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Comcast Admits Delaying, Not Blocking, P2P Traffic
haibijon writes "The executive declined to talk in detail about the technology, citing spammers or other miscreants who might exploit that knowledge. But he insisted the company was not stopping file transfers from happening, only postponing them in certain cases. He compared it to making a phone call and getting a busy signal, then trying again and getting through."
On that note, I'm not "cancelling" my service with you. I'm merely "delaying" signing back up with your company (indefinitely).
So they're not actually stopping the transfers, they're postponing them indefinitely.
*Sigh of relief*
I'm just delaying it...I tried to put my payment in the mailbox and there were other letters there so I waited until it was less congested....
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
I compare it to paying a gym membership, heading towards the treadmill only to be stopped by a trainer and told there is someone on it already. You look, see no one is on it, ask again and are allowed to use it. Sometimes the trainer comes over and tells you that you have to get off for someone else. Everytime you get off, no one else gets on. So you have to restart your workout whenever the trainer asks.
if they are simply port blocking or doing deep packet inspection. If it is the former I would think it would be pretty easy to circumnavigate...if it is the latter....then I suppose SSL would be the solution.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Sorry about that - oh, did your precious cargo expire?
What, you were transporting critical medical records via Torrent? and someone died? Too bad - we were preventing you from pirating movies / music / software.
See, the problem here is that they cannot know what is being transported. The protocol by itself is not bad. If that were the case, they'd have to block TCP/IP - as all bad things over the net come through via TCP/IP - of course - all good things come that way too....
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
This sounds a lot like getting the camel's nose into the tent. Once it's established that there are two or more "classes" of information, and those classes can be treated differently, there's endless opportunities to make some customers "a little more equal" than others. And charge them a premium, of course.
I'm thinking of an airline that's planning to ensure that if you fly coach, your bags will be the last ones off the plane.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I like to leave my Slackware downloads seeding just for the hell of it, and I've noticed that Comcast doesn't exactly block the traffic but does something similar to what this article describes. During certain hours (typically mid-morning and evening, roughly), all torrent activity will cease for a minute or two and then resume normally. This only happens at certain "peak" times and usually rather infrequently. Torrent speeds are generally quite good later on at night and on the weekends.
Not that I agree with Comcast screwing around with traffic and killing off connections, but they at least appear to be telling the truth here.
Does Comcast advertise very high transfer speeds? Because if they advertise that, knowing that they intentionally force lower speeds for some kinds of traffic, that sounds like fraud.
As has been noted in numerous places, Comcast isn't just forging RST packets to disrupt P2P traffic -- they're also doing it to disrupt Lotus Notes traffic...which makes the "we're doing it to stop the bad guys" excuse a transparent lie.
Moreover, disrupting P2P traffic will have no effect on "spammers and other miscreants", as they have far more sophisticated, self-organizing C&C methods already deployed. (No doubt having anticipated that use of traditional P2P would leave them vulnerable to such countermeaures.)
But the truly galling part is that Comcast continues to repeat the same big lie they trotted out years ago: "We take the spam problem seriously". This is utter nonsense, of course; spam emission levels from their network continue to steadily increase, as they have for half a decade, to the point where their only serious rival for the #1 spot on the world's list of top spam-sending network is Verizon.
So what this episode tells us is that Comcast has the capability to monitor and modify traffic, but only chooses to do so when it might affect their profits -- not when it might could the unceasing flow of abuse outbound from their network.
At least, that's the way it works for a huge portion of Comcast's service area, including large swaths of Chicagoland.
Comparing with a phone service is correct, if they did this to a commercial customer and deliberately stopped a certain percentage of calls that had to then be re-dialled they would be accused of blocking calls.
He should have said "its like a set of tubes its just that P2P traffic is heavier so it sinks to the bottom, and as everyone knows with rivers they flow slower at the bottom so we aren't delaying them its just that P2P traffic is like a Pike, its a heavier fish that swims at the bottom while the normal internet stuff is like a salmon at the surface. Pike also eat cute little ducklings so P2P is evil"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Last friday they had a large layoff in their Ad sales division. I know of several people that lost their job there and many said they did this country wide, gutting lots of jobs.
Funny though, they did not trim the fat. Lots of middle management still there that really are not needed.
Me thinks Comcast is circling the toilet bowl. still on the outer edge but we all know the spiral is a logarithmic one.
I'm waiting for the next round on the CableTV side (oh yea it's coming!). I have a bunch of friends there as well and they give the heads up after the axe starts swinging.
cool part is my company can hire some incredibly talented people that comcast cast aside in their ignorance.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Rogers does that in Canada on a regular basis. When I called them up, they admitted they block bit torrent. I asked them why don't they do this AFTER i use all my "unlimited" 60GB/month ($50)? No answer. Go figure.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
It's possible to track FIOS rollouts merely by noting spam sources whose rDNS matches it, e.g., "*.fios.verizon.net". To date, this has been a 100.00% indicator of spam. For example, in the last few minutes, one of my mail servers has observed the following:
pool-70-104-193-136.nrflva.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-170-157-58.dllstx.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-178-175-162.washdc.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-180-67-156.tampfl.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-187-176-23.nwrknj.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-245-227-130.bstnma.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-245-247-31.nycmny.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-245-74-238.prvdri.fios.verizon.net
pool-71-251-69-183.tampfl.fios.verizon.net
pool-72-64-87-227.dllstx.fios.verizon.net
pool-72-66-1-223.washdc.fios.verizon.net
pool-72-75-227-248.bflony.fios.verizon.net
pool-72-90-121-2.ptldor.fios.verizon.net
pool-72-94-19-223.phlapa.fios.verizon.net
pool-72-95-136-185.pitbpa.fios.verizon.net
pool-96-229-80-50.lsanca.fios.verizon.net
That's a mail server with one user. Production mail servers with tens of thousands of users typically note 5000-10000 such systems every day.
So from here, it appears that new FIOS rollouts are being 0wned nearly as quickly as they're connected, and that they're staying 0wned. I'm sure the spammers are quite pleased with the quality service provided by Verizon et.al.
I disagree with comcasts analogy. Its not like getting a busy signal, its like an operator coming on the line mid conversation and tell both partys please try again later and disconnecting them. The busy signal occurs when you initiate the call and the receiving end is busy an unable to answer. What they are doing is at a certain threshold (that no one knows of course), getting into the middle of the connection, pretending to be each other, and disconnecting the connection.
:) (okay the last paragraph is sorta absurd.. but still it amused me when I read that back to myself so it stays)
A better analogy for comcast to use would be something along the lines of we are promoting identify theft by pretending to be the recipient and closing your connection so we can redirect the traffic and steal whatever you are downloading
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Well obviously if this is affecting you should drop Comcast and chose from the 3 or 4 other major broadband providers that can provide megabit service to your home.
Oh..that's right...there aren't any other major providers in your area....
I am not blocking forged RST packets from Comcast IP addresses. I am just placing them into a very long delay queue in my traffic shaper.
Anyone know of any companies that make revenue by selling products or services that are transferred via BitTorrent? If so maybe they should file a lawsuit against Comcast to recover damages. I went back and forth from Comcast to Verizon and then tried Cavtel for a while. I'm currently using Comcast but am going to leave them and go back to Cavtel. I do not want anyone screwing around with my packets.
btw, "busy signal" = TCP-RESET
Back in the olden days, when people used to write checks, a friend of mine used to make his phone bills payable to "Adolf Hitler" and "Ayatollah Khomenei" and they all went through, every one of them.
That's because they both work for the phone companies
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In the case of getting a busy signal, the party you are trying to reach is already on the phone, thereby denying you the ability to reach them.* This is more like you try to call someone and get the "all circuits are busy" message, then try again and get through. The point is in the example he used, the reason you can't connect is because of the answering party, not your phone company. Which closer to what is happening. And getting the "all circuits is busy" message is a sign of too little capacity, and considered poor service. Which is really what's going on at Comcast, too.
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* We'll ignore CallWaiting, and the fact most phone companies let you have two calls running at the same time, alternating between them. Heck on some can combine them into a conference call on the fly.
Request Timeout. Request Timeout. Request Timeout. Request Timeout. 100% loss. That's basically the effect of postponing. You don't *need* to postpone it indefinitely, you can delay it until it times out... and send bogus data to everyone that fails in the checksum so it looks like they aren't actually modifying your transmission speed.