95 deal, just more bandwidth and more money. None of those weird ass restricitons. I think that's what i'm getting now, at least until i'm notified and told otherwise.
I don't think I make much sense, but maybe i can make some change.
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
If they are trying to avoid copyright lawsuits, they are actually making it worse for themselves. By censoring my online communications, they also assume responsablity if I send hate mail, download warez and so on. On the other hand, if they are worried about bandwidth - well why would people get high-speed access if they were not going to use bandwidth? I bet most customers will at least occasionally download audio or video. They can cap the total bandwidth and document the limits but it has nothing to do with what exactly I am doing - sharing files or videoconferencing.
Anybody who is angry about Roadrunner blocking their p2p file sharing should cancel their sevice, and tell them why. If no other high speed service is available, groups of former subscribers could get together, and start a Motorola Canopy Wirelss ISP of their own. Slashdot posted a story about those a while back. No one should continue to do business with a company that won't give them what they are paying for. Pull the plug.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
It's responses like this they REALLY get to me. I'm assuming that you (like me) are a U.S. citizen. In this country, so many people think that if there is a legitimate business reason for taking an action, then it must be justified. I can't even begin to say how much this pisses me off. Yes, I understand that businesses are in business for one thing--to make money. But there are so many more lofty goals that people should pursue. Capitalism is not the be all end all of morality.
What ever happened to people who started a business because they wanted to provide a service to the community? They worked at a profession because it meant something to them. When did we all adopt this middle-management company man attitude that a company is entitled to profit at other people's expense?
Yes, Roadrunner has the right to do what they want with their service. But if they are selling "Internet Access," then they should be selling "Internet Access." They don't advertise "Web and FTP access." But obviously it doesn't really matter what they advertise, because it's more profitable if they fudge a little bit. Well, bull shit. I've had enough. I'm sick and tired of Corporate America(TM) and their never ending pursuit of profit. Their are some things that capitalism is ill-equipped to handle. With more and more corporate mergers in the works (which equals less and less choice for consumers), it looks like customer service may be one of those things.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
I heard an ad on the radio this afternoon, for roadrunner, advertising how "with roadrunner high speed online, you can download music for your road trip".
So, on one hand, to get people to sign up, they're touting broadband for downloading music, but once you're paying for the service, they yank the carrot away. Cute. And they wonder why AOLTW debt is trading around junk levels.
Packeteer can do things like this to traffic. See their management-level Flash presentations. It's a quality-of-service system, with a "lousy service" option. There are other vendors; I have no idea whether RoadRunner uses Packeteer, but there's a good chance that they have something comparable.
In other words, what they want is for people to pay a lot more per month to do very little more than they can do with dialup.
If they manage to prevent via port/IP blocking and/or AUP the use of their system for anything more, even Joe Sixpack from Deadfish, ID might start wondering why the hell he's paying $50-70/month for the kind of interactivity he was paying $20/month for.
Do you have any new sort of things that might be worth trying with broadband of the sort that might be the next killer app... the thing that will make everybody realize that they can't live without broadband?
Try it with a cablemodem and you might have the police or FBI kicking down your door.
If you have anything more interesting than a P2P server in mind, think in terms of relocating to a place where you can get citiLEC service or of creative DIY alternatives... find an ISP willing to let you stick a microwave antenna on their roof or do the other end of a DIY DSL setup. Or start looking for dot.com investors and get yourself a T1.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I'm in South/Central Texas, and RR doesn't seem to be blocking Kazaa here. I'm downloading just fine right now. Did some searches too. Worked for me.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
How about the cable companies offering speeds they can support users taking advantage of? The cable companies keep offering faster connections, then denying users the ability to use the speed. Just give everyone a solid 60 kps or whatever their pipe can stand and forget about it. That's what DSL providers do more or less.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Search deja for "DirecPC FAP" (your idea is part of their Fair Access Policy) and you'll notice exactly how much the users like that idea.
I can tell you that it is certain death for any company that does that. It has to be the most hated way of limiting use of bandwidth known to man. I something that's for sure -- if my provider moved from limiting by total usage to incremental speed decreases I'd quit them that hour.
Next thing you know they'll add remote controlled governors to trucks and force them to go slower and slower depending on how many miles they put on them. Blech! You can keep those heavy handed tactics off my network connection, TYVM.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
If you think this is obnoxious, and as a RoadRunner customer, you want to complain in the loudest possible fashion, call them.
:-)
Call their tech support number. Tie up their customer service people for as long as you can stand to be on the phone.
They don't care if you post in their forums. Bits. Easily ignored, nearly free.
When you call their 800 number, you are costing them money. They keep track of how many calls they get to tech support. They keep track of them by issue, and how much that issue is costing them. Customer support is where most companies see their profit margin evaporate, and consequently it's the one interaction with the customer that they watch closely to make sure they make the customer happy, because support costs money.
They don't care about your silly "rights". If 30% of their customers called to complain about their underfed cats, they'd probably send everyone cat food with the next bill. They don't listen, but they do react.
Make them pay.
-pmb
Horrible crimes are committed using the road and telephone system -- crimes almost as bad as file-swapping, such as murder and rape. But the people responsible for the roads and telephone system are not liable for these crimes. To some extent this a question of practicality -- the telephone operators cannot listen in to all conversations -- but more importantly it hard to see how vetting telephone conversations according to there content is compatible with a democratic society.
But somehow, for some greater good, such as the protecting the five major labels' total control of music distribution, this principle is being abandoned for ISPs. I think this is a slippery slope. In a land such as the US, with so many lawyers and politicians susceptible to lobbyists with big cheque books, is hard to believe that other bodies will not want to tell the ISP's what they can deliver to their customers. I am sure there are other forms of content that could conceivably hurt some company's profit margins.
Even if Americans feel they have to violate the principle of non-liability of communications providers for some overriding greater good then they must surely build in some accountability into the system. Internet communication is becoming so important that the terms of service should be regulated. In particular, they should written in such a way that that ISP service can only be denied when the ISP can prove beyond reasonable doubt that some heinous crime, such mailing a friend a MP3 file, has been committed. Just blocking a port because you think that someone might do something illegal on that port should not be permissible.
In general, however, the principle should be defended that communications providers are in no way liable for what is being communicated and they should not be allowed to tailor their service based on the content. If file-swappers hog bandwidth, use traffic shaping to limit their bandwidth (and put this in the terms of service). ISP's should not be snooping on what private parties communicate amongst themselves or otherwise be making guesses about the use of bandwidth -- at least in a democratic society, which the US makes some pretense of being.
I am well aware of this problem. I know, that p2p software consume all bandwidth (even mine) quite efficiently. But still, I run such software on my computer.
But I quess I'm a little bit odd, 'cause this is what I do :
During the daytime, I limit my upload transfer to only 10kbit/s, and download is limited to 20k/s. This leaves a lot bandwidth for all those surfers and game players. And during the nighttime, I limit all transfers to about 50% of total bandwidth (we have 1mbit/s connection divided for all users). Haven't had any complaints yet, so I quess this works well.
I just hope that p2p software developers would make automatic bandwidth controller, which would change limitations according to clock. Would ease my filesharing a lot.
In some markets Comcast already blocks VPN which for those who use it to work from home, it really sucks. Their reasoning for blocking a legitimate service? They want people to pay double for a "Pro" account of some sort.
Broadband might be the only service I receive that not only has been going up in price, but has been becoming more and more restrictive with less features.
I am just glad I moved. In the town where my brother-in-law lives Comcast has already begun routing all port 80 traffic through proxy servers. I hope they don't do that in my town.
--Jon
As other posters have pointed out, this is very probably a few users with technical problems blaming it on their ISP.
However, this entire issue is a red herring. Roadrunner, as with most cable ISPs, caps upstream and downstream bandwidth. I'm not going to be able to transfer enough over my cable connection, even if I saturate it, to make much of a difference for others nearby. Now, if everyone on my block did this, then we'd notice a problem. But at that point, demand for bandwidth has exceeded the available infrastructure, which obviously did not anticipate people actually using the bandwidth they were told they had.
As for cost, this is also a bad argument. Yes, you can buy a large pipe for some incredible sum-plus-usage-costs for "business use". You seriously think major ISPs pay the same incredible sum for bandwidth? Many have peering arrangements, and for those, more traffic is better - you get more other providers wanting to peer with you. Even if you don't, your bandwidth is so cheap that a sizable percentage of your customer base saturating their connections 24/7 probably wouldn't cost you more than $500 a month.
(To say nothing of the rediculousness of charging for bandwidth usage anyway. Bandwith isn't a non-renewable resource. Any bandwidth not used in a given time interval is wasted and unrecoverable.)
No, to see why this is happening, follow the money. Who gains by preventing citizens from having an easy avenue for sharing music and video? The media cartels. Who's hurt by preventing it? Their indie competition. Wow, what an astonishing coincidence!
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I'm amazed that no one seemed to mention that TW/AOL, as a condition of merging, had to OPEN THEIR CABLE MODEM NETWORK! Competing ISPs, in theory, are able to give you cable modem service in TW/AOL-serviced areas. Right now, your three choices are Road Runner, AOL, and Earthlink. Which really means two choices. However, I'm posting this from an Earthlink cable modem account which runs over TWC-installed lines. There's the added bonus that I pay $42 a month for service, all-inclusive, rather than $60, as when I had cable modem service without cable TV.
You DO have a choice...for now.
I dumped Roadrunner months ago. Their service is bad even for a consumer ISP. Port blocking? Peanuts compared to complete service outages that would last for days. Not to mention a service department that never answers the phone. I'm much happier with DSL. Still not completely satisfied, but at least they answer their phone (usually).
Mooney Guy N4074H
Of COURSE, if you cut down on the 10% most expensive customers, you'll make more money. You could do that in ANY business or organization.
Its just in most businesses, you can't tell who's doing that, or kicking off customers would cost you additional ones. Schools can't kick out the 10% of students that need the most help. Technical support can't say "You're so dumb, you're in the top 10% of time we waste per-customer. Never call back."
Here, they were brilliant. Start with "news" articles explaining how those people are costing YOU money!!! What a crock of shit. Stores will charge as MUCH AS THEY CAN, AT ALL TIMES. Call them gluttons, hogs, hackers, theives.
Then, kick 'em off or charge them a LOT more!
Of course, once you've set that precident, now you can start on the NEXT 10%. Then the NEXT 10%. Then the NEXT 10%. Soon, you have a wonderful pay-per-byte system in place, and people only using it sparingly because they can't afford it. Of course, thats great for you, because:
-You still make your $50/month
-Since internet advertising didn't really work out, there's no longer any financial motivation for the ISPs who can really suck out of people when they use the internet anyway
This would not take DAYS, as you suggested.
Actually, it's been several weeks since I've used Kazaa(lite), and I wasn't running as a supernode or anything... and yet, my firewall is STILL seeing a continual stream of traffic coming from Kazaa users.
I don't think their system really filters out inactive nodes all that efficiently.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
If I ever see another person thinking they're being somehow insightful by claiming "10% consume 90%", I think I'll puke. Hint: in the business world, the old maxim was 20/80, and this goes back a lot more years than any ISP, or the internet itself.
Virtually every business or service in history sees unequal use from its customers. ISPs are no different. Saying "fuck you" to the 20(or as you say, 10)% of your customers is called suicide to most businesses.
Hell, just imagine if we ran our medical system this way: "well, we eliminated the 10% of our customers who use 90% of our services, and wow! are hospitals ever efficient now!". And in this case it's more like 5/95%.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I think he was simply stating that, file sharing apps are almost always used for immoral activities.
Beware of the word "immoral" - Most would probably agree that a lot of filesharing trafic is against the law, but that's not the same as it being immoral.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
To sneak up on you while you are secretly planning to download the latest LOTR Divx using the ACME Kazaa client, and then
Beep! Beep!
Scares the shit out of you, causing you to fall out of your chair, out the door, down the street, and over a cliff where you freefall for 25 seconds, ending up making a little while poof of smoke.
Damn you, RoadRunner! Damn you to Hell!
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I paid for "Internet Access". Since I don't live in China, I expect that to mean uncensored, unabridged access to the global internetwork of IP-connected machines, using *any* IP protocol and/or port number that I see fit, within the limit of the bandwidth agreement we have.
I have tried to explain this to TWC multiple times by email when complaining of technical issues that they are cuasing, but they don't give a damn and still refuse to inform their customers.
They block inbound port 80, so that even with a DynDNS setup you can't run a home webserver without resorting to a non-default port. They state in their contract that you're not allowed to run any "server" services, enumerating several like smtp servers, news, www, etc.
The problem is that they see certain things (KaZaa, home web server, etc...) as eating up disproportionate amounts of their bandwidth, so they try to block the protocols to save themselves bandwidth.
IMHO - I paid for unlimited access at Cable's advertised speeds (shared with my neighborhood loop of course), and that's that. If they don't me using so much, don't sell me so much. If they *must*, they should implement monthly xfer limits in the up and down directions and charge for going over (e.g. 10GB down and 1GB up permonth for the usual low monthly fee, larger packages available).
I would much rather be limited in GB/mo that be limited in which ports/protocols I can use. I don't want (nor did I purchase) a Web/Email-only service. I want my IP access.
11*43+456^2
That is, unfortunately, the most reasonable response, and the one that will happen.
This is not only underhanded and unethical, and, possibly, illegal. It's also silly and stupid. I can see no advantage, and lots of disadvantages, in forcing everything through port 80.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
without copyright protections a lot of things wouldn't get made in the first place.
Assuming life after publication is 50 years, and copyright gives the author's estate the monopoly for 70 years after the death of the author, how do you justify giving one author a monopoly over a work for 120 years?
With copyright protections, a lot of things wouldn't get made in the first place because 1. some authors, publishers, and estates refuse to license a work at any price, and 2. some authors, publishers, and estates have a reputation of filing frivolous lawsuits accusing plagiarism, discouraging people from creating new works for fear of the cost of a legal defense.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I first noticed the problem in early february, when morpheus was still fasttrack. I would type in a search for anything (to test, I tried something really common, like our friends Metallica), and after a few moments it would return 'no results found'. This was frustrating so I went to morpheus's tech chat room (which was full of kids who didnt know their ass from a mouse but were supposedly 'volunteers') and asked around. Though everyone of them had had numerous people from texas coming in and complaining.
I went and downloaded an online port checker which connects to a server, which then tries to connect to you to test and see if your ISP is blocking a specific port. It reported that the usual suspects like 80, 21 and SMTP were blocked - but also the port that fasttrack uses.
I did some more digging and found others who had reported the problem. One guy said he had good luck by disabling file sharing. I tried this, and yes, it did work most of the time.
I called RR's support and got the run around, passed between different departments. When I told them I had gotten a port scan that told me they were blocking, I was given the usual spiel about how port scans were against the TOS, blah blah blah... idiots. I gave up on them.
Nowadays I use kazaa lite with file sharing disabled. Usually I can download 1 to 5 files before searches and downloads stop functioning. If you wait a while it seems to release the block.
-
This is just speculation, but I've noticed Comcast's DNS Servers (68.80.0.5 and 68.80.0.6) trying to connect to port 1214 on my machine once or twice.
Screwed up misdirected traffic, or KaZaa scanning. Any comments? Anyone else notice this?
How about this scheme:
Instead of completely eliminating port traffic,
why not have rules for bandwidth?
Maybe limit port bandwidth rates to Peer2Peer ports and give priority to other ports. better yet, uncap (at least partially) all ports during low consumption hours (i.e. 2-6:00 AM)
Wouldn't everybody be happy then?
Web Surfers would have a fast connection, and the Warez crowd still download their favorite boy-bands by morning?
How many people use ftp for something other then mp3 trading and warez?
I use FTP to upload files to my web site because for one thing, my current provider doesn't support HTTP form uploading, and for another, I prefer the drag-and-drop interface of my FTP client to the dialog-box interface of most web browsers' file upload widgets.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A decent amount of webspace with almost unlimited bandwidth can be had for next to NOTHING!
And I'd like to recommend BinaryBlocks. You get 100 megabytes of space, with unmetered data transfer, Perl and PHP support, and a MySQL database, for only $7 per month.
No time to rip a cd I already own?
When I first started out on the MP3 scene, good ripping and encoding tools were hard to come by. My Lite-On 32x CD-ROM had a bug that would corrupt the last two seconds of any ripped CD Digital Audio track no matter which tool I used. (Then I bought a Plextor burner, which rips audio perfectly.) In addition, it was tough to find Windows binaries of a free(beer) MP3 encoder that went above 96 kbps (RealJukebox's limit) until the developers of the LAME encoder replaced the last of the ISO example code.
I buy many cd's and I leech many too.
$32 for an album? I'll pay $15 for an album at Best Buy, but this is ridiculous.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Mozilla is a browser after all; why should it serve the intranet?
In some versions of FTP, when you request a file, your client program opens a random port, and then the server pushes the file to you. Some firewalls confuse such traffic with running a server.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What's next, is TW going to use its power over architecture to mandate that its users connect to RR with Windows/Mac through Internet explorer, and not on alternate OS' such as Linux, BeOS, etc, nor through alternate browsers like Mozilla (which I'm using now)?
Time Warner Cable's parent is AOL Time Warner Inc (hereinafter "AOL(tw)"). AOL(tw) owns Netscape Communications Corp., which provides most of the labor and funding for The Mozilla Organization, the group responsible for the Mozilla browser technology used in the Netscape 6 browser and the forthcoming Netscape 7 browser. I don't see any AOL(tw) subsidiary blocking use of Mozilla in the foreseeable future.
Will I retire or break 10K?
A Service is NOT a physical object. So if I hire someone to perform a service, and refuse to pay them, haven't I stolen from them? Guess what, the RIAA labels are selling a service, the distrubition of a copyrighted song. When you take that service without paying for it, you are just as much a thief as an employeer who hires someone to do a job and refuses to pay them when the job is finished. If you can't afford to pay someone for a service don't hire them.
A Kid I grew up with hated rich people with a passion. Said they were all thieves. He took to breaking into upscale homes to "show the theives what it feels like". "Hey they have more than they need". "They have more than their fair share" Haven't seen him since he got shipped off to prison, but most arguments I hear attempting to justify copyright infringement remind me of his attempts to justify his thefts.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
What new customers? I tell people that cable is not worth it, and have undone all sorts of silly adverts that way. As long as the cable people continue to suck, I'm going to tell people that they suck and NOT recomend it to anyone. Not many people think an extra $40/month in ISP charges are justified by an ever suckier web experience. "Pirates" want this? Why bother? You can download all the $20 albums you want over a $20/month dial up. Cable modems really only apeal to people that want to run real servers, and the stable ones don't really care about Kazaa. At some point, their customer base is going to contract. They will then go bankrupt and the equipment will be taken over by someone competent.
So they cable fools invite their end faster than ever.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
A link to, or a copy of their T&C's? I can't find one on their website, and without reading the T&C's, we're just mouthing off.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I Think Cable TV provides the best model for what is occuring. Some people modify equipment to recieve cable services without paying for them, for example getting HBO when they are only paying for basic cable service. There isn't any way to determine how many people who are "pirating" HBO would have paid for it if they couldn't get it for free. Some cable companies bring charges against these people and the charge is theft of services. Telling the judge "I wasn't stealing HBO because I wouldn't have bought it if I didn't have that modified CATV box, so HBO didn't lose anything" might be true, but it won't keep you from being found guilty of theft of services. All that is required to constitute theft of services is having the service without paying for it. This would apply to people who just grabbed a MP3 that they didn't want bad enough to actually pay for it. It's still theft of services regardless of the degree you actually wanted that service.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Whoa!!!
I work for RR Business Class in Greensboro NC, and we don't do anything like that- however, we have a full time (well will be soon) abuse coordinator, that constantly gets calls from Microsoft, Adobe, etc... to stop people from sharing out their software illegally on servers. It's plain illegal to share Win2K on a server. No two ways about it.
We also get calls from Sony and others about people sharing MP3s of their artists, we just normally call and tell them to turn off file sharing I think (but it's not my job so I don't know what they really do.)
I haven't heard anything about this port blocking here. Kazaa will probably go to dynamic port switching soon...
Going to tell my boss that I dont like this...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Hmm... I'm a couple days late... Wonder if anyone will even read this...
The problem with this solution... More and more services will steal ports. That mean Kazza and Gnutella running on port 80. This method of limiting access is a bad one!
It's already been pointed out that the best way to regulate users is to have a bandwidth and traffic quota.
Each user gets a certain ammount of traffic. As they hit their cap, their bandwidth slows down to modem speeds. The cool thing about that, they can still surf and download without costing the ISP. Of course you could always make a call and say you're willing to pay extra this month to get back to your full-speed.
That's a good system! Or at least it would be if each user's quota was reset on different days (preventing a single bandwidth surge).
On modems, speed limits are just fine. There's just no way to make it any faster! On broadband connections, the limit should not be speed, but over-all traffic.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant