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.

Comments

Re:Straight from thier lawyers mouths

[X0563511]

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.

So, they are not even coming close to telling you the truth!

How exactly sending RST packets to peers doesn't fall under "prevent P2P activity" I don't understand.

Should be shot

[norton_I]

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.

Re:It's not blocking per se...it's worse!

[SuperBanana]

They are illegally interfering with their customers' service

Since you've been modded up to "5, insightful"- would you care to tell us what is illegal about it? Extra credit for references to specific federal or state laws or regulations.

And, more specifically, if it is illegal, why this is (supposedly) pushing Congress towards net neutrality laws?

Re:Practices like these make me not want to give t

[merreborn]

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.

Re:Good for them

[Al Dimond]

Although you're marked as a troll, you're stating the honest opinion of lots of people and the opinion that shapes policy of many companies. So I'll bite. I think your characterization of BitTorrent users, looked at by the numbers, is probably true. While there are people using torrents to distribute content that's both legal and non-commercial (Free Software, for example), it probably makes for a pretty small percentage of the total. But that doesn't matter. The Internet is a network of peers. That's how it was designed, and I believe that's how it ought to stay. The more rights to communicate are gated by money and elitist policies the fewer voices contribute. You need to pay big bucks to get a fat pipe, but you shouldn't need to pay big bucks to get all the protocols. That's what the Internet means on a technical level. If you're not selling me that, you're not selling me Internet access, you're selling me "Web and Email access". If you want to offer that as a product, go ahead. But it's *not* true Internet access.

Blocking SMTP or XYZ service kind of makes sense

[davidwr]

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."