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Comcast Continues to Block Peer to Peer Traffic
narramissic writes "A report released Thursday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) finds that Comcast continues to use hacker-like techniques to slow down customers' connections to some P-to-P (peer-to-peer) applications. The EFF said that Comcast appears to be injecting RST, or reset, packets into customers' connections, causing connections to close. 'The investigators say that their tests confirmed an earlier one conducted by the Associated Press that showed that Comcast is interfering with BitTorrent traffic. BitTorrent is a protocol used to efficiently distribute the online transmission of large files, and some entertainment companies have partnered with its creators to distribute its content online. Comcast has said that it doesn't block BitTorrent, or any kind of content.'" If you're the type that always looks for a silver lining, Comcast's skulduggery may be pushing Congress to reconsider Net Neutrality.
Never ascribe to skulduggery that which can be adequately explained by asshattery.
I think the problem may be due to their new cable modem hookup diagram.
Here is the official load of crap you get if you bitch about it to them .....
-- begin bunch of shit ---
Thank you for contacting Comcast Cable Mark.
Thank you for writing to us in response to reports about Comcast's
efforts to manage peer-to-peer traffic on our networks.
Mark, we have posted new FAQs on our Web site making clear to our
customers the steps we are taking to protect the customer experience for
all of our customers. You may access content related to this issue in
the FAQ section of http://www.comcast.net/
First, and most importantly, you should know that Comcast does not block
access to any Web site or application, including peer-to-peer services
like BitTorrent. Our customers use the Internet for downloading and
uploading files, watching movies and videos, streaming music, sharing
digital photos, accessing numerous peer-to-peer sites, VOIP applications
like Vonage, and thousands of other applications online.
Mark, we have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a
good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage
our network so that you can continue to enjoy these applications.
Peer-to-peer activity consumes a disproportionately large amount of
network resources, and therefore poses the biggest challenge to
maintaining a good broadband experience for all users, including the
overwhelming majority of our customers who don't use P2P applications.
It is important to note, however, that we never prevent P2P activity, or
block access to any P2P applications, but rather manage the network in
such a way that this activity does not degrade the broadband experience
for other users.
Mark, network management is absolutely essential to provide a good
Internet experience for our customers. All major ISPs manage their
traffic in some way and many use similar tools.
Comcast believes we have a responsibility to our customers to provide
this service. Network management helps us perform critical work that
protects our customers from things like spam, viruses, the negative
effects of network congestion, or attacks to their PCs. As threats on
the Internet continue to grow, our network management tools will
continue to evolve and keep pace so that we can maintain a good,
reliable online experience for all of our customers.
I understand you have some questions about Comcast's policies. You can
view all of the Comcast Subscriber Agreements and Policies by visiting
the Comcast Online Customer Support Center at http://www.comcast.net/terms/subscriber.jsp
On this site you will find the Subscriber Agreement, the Acceptable Use
Policy, and other policies relating to your Comcast Service. You can
also view our Privacy Policy Statement at http://www.comcast.net/privacy/index.jsp
Links to the Privacy Statement and Terms of Service are located at the
bottom of every page at www.comcast.
-- end bunch of shit --
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
business. I've been weaning myself OFF of the at-home "Internets" "experience". Not missing it much either, except when I need to upgrade PCLinux or Mandriva from DVD and then can't resolve dependencies because the DVD's don't have some (for example, VirtualBox dependencies.... frm one of the magazines...) Well, now I've come to live without Internets at home for months now and it's nice to kick 50% of that addiction...
But, tho this is unrelated to torrents (which I don't use), it might make comblast wake up and be nicer. Offer a rate plan, ask torrent users to wait till off-peak hours, something... anything reasonable...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Good for Comcast. I hope more places continue to block BitTorrent. There's no legitimate use for it anyway. It should be banned.
Any legitimate distributor of content can pay to distribute it with trying to hide the real cost from their consumer. Any other use of BitTorrent is by definition illegitimate.
And in any case, users of residential internet connections shouldn't be surprised they don't get all the business features. Want a full internet connection? Pay for it.
It's far more sinister. They are spoofing packets by impersonating a p2p node. They are illegally interfering with their customers' service and don't have the guts to do it outright themselves.
I got a catholic block.
People who inject fake RSTs into network streams should be shot.
This will lead to non-compliant network stacks which attempt to detect "bogus" RSTs and ignore them. And that cannot be allowed to happen at any cost.
It is fine for them to drop packets. It is a dick move, of course, when they sold people the bandwidth and don't let them use it, but TCP/IP is designed to deal with packet loss, and treat it as congestion. Fragrantly violating the network standards that allow communication between different networks to interoperate is literally trying to destroy the internet, and cannot be tolerated.
How is it a silver lining that Congress may reconsider Congressionally mandated Federal control over the internet in the United States?
If there's one thing Congress and the rest of the Federal government have proven time and time again it's that the only thing they're good at is spending money. Everything else they try to do (ie. all the stuff they spend the money on), they can't help but fuck it up. Never heard the phrase, "Good enough for government work"?
If you're in favor of Ted "Series-of-Tubes" Stevens and his band of merry men handing over control of the internet to the F "OMFG A DECISECOND FLASH OF BREAST!" CC, then I have to ask, why do you hate the internet?
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Bought the ticket, taking the ride.
Define "net neutrality". I don't want high-level goal oriented stuff. I want to know exactly what such a law would look like because frankly I'm skeptical that any net-neutrality law wouldn't just be full of vagueness, unintended consequences or be so limited as to be useless.
Just saying "make the networks fair" doesn't make a good law, but that is all I've heard from the NN people. I want to be behind NN, but I can't as long as it is so ambiguous.
Check out this article posted by George Ou at ZDNet a couple of weeks ago.
The reason Comcast is doing this is because the shared node topology of Cable can't handle all of the connection requests. Similar to a bunch of Windows 95 boxes running NETBUI on a large non-switched network, bittorrent causes a a ton of contention. The result are packet storms which end up taking everyone out.
Of course Comcast won't say, "The reason we do this is because our entire infrastructure is shit and needs to be replaced." The stockholders wouldn't like that.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Comcast continues to deny they are blocking or discriminating with traffic. (See "Hot Topics" in the middle of the page.)
See this nonsense linked from that page:
Question: "Do you discriminate against particular types of online content?"
Answer: "No. There is no discrimination based on the type of content. Our customers enjoy unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications that the Internet has to offer. We respect our customers' privacy and we don't monitor specific customer activities on the Internet or track individual online behavior such as which Web sites they visit. Therefore, we do not know whether any individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site."
I guess that is called "plausible deniability". Comcast management apparently assigned that question to someone who is so ignorant that he thinks BitTorrent is only a web site, and clearly doesn't understand the issues. I suppose that later Comcast management can blame the denial on a confused lower level employee.
I was talking to a Comcast repair technician yesterday who came to replace a poor quality, non-functional cable modem. He was very uncaring. I suppose that is the Comcast culture. It must be miserable to work there.
You can't see it with Slashdot's HTML rendering, but whoever typed that reply for Comcast is back in the days of the typewriter. He or she used two spaces after every period. That made sense when all type was monospaced. I wonder if I visited Comcast headquarters, would I see horses tied outside?
I wonder if Comcast can deliver this on time...
This can be done in virtually all clients..for example, in uTorrent, set Encryption to "Forced" in your preferences. This isn't 100% foolproof but it seems to help a lot of Comcast users, among others with throttling and other P2P blocking measures forced on them from their ISP.
I almost got internet access from you guys at my new apartment, but about the same time I was looking, I started seeing all these stories about how you like to prevent your customers from using the services they pay for. So I'm giving my money to Copowi instead.
I hope you enjoy your BitTorrent-less network, while it lasts!
News... typically something *NEW* - see section 1.b.
Main Entry:
news Listen to the pronunciation of news
Pronunciation:
\nüz, nyüz\
Function:
noun plural but singular in construction
Usage:
often attributive
Date:
15th century
1 a: a report of recent events b: previously unknown information c: something having a specified influence or effect 2 a: material reported in a newspaper or news periodical or on a newscast b: matter that is newsworthy
and in other news... water is wet, the pope is catholic, and the earth is 1 au from the sun.... news at 11
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
I'm a fan of YouTube (who isn't), but hadn't logged into my account for awhile and forgot the password when I tried commenting on a video. I had a reminder sent to my comcast e-mail account a day or two ago -- and it's been about 36 hours, and it never arrived! Assuming something was hosed with my YouTube account, I decided to create a new account, still no activation e-mail sent.
I then changed my YouTube preferences to my GMail account, and the confirmation e-mail arrived within like 2 minutes. No surprise, since Google owns both GMail and YouTube. But my curiosity was now aroused, so I changed the e-mail preferences on YouTube to my work account (I'm an open source programmer at a Big-10 university). Again, the YouTube confirmation came within like 2 minutes or so.
I logged into comcast.net under my main subscriber e-mail account today -- and deactivated ALL spam/filtering on that account. I then went back to YouTube and switched preferences back to my comcast account. It's been about 4 hours and, of course, there's been no e-mail from YouTube.
Anyone else notice this oddness between YouTube / Comcast? It irked me enough to create a little web site of it this afternoon, and post it on my blog as well (http://paulbramscher.blogspot.com/).
I'm not sure comcast is *that* sad to see you go. Their entire business model is based on overselling their bandwidth. Their favorite customers are those that pay $50/mo for internet access, and then only check their email.
People like you and I, who actually use most of the bandwidth advertised, make Comcast little, if any profit. If all the heavy bittorrent users followed your example, comcast may well be able to cut their costs enough (with all the bandwidth savings, etc.) that they could stay just as profitable, if not more so.
Think about it. They're already *cutting off* subscriptions of the heaviest users -- they're obviously not concerned about losing that business.
Use IPsec. Not only can they not tell what your packets mean (only where they are going and came from), but they cannot forge an RST since that also needs to be encrypted with the association key.
So they could do a man-in-the-middle attack on a simplistic key exchange done over IPsec. But that would require far more resources (they have to get in the middle of each connection) than they appear to be willing to use (RST forgery is about the cheapest form of net interference there is). So I think even minimal IPsec would bring this blocking to and end until such time as they want to invest in whatever it takes to mount an attack on IPsec. Then we just use a strong key infrastructure and end that.
If the protocol involved understood the work to be done (e.g. how many bytes to be transferred), it could also re-establish a new connection if the existing one got dropped, and resume the transfer ... until done or one end decides to not do this anymore.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Those of you who haven't worked on the business side of an ISP may not realize this, but customers who actually use the service are [i]the enemy[/i].
Of course they're going to throttle p2p for as long as they can get away with it. It uses bandwidth!
Users using bandwidth costs them money. Much better to just have people pay without actually being able to use the service they're paying for.
There is already a law to apply here....take away their common carrier status. As soon as they discriminate among content, they SHOULD lose their common carrier status, and can be sued out of business the first time they DON'T block hate speech or kiddy porn. THERE is a law that applies. It never gets applied because they pay politicians.
It's antiquated partly because we are supposed to let the font designers design the look of the font, and not mess with it.
The two spaces after a period method is antiquated also because it prevents you from doing an efficient search for accidental typing of two spaces between words.
All one has to do is look at the main competitor to Comcast, which is Verizon, and look at how they do the same type of stuff. They block outbound SMTP traffic except to their smtp servers...
Can't you just write a iptables rule to drop RST packets destined for your bittorrent port? You could even get clever about it and drop RST packets that come out of the blue, but allow repeated RST packets to pass, so that connections that have really be reset on the far end can be closed.
So, if they start injecting RSTs into the stream, they obviously are monitoring the contents of the stream, know that it's p2p traffic, and are rewriting the contents on the fly (you could say "moderating" the packets). Does this affect their common-carrier status if they just interfere/slow down a transmission that happens to contain illegal material but permit it to (slowly) happen?
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Our organization has an appliance by Packeteer which does traffic shaping and manages bandwidth to ensure that a group of 'clients' do not clog our internet access for everyone else. Isn't this basically what Comcast is doing? I don't use them but I'd be pretty pissed if the college students that live in my area brought my internet access to a crawl due to all their P2P activities. I'd want some bandwidth for my P2P activities too!
Higher level protocols don't poke their nose into lower level protocols.
For the past two weeks over here in Canada, Sympatico started doing the same thing during "rush hours" to make sure every client has the best internet experience they can have. But this company is the one that sells its DSL internet by saying how your line is not affected by the downloads of your neighbors.
Isn't all internet traffic p2p, for some values of "p"? Isn't that the whole point of IP?
...and join me in my boycott of Comcast. Blocking a completely legitimate, beneficial technology just because some may use it for illegal purposes is ridiculous; what are they going to do next, ban computers because they can be used for illegal purposes? Bittorrent is used to distribute perfectly legitimate materials, such as Linux distros and streaming video, and it is utterly abhorrent. Comcast is virtually unopposed as a provider of broadband internet in many areas, and as such, they are feeling full enough of themselves to start taking away services, likely to ease growing pressure from the RIAA, etc. Please protest/boycott their decision, or do what I do and use an EV-DO card. :-)
Fear the penguin.
they are not even coming close to telling you the truth!
The truth is more like, "the entertainment industry, AOL, M$ and other have all threatened retaliation if we do not do as they say and eliminate this growing alternate content distribution system." They would rather you conclusde that blocking P2P with rst packets will somehow make things faster for you and other customers. They also hope you don't know about upload speed caps they already have in place that are already supposed to eliminate bandwith hogging. Money wasted on these measures could have solved bandwith problems directly by building better networks. In a few years time, the networks and the equipment bought to cripple it will be hoplessly obsolete and the US will have fallen out of the top 20 nations in networking access and speed.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The biggest problem you may have here is that there are two competing definitions -- the real one, and the ones the ISPs made up.
The real one goes: ISPs shall be neutral with respect to network traffic. This is really, really, ridiculously, ludicrously simple: you put a router between your customer and the Internet. You do not put any firewall or packet shaping rules there.
There's a lot of ways to be more specific and less possible to poke legal holes in it. But that's the part of it that's as simple as, for instance, "Don't steal other people's shit." There's all kinds of ways to steal other people's shit, and there are separate laws for most of them, but the definition of stealing really is pretty simple, most of the time -- taking something from someone else without their consent.
Now, the other definition is just the opposite: The ISPs, of course, don't like net neutrality legislation -- they would rather have the governments not regulate them. So they twist it into how net neutrality is supposed to be about the government remaining neutral about the ISPs (net providers). And so you get morons like this, except most of them think they're FOR net neutrality.
Hope that clears some things up.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I think capitalism will be Comcast's undoing, assuming that consumers start to get annoyed with the diminished results, and begin to express their discontent.
Other DSL providers will naturally begin try and use the fact they don't interfere with the internet as a selling point. Assuming this happens, the only places that may be affected are any in which Comcast has a monopoly by being the only source for DSL.
My only fear is other DSL providers will see that Comcast is getting away with tactics like this, and try to pull the same stunt. For that reason, I honestly hope Comcast gets sued bigtime over this. Comcast needs to be made an example out of.
A person is guilty of criminal impersonation in the second degree when
he:
1. Impersonates another and does an act in such assumed character with
intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another; Not a real stretch. If they just enforced QoS, then it wouldn't be an issue, the issue is pretending to be the end user's system.
Which other ISP's are involved in this phuckery?
I'm a new Satellite customer (wildblue) and bit torrent appears to have
similar issues. Mainly with keeping a connection. Once BT starts to pick up speed
its like it gets disconnected and starts scraping again. Does this sound like a RST aswell?
I'm not sure if my issues are with the ISP messing with me or Satellite just having horrible latency and packet loss. Anyone know?
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
You can change the modem speed on-demand, but it may require a modem reset for the new speed to kick in.
With mid-billing-cycle and on-customer-demand modem-speed adjustments, it's easy enough for cable companies to charge people by the GB and when their monthly limit is up for their price plan, reset their modem speed to 56K or something similar at a scheduled time, say, 3AM the day after the bandwidth cap is hit or some other time of the day previously chosen by the customer. If they want to buy more units they can go online and do so. Their modem may have to cycle for the new bandwidth to kick in, so this won't work for customers who really need 24/7 uninterrupted service.
Customers willing to pay more means more money for Comcast which may mean more money plowed back into the neighborhood infrastructure which means smaller collision domains which means fewer collisions.
Customers who use up their bandwidth who are not willing to pay more get relegated to 56K. They throw fewer packets on the network in peak hours and thereby reduce the overall number of collisions.
Customers not using their bandwidth allocation benefit from the reduced collisions.
In any case, the number of customers willing to pay for higher bandwidth will give Comcast a good idea not just of where there is a higher demand for bandwidth but where there is a higher demand from people willing to pay for it. In a free-market economy, these "golden neighborhoods" will be among the first to be upgraded to newer, faster technology.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
True. But that's because they're idiots.
Us "heavy internet users" are also known as "the computer guys in the family". AKA the people all those email-checkers go to for technology advice.
If comcast starts losing all of its geek users, it will soon find itself losing its profit cows as well when we tell them a better ISP to use.
BTW, anyone know a better ISP to use? Fucking monopolies.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Wondering why Comcast is still doing this even after having been "outed" over the last few weeks? Simple: they don't care. If you get fed up and leave for one of their competitors, just to show them, think they'll miss you? They'll be high-fiving around the office as soon as you go. You're costing them money by maxxing out your use of the service. They want you to leave. The best way to get you to do that is to keep giving you crappy service and lying about the reasons for it. If they lose the heaviest 1% of their customers which are generating 10% of their traffic (both figures totally made up, but the point should be clear), they'll be ecstatic. They'll make that trade 8 days a week.
Netflix operates the same way, throttling its customers who try to use the service as it's advertised. It all comes down to what's meant by "unlimited." We should all know that there is no such thing as unlimited service, and whenever you start to push too far into a company's profits at the all-you-can-eat buffet, you shouldn't be surprised when they start clearing your table before you're done and shooing you out the door.
It's 21st century business, kids. Get used to it. The best way to stick it to these companies is, unfortunately, to keep paying them and be right on the edge of what they allow you to do, like a kid causing just enough trouble in class to piss off the teacher but not enough to get sent to the office.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Don't know where you've been my friend, but heavy P2P useage does NOT equal being the computer savvy guy.
From your post you sound like a supporter of Ron Paul?
Libertas in infinitum
Yeah, but there's a (slight) difference between "they cut me off" and "I know they'll cut me off (and lie about it), so I won't bother".
At bar A, they say "we'll cut you off if you seem drunk", and they cut you off after 5 vodka shots. At bar B, they say "we'll never cut you off!", but you've done chemical analysis and discovered they serve water after the third shot, claiming it's vodka.
When your friends and family come to town and ask where to go drinking, and you say "bar B sucks" (with or without elaboration), what do they do? Heck, I'm a geek, and I got my last ISP recommendation from somebody even geekier than me ("get this ISP -- they don't suck").
Is it enough to matter? Beats me.
Blocking-by-default services which are abused by robots and which provide no value except to those who should know enough to ask for them makes a lot of sense.
These days, that's outbound mail, outbound SMB/Windows-networking, and all inbound ports other than DHCP-related ports. However, any customer who needs to should be able to log into their ISP account and say "I run IRC, turn on relevant ports," "I run eDonkey, turn on relevant ports," or "I run XYZ, turn on relevant ports" or even "I'm an expert and I'll take responsibility for my own security, remove all protection and feel free to suspend my account at the first sign that any of my computers sends more than ___ messages in ___ period of time or is otherwise causing harm."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just a little?
If they think Comcast is lying, they file suit and/or charges for violation of:
Computer Fraud and abuse act: 18 U.S.C. 1030. "Knowingly accessing a computer with the intent to defraud and there by obtaining anything of value."
Wire fraud: 18 U.S.C. 1343. Fraud by wire, radio, or television.
If they want to take Comcast's written denial that they're doing this at face value, file those same suit/charges against Doe, and suponea Comcast for Doe's identity. heh heh heh. How about a press release that someone is sabotaging Comcast internet service "and it's not Comcast".
There's a world of difference between blocking a packet or connection, and forging activity in one.
I'm not sure comcast is *that* sad to see you go. Their entire business model is based on overselling their bandwidth. Their favorite customers are those that pay $50/mo for internet access, and then only check their email.
Perhaps. But the were quite concerned when I pulled my brothers home account and the 10 commercial accounts I manage after the latest BS they drug me through. It is the power users everyone goes to for recommendations. And my recommendation lately has been Uverse... And to add insult, I never had Comcast at home.
I didn't think about them losing common carrier status. But that would be a good one.
I think the FTC should take a look. I would argue that once they start dicking with particular protocols and services that they are no longer delivering an internet connection they are delivering a web connection with some additional services.
I believe there is a law on the books that states that it is illegal to impersonate a party across electronic transmission. This law was probably on the books to prevent people from forging telegraphs or keep people from calling you and claiming they are from your bank or the government. When they forge RST packets (Both directions) they are impersonating their customer and the party they are connected to.
I'm not a lawyer so I don't really know.
BTW The FCC just slapped them with the a restriction that they can grow past 30% market share for cable TV which is about 30m. They are at 27m now.
I have their service and I can't wait until I can send them an RST packet and disconnect my service.
/. http://www.flurl.com/item/Hatchet_vs_Genitals_u_199612
First, why is it that the number of connections has anything to do with it? I thought it was the amount of bandwidth used -- that is, number of packets sent?
Second, if this is really the case, then why won't Comcast simply come clean, and put in their FAQ "You get x simultaneous open TCP connections. Go over that, and we will close them for you."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I've been a Comcast customer in two different cities this year. I wouldn't say I'm a heavy downloader, but I grab the occasional, *ahem*, Linux distro from time to time. Any reasonably well seeded torrent seems to scream right along for me, as fast as it ever has. Are they not doing this in all areas, or is it limited to heavy bandwidth users or something?
I use Debian GNU\Linux both on my personal and my business machines. I download new releases through BitTorrent. I also use BitTorrent for downloading other GNU/Linux distributions like Fedora, always from the official trackers. Then I leave BitTorrent active for months to contribute back to the community by offering part of my ADSL upstream.
If my ISP sabotages my BitTorrent traffic, this means that it also affects my business as I would have to wait more for new GNU/Linux DVDs to download. Imagine setting up a new PC for development and having to wait a lot because a manager thought that BitTorrent can only be used for mp3z etc... Ridiculous. Just because some people use it for something big media companies don't like doesn't mean that everyone including the legitimate users should be made to suffer.
That's not to say that the system is perfect. You bring up emancipation, which I looked into a few years ago, and the fact is that (in the U.S. at least) the standards for emancipation are way too high. You have to prove major complications in the parental relationship, such as abuse or neglect. Having parents who are simply financially neglectful doesn't seem to be enough. Whether this is a justifiable standard is something more qualified people should look into.
A workaround is to wait until the FAFSA year encompasses your 24th birthday. At that point parental finances no longer matter for most schools. My aid went up dramatically this year for precisely that reason. This is a kludge, no doubt, because we shouldn't force kids to wait ~6 years after high school before entering higher education. But it's doable, while in many cases paying for college right out of h.s. is not.
So you can laugh all you want to...
You know, being from continental Europe, I can't quite grasp the typical USA "OMG, it's the government, run for the hills!" attitude.
The fact is, the government is a tool, and a necessary one. Anything bigger than a small tribe ends up needing some form of organization, or it goes downhill fast.
During the history of humanity we have already tried anarchy several times, and it tends to not work well. It ends up in the biggest arseholes making everyone else very unhappy. Just because they can and there's noone to stop them.
We've also tried Wild-West-style, every-man-for-himself scenarios, and they don't scale.
1. It's a disproportionate waste of society's resources if, say, everyone has to leave one armed family/clan/whatever member at home to guard the farm, as opposed to having a much smaller police force to enforce the laws.
2. Divide et impera. Isolated individuals are easier to bully. In the above example, a merry band of bandits could pick off each farm one by one, if they stay each-man-for-himself. (And if not, congrats, they just created a local primitive form of government, army and police rolled in one.)
Even this Comcast example, is an example of what happens without laws and regulations: the biggest pricks _will_ shaft you because they can. And as long as the only recourse at the level of "but if enough isolated individual people decided to do something about it..." it will remain so. A prisoner's dilemma involving 300 million people just won't ever produce the result where they actually pressure the asshole to play nice.
So, yes, we know over here too that governments are dangerous and expensive things. That's why we try to control them to do what we want. Because that's the whole role of a government in a democratic society.
Throwing your hands up and admitting that your government already isn't under your control any more -- which is a pre-requisite for this "OMG, it's the government, run for the hills!" attitude to make any sense -- doesn't make it any less dangerous or expensive. It just means you've already failed and it will get more and more dangerous without control. And more expensive.
Basically, let me give you a metaphor. Let's say you have a big bad dog in your backyard.
The way I read it, the USA attitude seems to be "auugh, hide from it, don't let it get to your family, it could become rabid any time soon. Lock your doors and load your guns, just in case!"
The way we see it on this side of the pond is more like: so freakin' train it, take it to the vet, and make it work for you. Because it _is_ your dog. Might as well be a responsible owner.
So, anyway, please enlighten me: what am I missing there? Exactly how is a situation where we already know that the biggest shits are shafting millions of customers, actually better than having some laws there?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's true, smaller midwest outfits such as Northwest Communications/Wildblue and Long Lines, among others, have literally been blocking all p2p traffic for all customers without any regard to content. They don't care if it's legitimate software, such as a Linux distribution. If it's using bittorrent or something similar, it's automatically in the wrong and needs to be blocked, that's how they're looking at it.
Makes me sick to know that non-technical idiots are running the internet in certain places. They look at how they're doing it in Hollywood with the RIAA and MPAA and automatically get down and start doing some dirty work on their knees... no wonder the prison system works so well in this country, look who's getting the other end of the stick.
Of course, if they hadn't blocked the traffic in the first place, none of this would have been revealed. Oops, sorry, but no, the customer is always right, even when they're wrong. Guess they need to get some people to work for them that have some real education and real experience, not just one or the other.
Cableone is doing it to. I noticed it when I was doing some ping tests and my wife's World of Warcraft was downloading the newest 200mb patch (WoW uses a bit torrent client). All of a sudden my ping times shot up to over 600ms from a normal 34ms times. As soon as the patch was downloaded it reverted back to normal. So I then decided to bit torrent a Linux ISO and sure enough same damn thing. It's total BS!
Thank you for contacting Comcast Cable Eh! Steve.
Thank you for writing to us in response to reports about Comcast's
efforts to manage peer-to-peer traffic on our networks.
Eh! Steve, we have posted new FAQs on our Web site making clear to our
customers the steps we are taking to protect the customer experience for
all of our customers. You may access content related to this issue in
the FAQ section of http://www.comcast.net/
First, and most importantly, you should know that Comcast does not block
access to any Web site or application, including peer-to-peer services
like BitTorrent. Our customers use the Internet for downloading and
uploading files, watching movies and videos, streaming music, sharing
digital photos, accessing numerous peer-to-peer sites, VOIP applications
like Vonage, and thousands of other applications online.
Eh! Steve, we have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a
good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage
our network so that you can continue to enjoy these applications.
Peer-to-peer activity consumes a disproportionately large amount of
network resources, and therefore poses the biggest challenge to
maintaining a good broadband experience for all users, including the
overwhelming majority of our customers who don't use P2P applications.
It is important to note, however, that we never prevent P2P activity, or
block access to any P2P applications, but rather manage the network in
such a way that this activity does not degrade the broadband experience
for other users.
Eh! Steve, network management is absolutely essential to provide a good
Internet experience for our customers. All major ISPs manage their
traffic in some way and many use similar tools.
Comcast believes we have a responsibility to our customers to provide
this service. Network management helps us perform critical work that
protects our customers from things like spam, viruses, the negative
effects of network congestion, or attacks to their PCs. As threats on
the Internet continue to grow, our network management tools will
continue to evolve and keep pace so that we can maintain a good,
reliable online experience for all of our customers.
I understand you have some questions about Comcast's policies. You can
view all of the Comcast Subscriber Agreements and Policies by visiting
the Comcast Online Customer Support Center at http://www.comcast.net/terms/subscriber.jsp
On this site you will find the Subscriber Agreement, the Acceptable Use
Policy, and other policies relating to your Comcast Service. You can
also view our Privacy Policy Statement at http://www.comcast.net/privacy/index.jsp
Links to the Privacy Statement and Terms of Service are located at the
bottom of every page at www.comcast.
you guys are all delusional i don't have any problem with comcast's service in fact i'm downloading 5 torrents from my comcast modem righyu{#`%${%&`+
'${`%&NO CARRIER
"BitTorrent is a protocol used to efficiently distribute the online transmission of large files, and some entertainment companies have partnered with its creators to distribute its content online"
What horseshit. 99% of P2P traffic (esp bittorrent) is copyrighted material and EVERYONE knows it. trying to pretend this isn't the case by cherry picking words like this is just laughable.
As someone who BUYS his entertainment, I'm 100% in favour of them blocking P2P traffic entirely. I'm sick of thieving scumbags leeching off of honest people and using up everyone's bandwidth. Stop whining and get a fucking job!
It is my understanding that Comcast is sending fraudulent RST packets to discourage BitTorrent traffic between their customers and non-customers, because such traffic burdens their external links. They hope that by discouraging such traffic they will encourage downloading from servers within their network.
Wouldn't it be better to use honey instead of vinegar? Instead of sending RST packets, download external torrents that are observed to be popular onto Comcast servers within their network, and offer those downloads to their customers. Assuming those servers are not overloaded and give good response compared to external servers, BitTorrest traffic within Comcast's network will prefer Comcast's servers, solving the external link burden problem.
Tho, they shouldn't lie about it. Just change the TOS and be upfront and the 'problem' is solved.
They will lose customers, but at least its all in the open for everyone to make a decision.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But I understand that a LARGE portion of that $50 is for technical support, techies (hopefully) call less frequently than luddites.
Which is also the reason that higher speed, not large corporate ISPS have better service, when you call they know there is really a problem... and one which can't be solved by replugging or reconfiguring a subnet mask.
Since when is traffic shaping "hacker like"? Seems more "network administration like" to me.
I guess the fact that Comcast's bullshit is more a matter of not advertising the throttling to potential customers who may be negatively impacted wasn't salacious enough for good ol' Zonk, though. Gotta keep up them ad impressions, you know.
Talk to me about WoW and I'll punch your faggot face.
There is debate about double spaces only among the people who don't know about typography. None of my teachers knew anything about typography.
Those who know typography, who typeset books, and newspapers, never discuss this problem.
Who would you rather believe? Typesetters or teachers? Many mistakes in the use of typography are caused by the limitations of technology. Today, almost every limitation is fixed, but the legacy mistakes remain.
Comcast is trying other ways to block bit torrent traffic, i ran into one yesterday every time i tried to connect to the pirate bay so i can get my hands on a 5 year old documentary that is not sold on dvd. i found in the torrent log that someone with a comcast registered ip injected the 'download finished stop sending' command into the transfer. this lasted for most of the day.
Us "heavy internet users" are also known as "the computer guys in the family". AKA the people all those email-checkers go to for technology advice.
If comcast starts losing all of its geek users, it will soon find itself losing its profit cows as well when we tell them a better ISP to use.
BTW, anyone know a better ISP to use? Fucking monopolies.
Cox Communications has been rated the top US Cable / Internet company for the last several years. Oh and they used to hide things like what's acceptable use and how much you can download monthly until customers rebelled and forced the company to come clean.
I suspect Comcast is next on the "come clean" block.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
I run a game server out of my apartment, and whenever I exceed 10 people playing for longer than a few minutes my cable modem gets reset! The only way to fix it is to put it to standby, press the reset button, and reset the router.
Since our government (United States, anyway) allows certain "utility" organizations to have monopolies (such as Xcel Energy, Qwest, BellSouth, Comcast, insert your local monopoly here), most people have no options when it comes to who they get their services from. In Denver, I get to choose Xcel or...Xcel for energy. That's it. I get the option of Comcast for broadband. And that's it. Sure, I can choose Qwest's DSL, which is half as fast, or I could choose Dish's internet, which is extremely unreliable. The day that consumers can actually have CHOICE is the day when we'll see competing companies stopping these kinds of tactics in hopes for more customers.
Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
Comcast on several occasions has disrupted my internet service and generated a lot of additional effort to reset my home network so that I can use their service. I've had technicians to my house at least 6 times and I've spoken to them on the phone no fewer than 15 times in 2007. Their service SUCKS. But recently I've experienced an outage whereby they sent a disabling signal to my router, causing me much grief. I cannot get my wifi going because they reset my router's settings, and even doing a reboot and reset hasn't made it function properly. I'm pissed off at them, and wonder what law gives them the right to fuck up my home network.
**
12/1/07 - service interruption because of late payment
Made payment via telephone at 9pm
Still couldn't connect to internet at 10pm
Called tech support at 11pm, waited 48 minutes on hold for supervisor
Internet back, but it's a class A network and new settings Comcast applied to my router prevent me from getting into my own router to change the settings.
Linksys Wireless G Cable Gateway
WCG200
Cable modem + router + 4 port switch + wifi G
Comcast sent reconfigure message to my router forcing a reset
Now won't let me get to admin page to reset wifi
Have restarted 6 times.
Joe - Supervisor on floor
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Just last week I was giving someone at democrats.org hell for NOT redistributing clips of Republican candidates via P2P. The basic idea they have is great, stringers are following the Republican candidates around and recording as many public events as possible. The audio/video transcripts are reportedly posted on a publicly accessible server for download. Opposition supporters are supposed to be able to download, purview, cut, mix, remix etc at their will. The damn distribution server has been so bogged down that I gave up on it without a single downloaded file. In an pissy email I whined about that and about their choice of format for content they wished people to be able to edit easily, Flash, of course.
After thinking about it I hope nasty tricks like this Comcast deal, or packet redirection or throttling, and restrictive propriety formats do cause issues for them, maybe the present majority will be less like to kowtow to Hollywood and various software and media corps. These companies need a serious judicial or legislative bitch slappin in the worst kind of way.
Wabi-Sabi
Matthew
You're in trouble