Congressman Tells Comcast, Hands Off BitTorrent

An anonymous reader writes "Just a few months back, the Net Neutrality debate was all but dead. Luckily for fans of a free Internet, the telcos are their own worst enemies. Recent stories involving Verizon Wireless blocking pro-choice groups, AT&T censoring Pearl Jam's anti-war comments from a streaming concert, and most recently, Comcast finally admitting to using anti-BitTorrent filters. The Net Neutrality debate would appear to be alive and kicking, with Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) being the first politician to make a public statement sharply criticizing Comcast's actions."

Comments

Comcast Tesll Congressman: We Own Your Colleagues

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast Tesll Congressman: We Own Your Colleagues

Comcast has politely reminded this wayward congressman that in America laws are paid for by bribes. Comcast then offered the congressman a "campaign contribution", silencing his dissent. The system works.

Great start

[martin_henry]

As a Comcast customer in Virginia, I am glad that Congressman Boucher is taking a stand for net neutrality. Mostly because I need to get my share ratio back up.

Re:Great start

[TheRequiem13]

Hopefully not on OiNK. :/

Comcast seems to be fast

[Technician]

Am I the first to notice that Comcast may have removed the filter? Last night I started the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon DVD download. I thought it would be done this morning, but I noticed the network switch still blinking like crazy. I logged in and checked the status. The download is done. I checked the upload status...

1286 K uploaded at a rate of 20KB/s. This is the first time in weeks I have seen upload speeds better than 0.0 KB/s and a transfered size larger than 0.1 KB. Since I am finally able to help spread Ubuntu, I'll let it run all day. Maybe I'll be able to upload more than I download for a change. Seeing any upload traffic after a completed download is highly unusual on Comcast lately.

Sigh

[bucky0]

Guys, if we want to win the argument on Net Neutrality, we can't keep confusing QOS with NN. If they want to indescriminantly block bittorrent, that's QOS. Saying that QOS runs afoul of NN means that later Comcast can say, "Look, if you enforce net neutrality, we won't be able to do QOS on our networks which means that internet tv will be bogged down"

NN is preferential shaping based on the source of the data. QOS is preferential shaping based on the type of data.

Re:Sigh

[Andy Dodd]

Actually, they're not blocking an entire protocol.

They're actively resetting ANY TCP connection that involves uploading significant amounts of data for more than a few seconds.

There have been numerous reports of this killing Lotus Domino connections too, and I wouldn't be surprised if I found lots of complaints on the SmugMug forums about people being unable to upload pictures if they were on Comcast. (Same traffic patterns - lots of upload for a while.)

Still, anything that involves resetting/blocking connections is not QoS. I don't think people would care if BT were the "bottom of the barrel" and was superseded by any other traffic type - it would still be wicked fast at 3 AM. The problem here is that Comcast is actively killing connections regardless of what the actual status of the rest of the network is, instead of taking advantage of TCP's built in congestion control mechanisms to slow things down.

I worry that if done wrong, legislation will be passed that even forbids QoS, which will make things really bad for both users and ISPs. The legislation would have to have wording that QoS is OK as long as the "bottom of the barrel" protocols are able to use full bandwidth when no one else is using the network.

Re:Sigh

[bkr1_2k]

"My bits are just as important as the next guy."

Yes but your bits aren't as large as the next guy's so you'll have to compensate with a cool car.

Re:Sigh

[Dash Hash]

If Comcast were only throttling BitTorrent traffic, I would not have so much an issue with it (so long as the throttled speeds were decent enough to serve ISOs and WoW updates).

Unfortunately, it is not about throttling, it is about killing entirely. When every attempt to connect is killed, you are not delaying traffic, you are stopping it entirely. But that is only one issue on the table with Comcast and its anti-BitTorrent activities, and quite frankly, it is a minor issue compared to the other.

More important to me, and hopefully to everybody else, is that Comcast is killing BitTorrent traffic by spoofing the users, and not always its own users. They are pretending to be their customers and the people they connect with, whether or not the people they are connected with are Comcast customers, to send the reset packets.

I don't know about you, but quite frankly, having /any/ company masquerade as its users is frightening.
With a massive company such as Comcast faking its identity, it is out-and-out mortifying.

Throttling would be one thing. Killing by falsifying oneself as the customers they represent is another entirely.

Too late for Comcast

[Space cowboy]

At least, from my perspective. I'm not a huge user of P2P, my ire is more directed at the violation of the principles that founded this 'internets' thing. If we let company-interests direct the future development of the internet, we may as well give up now.

What *did* annoy me, after the decision was taken, was that my difficulties with ichat over the last few months seem to be similarly down to Comcast policies.

I use iChat a lot to keep in touch with my family (all of whom have Macs, and 4-way video-conferencing can be pretty cool). There's several thousand miles between us, so this is one of the few ways we can actually see each other without major travel.

Until a few months ago, it all worked great. Now, I get less than a minute of great picture, and then everything breaks up. I was putting it down to transatlantic bandwidth issues, but then I tried it from work, and (lo and behold) had no problems whatsoever.

I pay (not for long, now though, the T1 arrives in 2 weeks) for the most bandwidth Comcast offer, and I cannot believe I average even 1% of that bandwidth. To have them limit me when I *do* want to use it, as a deliberate *general* policy of theirs, is infuriating. All I can do is cancel the service, and hope others do too. Eventually, hopefully, they'll get the message. Not everyone can cancel due to the monopoly they hold in some areas, but perhaps enough can to make a difference.

Now a T1 used to be a lot of bandwidth, but it's not so much any more (1.5Mbit/sec is pretty poor by advertised-bandwidth standards). I'm willing to trade off the small time-periods I actually can use that advertised bandwidth for the reliability of always having the smaller amount - it may not work for everyone, but it works for me :)

And so, Comcast lose another ~$200/month. Hopefully part of a trend, because won't anyone think of the network ? [grin]

Simon.

Re:Too late for Comcast

[Seumas]

The problem is that broadband providers really do have a monopoly. In any given area, you have dial-up (56k), a single cable (8mbps) provider or a single DSL (768kbps to 7mbps) providers. While every city varies, you can usually get dial-up in 100% of the area, cable in perhaps 70% of the area . . . but DSL in only a small percentage of the area. At least if you want speeds that are even remotely comparable. If you don't live down the street from the local CO, you are going to get speeds that are difficult to tolerate. And of course, phone companies have bandwidth and usage concerns, too. They aren't selling you a dedicated service anymore than Comcast or Cox or Shaw is.

What really annoys me is that my tax dollars are used to provide these "utilities" with a limited sanctioned monopoly for the supposed public good, yet they don't offer services that address the whole public. If you really only intend your $65/mo service to be for grandmothers who use the account for email and checking up on their local church and the occasional amazon service, then offer a more expensive account for people who want heavy use and connect to work via VPN, back stuff up to remote servers, connect to colo hosted systems, use bit-torrent, watch lots of streaming videos, etc.

And for people who want to know "how in the hell do you use so much bandwidth?! 30gb should be more than enough!". Well, just downloading a few popular podcasts will do it. Especially now that they're HD quality. Diggnation, Crankygeeks, DL.TV, Totally Rad Show and a couple others downloaded every week at an average of almost 500mb each comes out to about 12gb per month right there. And that's if you aren't acquiring them via bit torrent where you'd have some overhead as well as at least 6gb to 12gb in upward bandwidth. So right there, you're at 24gb. Just to keep up with half a dozen weekly podcasts.

Throw in a couple people at your address listening to a lot of streaming radio. Watching streaming movies and news. Downloading five to ten gigs of demos on Xbox Live and Play Station Network. Perhaps connecting to your office with VPN and VNC to use your desktop. That's quite a lot of bandwidth. For completely legitimate purposes. And we haven't even touched things like using remote backup services that you can find online or downloading linux ISOs or the other streaming services like Vongo, Netflix and Amazon Unboxed.

Re:Nice glasses

[brandor]

Congressman Boucher rocks. He actually does a great job of getting things done for everyone. It doesn't hurt that he is all about technology either. He's probably the main force driving broadband adoption in Southwest Virginia (my home). Some the most recent things he's helped get accomplished are a major fiber optic pipe to Lebanon, VA (it's slowly making it's way to my small town), that pipe has convinced at least two global companies to set up shop in Southwest VA. Northrop Grumman being one and CGI-AMS being the other. He does such a great job and is liked so much that I don't think he has even had anyone oppose him in the election for the past several years. And if someone has opposed him, he won by such a margin that they might as well have not shown up. (This is me talking, I'm too lazy to look up any stats, so what I just said could be completely wrong. But, he rocks so much, it doesn't matter. Watch out Chuck Norris?)

Isn't it strange...

[teutonic_leech]

... that we actually cheer when a politician we put into office for once stands up and protects our [fill in civic right of your choice]? I mean, when did things go so bad? (rhetorical question) It's sad that we all have gotten used to a status quo where our elected leaders work hand in hand with big business and constantly screw us over. I don't care what political affiliation you have - just take a step back and look what's going on in our country. I do feel very strongly about net neutrality but must also concede that it might be the least of our problem right now. Nevertheless, it is one of thousands of important issues that needs to be addressed and coming next election day we all should do our part and 'kick the bums out' (not my quote - start hearing that very frequently on Hardball recently). Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I'm trying to make a point here, which is that we need to take a step back and rebuilt our democracy - it's ridiculous that we continue to desperately grasp for a few breadcrumbs from an administration that's blatantly in bed with big business.

Simple soulation

[Anon-Admin]

There is a simple solution,

If Comcast, Verizon, AT&T or anyone else blocks any content for any reason, they are (from that point on) legally liable for all remaining content. This is because the have made an effort to control the content crossing there service and by default must agree that all remaining content is acceptable.

Then remind there legal department that it means "If you keep it up, we will hold you responsible for all the remaining content including but not limited to all the child porn, child predators, etc."

In other words, they have violated the common carrier clause and thus are not protected from prosecution!

Where is a lawyer when you need one?

Re:Congrats to the Congressman

[stinerman]

You miss the point of those of us who are for government regulation. I'm willing to go with a totally free market where ISPs compete on service and price. The problem is that we need the government to step in and create a free market. Last mile connectivity is a natural monopoly (which is why you can't get POTS from anyone you want, nor can you get cable television service from anyone you want). The government should own all the pipes and allow anyone access to it at non-discriminatory rates. That is the only way you're going to have meaningful competition.

This "hands off" talk assumes there is a free market already. There isn't, and the market will continue to devolve into an oligopoly until the government does something about it.