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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.
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."
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.
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
Thankfully that will likely never happen since it would kill VOIP and many online game protocols use UDP. Killing UDP won't happen, since it would kill too many legitimate uses.
A much better idea would be to simply make the connections look as much like HTTP over SSL as possible. They can't block that.This can, theoretically, already be done. (Sort of...) Since BitTorrent already runs over TCP and SSL (actually, TLS now) is simply a presentation-layer protocol, there's no reason BitTorrent can't be run over TLS.
The problem is the "sort of." Since BitTorrent involves a lot more back-and-forth than HTTPS would (HTTPS would be small upload followed by large download), it's still almost certainly possible to block BitTorrent traffic that runs over TLS. There's really no way around this - the send/receive ratios for BitTorrent will always be different from HTTPS ratios.
Besides, the ISP doesn't even really need that to throttle BitTorrent or P2P in general. All they really need to do is start blocking SYN packets from reaching their subscribers, or at the very least, throttle the number of SYN packets their subscribers can receive to, say, five every 30 minutes. About the only "legitimate" uses for subscribers accepting connections are active-mode FTP and various chat protocols. And even then, the only times chat protocols generally require the client to accept a connection is for direct peer-to-peer transfers, and the ISP won't care to kill those.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
No, it wouldn't help. I have had this issue with my ISP Atlantic Broadband for a good two months now. Incoming torrent connections are flat out blocked (you can open the port and test it, but once the first incoming torrent connection comes in, the port gets blocked). And while you tout UDP may be the answer, they do the exact same with KAD... first incoming KAD packet and the port is blocked.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
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
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
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.