ISP Rise Against P2P Users

bananaendian writes "Spencer Kelly from BBC's Click program writes about the emerging backslash against high bandwidth P2P users. Apparently it has been estimates that up to one third of internet's traffic is caused by BitTorrent file-sharing program. Especially ISPs who are leasing their bandwidth by the megabyte are more inclined to resort to 'shaping your traffic' by throttling ports, setting bandwidth limits or even classifying accounts according services used. What is your ISPs policy regarding P2P and is it fair for them to put restrictions and conditions on its use."

Comments

Rogers

[TheSpoom]

I use Canadian cable ISP Rogers. They do packet filtering whenever they detect a download coming from multiple sources -- including BitTorrent, podcasts, and several other types of "shotgun" downloads. They also have a digital phone service, which always goes through port 1720, which they cannot filter lest they affect their VoIP customers. Combine the two and you find that any BitTorrent download going through port 1720 goes at full speed.

It's just a matter of time before they find a way around this to filter all multiple-connection downloads though, and that scares me, considering that we really only have two high-speed ISPs here, Rogers and Sympatico DSL. Everyone else uses their lines, and thus their filtering. Hopefully we'll have more effective header encryption by then.

Re:Rogers

[CokoBWare]

I'm on Rogers, I use Azureus, and I am now, after a bit of research, getting good Torrent traffic rates after getting crummy experiences with BitComet.

Here's what I do with my Azureus client:

• Use RC4 header compression
• limit my connections to other encrypted users
• don't allow for fail-over to unencrypted connections
• use nonstandard port # with port forwarding through my firewall
• Use plugins:
  • SpeedScheduler - limiting my heavy torrent seeds to overnight use only
  • SafePeer - blocks questionable IPs from leeching off of me and collecting stats they have no right getting from me

I find that by using these settings and plugins, Roger's datashaping devices (that they won't publicly admit to) haven't kill my fullspeed torrent traffic yet. I'll wait for the next countermeasure, but I might just maneuver my port onto the VoIP port since their Home Phone service is too expensive.

That's nothing

[caffeination]

Spencer Kelly from BBC's Click program

I think it's better form to refer to the BBC.

Apparently it has been estimates

Blatant typo.

Especially ISPs who are leasing their bandwidth by the megabyte are more inclined to resort to 'shaping your traffic' by throttling ports, setting bandwidth limits or even classifying accounts according services used.

"Especially" is redundant because of "more". The sentence sounds terrible.

What is your ISPs policy regarding P2P and is it fair for them to put restrictions and conditions on its use.

1. Possessive apostrophe missing from "ISPs". Should be "ISP's"
2. Question mark missing from the end of the question

However, I am not a grammar or spelling nazi. I love Slashdot just as it is, warts and all. I make spelling and grammar mistakes all the time. I just wanted to play at being an anal dickhead for a moment, just to see how it felt.

Yes it can, and here's a paper on it

[sdpinpdx]

For a detailed analysis of exactly how, see Should Internet Service Providers Fear Peer-Assisted Content Distribution? (PDF Related papers can be found at http://del.icio.us/tag/locality+p2p

Re:Just so I understand...

[MarkRose]

That's why traffic shaping exists. I even do it on my home router. I can leave bittorrent running with several active torrents, using 95% of my available bandwidth up and down, yet still have snappy ssh, http, vnc, email, dns, voip, etc. All I did was configure my Linksys router to prioritize that traffic over bittorrent, letting bittorrent use the rest. Granted, my home network is nothing major, but anyone who has managed a network should see this as the obvious solution. Anyone who doesn't know about traffic shaping shouldn't be managing a network in the first place.