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Comcast Hinders BitTorrent Traffic
FsG writes "Over the past few weeks, more and more Comcast users have reported that their BitTorrent traffic is severely throttled and they are totally unable to seed. Comcast doesn't seem to discriminate between legitimate and infringing torrent traffic, and most of the BitTorrent encryption techniques in use today aren't helping. If more ISPs adopt their strategy, could this mean the end of BitTorrent?"
I thought it might be some obscure router setting, but I've been having this problem for a few months. Since I barely download things anymore (re: Linux ISOs), it hasn't affected me nearly as much as it would have, say, 2 years ago. Still, this entire situation is pretty ridiculous. Comcast basically says "You can get this speed for $xx.xx a month! It's Comcastic!" but then they act like a bunch of little girls when somebody actually uses what they're paying for. For that reason alone, The guys in suits just want to be able to milk their current infrastructure for longer, and I don't have any sympathy for them. What I find funny about this is that broadband probably wouldn't have gotten as big as it is right now (At least in the U.S.) without warez. Stop and think about how many of your local broadband ISPs were pushing the ability to get music, movies, and games more quickly a few years ago. Comcast was doing that back before legal download services got big. It's like they baited us with the promise of more warez in less time, and now that we're locked in, they want to screw everybody.
Maybe it's the start of customers demanding an actual INTERNET Service Provider and not a Web Access provider, which most so called "ISPs" try for today. Subset-Internet Provider. Shit, SIP is taken too. Oh, well.
One can dream.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Someone should sue Comcast for false advertising. I constantly hear commercials on the radio about how much faster their Internet connections are than DSL's, about how "the other guys" sell you slow connections and make you pay extra for higher speed connections, and all sorts of other crap.
Of course, they don't bother telling you that if you get Comcast, you might not even be able to use your connection, or that they're going to play mommy and tell you what you can and can't do, and punish you for doing things they don't like.
If they're going to do this kind of shit, the FCC and/or the FTC needs to make them disclose it in their commercials. It's a substantial factor in the decision whether or not someone might want to subscribe. And I'd love to see what happens to their subscription numbers when they have to say something like, "We will restrict or forbid some popular services you might want to use on the Internet. Oh, and we require you to use the browser that we prefer, even if you have a Mac and don't have access to it. And last, but not least, if you actually use the Internet, we'll cut you off entirely."
So if you want to charge for usage, do you charge just for down, or do you charge for up too?
Now, I only get data from them. I'm not interested in TV or phone, but as far as data pipe, I'm saving $20/mo and the connection speeds are faster.
So would moving the bittorrent protocol to UDP solve this specific problem? UDP doesn't have a reset bit. And you can always just stick something exactly like TCP on top of UDP to make it almost no different.
Metered internet is the norm in Australia. Low-end plans give you around 5GB per month, high-end plans give you around 100GB per month.
Given that traffic costs are 10-20 times lower in the US than in Australia, this would mean that US ISPs could easily offer "starter" plans with 50-100GB of downloads, and high-end plans with 1000+ GB per month.
That way, big downloaders would pay for their usage, and there would be no need for shaping traffic and other nonsense.
We can dream, can't we?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Change your isp? If they start losing customers they may reconsider their business decision.
...the end of a few of these ISPs?
Unless there is a legal loophole allowing them to unilaterally change the terms of consumer contracts from Internet to Throttled Censornet, only customers having no other choice would stay with companies trying to force them back to the days of scary time- or traffic-based metering (especially given the risk of excessive traffic due to botnets these days) and/or walled gardens with little content exclusively picked at the mercy of one's provider.
1 dolar for 10MB Check your math. That's $1/GB, or $4.50 for a DVD.
See my other posts in this thread regarding pricing.
Pricing should be set so less than 10% of the customers pay more, and only a small minority of that pay more than 3-4x more.
One thing I didn't mention:
No user should pay more than some maximum based on the size of the pipe, and that maximum should be significantly less than the per-GB fee low-end users pay.
Let's do some math:
There are 2592000 seconds in 30 days. Suppose for the sake of argument that 90% of users use less than the equivalent of 25920 seconds at the 6Mbps full speed, or around 20GB. That's a 1% utilization rate. Charge them $20, which happens to match the $1/GB rate you suggest. The real numbers may be higher or lower. If someone uses 40GB $40. You would think that at 24/7, this would be 2000 GB or $2000. But you already have an "unlimited business" plan specifically for companies that use full-throttle services and you only charge them $600/month for 6Mbps service. So, anyone using more than $600 worth of bandwidth will have their bill capped at $600/month.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
God dam it so annoys me when the ISP's bitch and moan about the customers actually using the bandwidth they have signed a contract, and paid for to use.
We're the people who build and run these systems. Comcast...or anyone for that matter...can't win that fight. I've worked with you wankers for 15 years, you're clever, relentless, and infinitely creative in a mischievous kind of way. If Comcast closes off BitTorrent, you'll find another way to disguise the traffic. They'll figure it out after a while and you'll figure out something else or go somewhere else. It may be difficult some days to motivate you at work, but you'll drive yourself until the early hours of the morning figuring out how to get around whatever filters they put in place. I've seen this arms race take place in every type of communication technology out there and you've won every time. Telephones, mainframes, PC networks, the internet. The road of technology is littered with the bodies of people who underestimate the technical genius of people who don't like being regulated.
We run your switches, your networks, firewalls, databases and your web sites. We are root and domain admins, we have the back door passwords to your routers. We run packet sniffers and Snort, know what a clever fella can do with xp_ extended stored procedures and javascript, we grew up on ping and tracert....we don't need no steeking GUI.
You can work with us or spend your life on an endless treadmill fighting a losing battle. But one thing history should have taught you...
....do not fuck with us.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We may change our prices, fees, the Services and/or the terms and conditions of this Agreement in the future. Unless this Agreement or applicable law specifies otherwise, we will give you thirty (30) days prior Notice of any significant change to this Agreement. If you find the change unacceptable, you have the right to cancel your Service(s). However, if you continue to receive Service(s) after the end of the notice period (the "Effective Date") of the change, we will consider that you have accepted the changes. You may not modify this Agreement by making any typed, handwritten, or any other changes to it for any purpose.
I'm calling Monday and canceling on the grounds that this constitutes a Service Change, and too bad about their stupid term agreement. I live in Tacoma WA so I get to choose between multiple cable ISP's, DSL, etc. I give a damn about any fine print in a TOS agreement, I pay for an internet connection and I want what I pay for. They cannot be allowed to dictate what class of packet I can or cannot upload through the connection I pay for. Bandwidth yes, but that's not what they're doing here.Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Not for transfers, only for tracker connections. And I wouldn't have to do this if the ISP's wouldn't force me too. They don't seem to care what I download via BT, only that I'm using it.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Evidently you've never heard of the "fair usage guidelines" which are mentioned in pretty much every broadband contract, yet aren't actually available to read if you want to see whether your usage is 'fair'. Personally I would say 'fair usage' would mean not exceeding the bandwidth I am paying for, whereas my ISP seems to think differently based on the emails I have received from them about getting put on a list of 'high usage users' and subsequently being put into a pool of other 'high usage' customers who have to share the same bandwidth during peak hours, causing daytime browsing to crawl (I just end up running MLDonkey at night for the distro ISOs I download, since I make sure my local Free Software User Group always has the latest releases of any popular distro available to burn)
(I live in the United "CCTV Land" Kindom BTW)
You want to run a server without hassle? get a business account. I have Comcast workplace at my home and I get 6m/768k with 6 static ip addresses and no port blocking or restriction on servers for $100/month.
Look, I'm not totally happy about it, but this is how it works today. You want a restrictive, "client only" connection to the internet you can do that for $20-$60 a month. You want a real internet connection you are going to have to pay $100+ a month in most places (in the US).
Frankly, I am hoping the ISPs finally just come clean and admit that their bottom tier service is client only, practically web/email only. There is a market for that and there is nothing really wrong with them selling it that way.
Verizon's FIOS service supposedly has a comparably priced business tier as well, and they are laying fiber on my street as we speak. I might check that out when it lights up (although I generally find Verizon slightly more evil than Comcast).
Finkployd
Yeah, except the contract ... likely specifies that the customer isn't allowed to host servers
Define 'server'.
If I telnet (I know) into my home PC from work, am I "running a telnet server"??
Technically, YES. But I sincerely doubt the tiny amount of traffic on the few occassions I connect will bankrupt my IPS.
If I FTP into my home PC from work, am I "running a FTP server"??
Same as above. As long as it is for personal use (IE: I'm not running a PUBLIC FTP site, it should be allowed.
If I connect to WOW, and download a patch using their downloader (which, due to the way it is made, also automatically uploads the bits of the file I already have to other people), am I "running a Bittorrent server"??
How about if I constantly DL from Bittorent 24/7?... at 5kb/s? 50kb/s? 500kb/s?
Does it matter WHAT I DL? What if I DL only overnight or duing working hours (when usage is low anyway?) What if I DL ONE CD (linux distro) during the busyist time of day, but then nothing for a week??
Things like that matter when determining how much 'strain' is put on the network. But ISPs ignore all that and make it against their rules to even telnet into your PC over the connection you pay for.
This has been pointed out here before. Neither Comcast nor any other ISP has common carrier status.
http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=36623 this describes that no or almost no ISP's have Common Carrier Status.
Inane Comments are Generously Disregarded
Sorry, but you're wrong. If Comcast sends RST packets to both ends of the connection (and why wouldn't they?), it doesn't matter whether or not you're dropping them, it matters that the other guy isn't.
There's an old saying that says pretty much whatever you want it to.
Here's the thing:
- You folks want common carrier status
- You want subsidies from taxpayers instead of spending your own money on infrastructure
- You advertise your services as always on and unlimited
And yet, when customers actually take you up on that offer you want to reneg after the fact.
When you advertise a service, accept payment for it, and refuse to deliver on it, that, my friend, is called fraud. Considering that you mail bills to your customers charging them for unlimited services, isn't each and every statement you mail one count of mail fraud? Isn't that what took down several mafia families, if the reference in The Firm is to be believed?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
At least you have options, my apartment has choice between Comcast and nothing at all (there's not even a phone line for dial-up). I have a strategy though.
Everybody call Comcast, daily, to bitch about this. Eventually they'll realize that each phone call costs more than they'd save in a month per customer complaining.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
Personally, maybe I just don't want people to know that I'm shopping for towels online (or, for that matter, downloading Ubuntu). Maybe I don't think it's anyone's business. Maybe I believe in an ABSOLUTE right to privacy. There's nothing illegal about trying to ensure your own privacy using technology. It sounds to me like you're the kind of person that would like to see hammers outlawed because you MIGHT use one to kill somebody.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
ISPs in the UK are starting to moan about having to carry traffic too, even going so far as to suggest the BBC should pay them.
The big ISPs are certainly complaining ("oops, we underpriced our product and are now making a loss - we'll demand that some random 3rd party bail us out of our mess"). Notably many of the smaller ISPs are now very explicit about their limits rather than selling everything as "unlimited". The smaller ISPs are showing that if you charge people appropriately and make it clear what they are paying for, even the high bandwidth users can be profitable customers.
Hopefully the end result will be that all ISPs will stop misleading their customers by selling limited accounts as "unlimited".
I don't think Europe is immune to profiteering by reducing the service standards so you can get by on a lesser investment.
Indeed not - underprovisioning the network and deprioritising bittorrent seems to be a reasonably common bad practice. However, by provisioning the network correctly and setting the pricing model appropriately, the high bandwidth users can pay for their own bandwidth rather than being subsidised by everyone else.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
I've had Charter in Massachusetts for a couple years now, and BitTorrent has always been throttled. BitTorrent downloads take forever to download, if at all. I've tested this by connecting to the same trackers with the same client on my old work's Verizon 1.5Mb DSL (I'm running 6Mb Charter at home) and the downloads were exponentially faster on Verizon.
It sucks because WoW updates and several of Microsoft's large downloads are sent via BitTorrent. I have to hunt and seek every time I want to update a new WoW installation.
If you are an ISP of any significant size you lose customers every day for competitive and other "normal" reasons.
You also don't know how many would-be customers rejected you when they read your policy.
Finally, will you allow each and every one of your residential customers to convert to a commercial account on request, without any geographic or "are you really a business" or other restrictions?
Is your commercial package actually affordable, i.e. no more than 5x the residential price for similar bandwidth? If your consumer price is $30 and your commercial is $300, that's not exactly a realistic offering for consumers.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.