Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Makes Nice with BitTorrent
An anonymous reader writes "In a dramatic turn-around of relations, cable provider Comcast and BitTorrent are now working together. The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it. The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network. Comcast is actually entertaining the idea of using BitTorrent to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer. '"We are thrilled with this," Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. It was important that Comcast agreed to expand Internet capacity, because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world, Navin said. Referring to the clashes with Comcast, he said: "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."'"
Is it April already?
This sounds more like, "sorry I got caught" than sorry:
BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. ... "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."
No one caught doing something wrong is happy about the attention but they need to admit what they did was wrong not because a company was involved but because it harmed their customers. The above makes it look like they think they still have the right to block traffic their customers want. Beware of special deals like this.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
So I can look forward to 0.3KB/s downloads for using "too much" bandwidth? Haven't we been down this road with Comcast before, advertising "unlimited" internet and then sending sh*t-o-grams to people who go above an unwritten limit?
My head just asploded!
Even though I had hoped that bit torrent would become the ISP's friend, I had not expected the devil himself to be one of the first to cozy up... WTF?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
...that the best way to ensure cooperation is via the threat of banishment:
1.) excommunicate
2.) ???
3.) cooperate!
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
It's a trap!!!
This, to me, is like Comcast jacking off into a hat and BitTorrent wearing that hat with the full knowledge of what's just been deposited in that hat.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
When I say, It's about fucking time.
Can we get a suddenoutbreakofcommonsense tag on this one?
well now the question is: does this refer to all bittorrent (the protocol) traffic, or just torrents approved by BitTorrent, Inc. (the company)?
I'm not sure they have said anything but it looks like nothing good if they want to make a special deal with a single company. If they want some good attention, they can unblock ports and dedicate themselves to network buildouts. The core issue is one of network freedom. Without freedom, the internet is no better than cable TV.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
i think itsatrap would be more appropriate. something tells me we're not getting the whole picture here.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm looking and looking and looking but I can't find anything where money is changing hands between these companies. Someone has to be making money on this deal but I can't figure it out. Either that, or BitTorrent has a lot of data to make Comcast look really bad. So, they are taking a path that keeps their "evil deeds" hidden. Does anyone have any insight here on the financial deal, if there is one?
How to Download YouTube Videos
BitTorrent the company is not BitTorrent the protocol. Bram Cohen may be working with Comcast to get the "legitimate" BitTorrent 6.0 (with its closed source code and protocol) operating cleanly on their networks, but don't expect that this will magically work for every client and tracker out there. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they actively collaborate to cripple the original, open protocol.
I think they're going to treat all traffic equally, so if your BT download rates suck due to congestion, so will your YouTube, Slashdot, etc. I don't see any way they can reliably allow on BT, Inc. traffic. Anyway, the more interesting question is what are they doing to make BitTorrent "more efficient" for Comcast. Maybe something like Ono?
Interestingly, this news comes almost at the same time Azureus develops a plug-in to detect ISPs that cripple your torrents transfers:
http://gizmodo.com/372442/bittorrent-plugin-detects-isps-raping-your-torrents
Of course, a peaceful solution such as this agreement is always preferred, as it enlightens more and more people about the true nature of BitTorrent, and opens up the doors for more and more ISPs to do The Right Thing (tm).
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
I mistakenly feared slashdot users would have one less thing to whine about now. But the real difference is instead of "Comcast sucks because they do this!" we'll be hearing "Comcast sucks because they once did this!"
Whale
Right. All you people going "about time" "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" didn't even read the summary. The deal is with BitTorrent, Inc. and probably has nothing to do with ALL bittorrent traffic, just the stuff Comcast is doing with video.
BIG HINT: This is probably why they started throttling bittorrent traffic to begin with.
My blog
First off they were getting BAAAAD publicity, and in this instance bad publicity is bad. When geeks start turning away from you and telling their friends not to use your service it begins to ahem... hurt. But I also think that perhaps the congress critters that are worried we are falling behind infrastructurally, may have hinted at dropping investigations and maybe even a little free gubmint money to help "upgrade" the public infrastructure. Indeed. And the other benefit is that .... AT&T is now the SPY ISP attempting to pick through traffic and block your downloads. We shall see, though, keep an eye on the broadband forums, we shall know soon enough.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
The new architecture from the Comcast/BitTorrent effort will be of great interest to content delivery networks (CDNs) who have been sorting out the best way that P2P can be used to assist in delivery of large files. Yesterday a CDN called Velocix announced a hybrid P2P streaming media service combining traditional caching with P2P delivery for live events. Velocix used to be CacheLogic, and worked with BitTorrent to develop the Cache Discovery Protocol, which lets ISPs cache the most popular torrent files, and then seed the files from servers within their network, reducing network traffic.
RichM
Data Center Knowledge
Exactly.
If it is just the company, congrats to Slashdot for just printing another empty press release!
The article states:
"The Comcast-BitTorrent dispute has been a cause celebre among Internet advocacy groups and others who called for greater regulation for an open Internet, citing Comcast."
I fail to see how greater regulation would ever be the solution. It was regulation that made Comcast's monopoly possible in the first place, allowing them to pull idiotic stunts like traffic filtering. No company in a competitive environment could ever get away with that, because users would simply switch to another provider. Greater regulation is definitely not the answer. Instead, the government should be keeping its claws out of the economy in the first place.
Tony Warner is Comcast's chief technology officer... ...no doubt there is a Carl Cast working at Time Warner.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
If anyone doesn't get the whole picture, it might be Comcast. BitTorrent is based on peering and people seeding what they have. They can't exploit it unless they find a way to get their users to seed content for other users instead of coming from their ser... vers....
Oh dear. I guess they do have the big picture. I can see it now: all Comcast users must keep a background application running while using their network (or have bandwidth severely throttled on a per MAC address instead of per packet shape) and will seed data to other users using your hard disk space and electricity instead of Comcast's central servers. Diabolical.
*adjusts tin-foil hat*
This is just Comcast PR spin doctor damage control, since most people won't differentiate between Bittorrent, Inc and the bittorrent protocol. Comcast is just saying that they will stop inhibiting Bittorent, Inc's traffic without mentioning other bittorent programs/services like Azureus, utorrent, etc... Or possibly Comcast will give Bittorent, Inc. preferential treatment as compared to other bittorrent programs/services - so long, net neutrality!
The real issue is Comcast underinvesting in its infrastructure to the point where nodes meant to serve 400 residential customers are serving up to 700 (as confirmed to me by a tech who came in for a service call). In fact, Comcast actually INCREASED it's dividend to shareholders this year, meaning that instead of investing its increased profits into its own network for the benefit of its customers, it paid out to investors since the stock price is stagnant and it hopes they will plow that dividend back into Comcast shares.
Without investing in its infrastructure Comcast will continue to use underhanded tactics to scrimp and save bandwidth costs on a seriously overburdened network, to the detriment of its millions of customers. Complain loudly enough to Comcast and threaten to switch providers unless their service improves - ultimately that's the only way to make it change course to a customer-centric business model, which ultimately is the only way for it to stay in business.
But how would they discern the difference between anything using the bt protocol and official BT traffic? Is that even possible? You couldn't target the source since the sharers would be the source.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
All that "more to it" is the problem and Comcast needs to be clear about network freedom. They can rig all sorts of schemes to make BitTorrent a traffic cop or to be some kind of traffic cop but none of that is appropriate. Comcast needs to do it's job, which is delivering bandwith. Everything else is bad for them and leads to real censorship.
All of this nonsense about "unauthorized reproduction" and single file copies being a criminal offense represent a tremendous and wrong expansion of copyright laws. Copyright disputes should be a civil matter of who deserves money earned from works. Copyright protection of restricted files violates the limited time provision of the Constitutional establishment clause and the whole point of copyright is to insure a rich public domain. Censoring the press (aka the internet) in order to enforce this new and unwholesome copyright idea violates yet another portion of the US Constitution.
Money that can't be earned in a free society is money that should not be earned. It would be better to live without mass produced entertainment than to live without a free press. Comcast and other ISPs should be at the forefront of the battle to preserve network freedom. As long as they insist on port blocks and traffic shaping, they are an enemy of freedom.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
Isn't that the perfect network model?
I'm surprised more ISPs (particularly foreign ones where bandwidth is pricey) haven't looked at ways to bias traffic to share internally. I know i talked with some ISP in the UK and tried to convince them to let their cable modems run much faster but to apply the traffic caps at their network boundary. Unfortunately it didn't seem practical to do that on that scale at that time.
If comcast were to double or triple the upstream available when staying within their network then i'm sure p2p tools would start exploiting it.
This sounds like the plot of a B-rated sci-fi horror flick. Two organizations have a difference of interests, become aggressive and then hostile, conflict escalates, and then, all of a sudden: everybody's happy! Of course we'll help you out! We'd be delighted! Think of all the ways we could help each other! And then the one PI starts poking his nose where everyone's so happy and he finds out it's stage one of the evil plan of a mind-controlling space bug from Venus, building it's legion of manslaves.
I just signed up for fios Internet, TV, and phone.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
I'm not sure I see what comcast is gaining from this ... except PR.
Unless bittorrent has sold out, the way kazaa and napster have... *sigh*
As an added bonus, it further makes the issue harder for non-nerds to understand. Obligatory car analogy: You own a highway, and I own a motor vehicle company called "Cars". You deny all access to motor vehicles (due to "congestion"), and when people start complaining that you're denying cars, you let my Cars-brand vehicles on and say "That's not true, we fully allow Cars!" Yikes, even the car analogy was hard to explain. This should get interesting...
My understanding of their BT filtering is that they're sniffing the tracker traffic in order to determine which connections to cut. Since any internal use of BT would be to known trackers that they run themselves, I'd assume that it would be relatively easy to add exclusions to the filters to avoid blocking "legitimate" traffic.
It should be noted that one can bypass comcasts crappy seeding-only blocks by running tracker traffic through an external proxy. Encryption of the individual p2p connections doesn't cut it, you need an encrypted tracker stream as well.
This would point heavily to the tracker being the telltale
In the words of Strongbad, "I like-a to say, 'Holy Crap!'"
This certainly is unexpected.
First off, Comcast is going to stop blocking or filtering or slowing down bittorrent traffic. That's bittorrent the protocol, not BitTorrent the company. From TFA, "We are working hard on a different approach that is protocol-agnostic during peak periods." Protocol. Not just torrents sanctioned by BitTorrent, Inc., but any torrents whatsoever.
Second, what seems to be even better, is that Comcast is going to be increasing throughput to its customers. "Internet Capacity" as stated in the summary doesn't really make sense, unless it's referring to an IPv4-IPv6 changeover (-1: Pedantic), but if that means what I think it was supposed to mean, then it's great. However, is it an increase in last-mile throughput, or overall throughput? Or both? Because overall throughput would simply mean that if your neighbors are torrenting, your connection isn't slowed down, whereas last-mile throughput would only increase your peak speed when no one else is downloading anything. It seems like last-mile throughput is generally already maxed out with today's (yesterday's?) technology, namely, cable, at around 6Mbps, and the bottleneck is in the shared line.
What I'm saying is that both should be improved. The shared line should be made so that everyone could attain peak throughput at all times, and the peak throughput should be about 10x-20x what it is now. That's right. The bottleneck should be in our own Cat5 cables or 802.11g networks, not imposed on us by our ISPs.
Of course, ISPs won't willingly provide this (it costs precious $$$s), but for what we're paying ($50 a month, or $100 with TV, which amounts to $1,200 a year) it kinda seems like we deserve it. Telecom companies are required to put most of their profits back into their networks, but I don't think ISPs like Comcast, which operate over cable, are. Maybe they should be. Seems like it might help.
Of course, most of that was just my incoherent rambling about one aspect of the state of technology in the US (don't get me started), so if you were expecting that to be meaningful, well, just forget what you read.
This still smells bad on Comcast's part. What the heck does Comcast care what is BitTorrent used for? So if it's going to be used to share files with a friend (the extent of which is illegal is questionable) it's wrong and needs to be censored, and if it's going to be used for business it's acceptable?
This is still comcastic censorship, corporativism and licking the media mafia's asshole. Keep boycotting Comcast.
I was about to say 13256278887989457651018865901401704640, but it appears this number is private property.
But how would they discern the difference
BT Inc. could provide hashes of official torrents to Comcast. If the handshake doesn't send an approved info_hash, Comcast throttles.
Rumor has it, Comca$t is also talking to someone somewhere about lowering prices. They're going to work together on it. It's just around the corner. God bless the Com.
Without freedom, the internet is no better than cable TV.Without freedom, the internet is no better than cable TV.
Without good laws and software to protect user privacy, the internet more resembles East German telco than anything American. Your emails and web browsing are checked for subversive thoughts and such things get you stuck on government and corporate blacklists. You are in a prison and don't know it.
No calls now, I'm
They can give hell to a much more popular client's DHT packets and go fine with Bittorrent Inc. DHT packets which would lead to horrible experience to the "other client" users. Or filter a specific large (and legal) tracker?
A company who hand picked bittorrent packets and conspired their own customers IP traffic can do anything.
Bittorrent is a great protocol but Bittorrent Inc. isn't really loved. uTorrent users stay with OUTDATED clients just because they don't trust to Bittorrent.com Inc.
Anyway, I was downloading (and still seeding) Neooffice for OS X. That is pure GPL software which the vendor (developers) prefer Bittorrent distribution as ONLY option. As I use Azureus 3.5.x, I was bored and started watching seeders and leechers. Everyone downloading that perfectly legal, open source disk image was using ultra-paranoid methods like RC-160 encryption. Comcast can be proud.
Full disclosure of bandwidth limits.
That is: Either give your users truly unlimited service, or cap that at some value, in units we understand.
See, Comcast did ban people at one point for using "too much" bandwidth. They eventually did clarify what "too much" was -- it was a certain number of songs, photos, videos, or emails (different numbers for each). In other words, it was in units of "whatever the fuck we feel like."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Compare this with the betanews headline "Comcast opens up negotiations with BitTorrent on bandwidth"
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
In the face of FCC embarrassments, this is a public relations stunt
to confuse the public into believing torrents will now be treated politely.
Like others have said, they have the technology to play nice with specific content
provider torrents (friendly corporations) and not other legitimate torrents.
Don't stop the pressure! CLASS ACTION SUIT NOW!
I agree that this seems bad, something stinks here. I mean I know I'm paranoid and all but this just seems wrong.
-Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
Notice the fine print: They aren't saying they are ending interference with P2P, they are saying they will stop treating BitTorrent differently then other heavy transfers.
Which is a Good Thing, IMO, and I'm happy to have been proven wrong (I thought the P2P vs ISP war was going to heat up further.)
However, a guess: it may be a consequence of improved traffic shaping: they are already starting to prioritize short connections ("Speed boost", which is being very heavily advertised in this area).
You don't NEED to do RST injections if you can take the 1% heavy-users and traffic shape them down to a reasonable level when there's congestion. RST injection is very crude traffic management compared to the alternatives.
It also allows the ISP to deal with the cost externalities indirectly, because now the 90% don't complain as much about bad performance when they want to surf the net.
Finally, there is NOTHING in this that says they have to treat BitTorrent UPLOADS as special, just "not different from youtube".
Comcast has repeatedly claimed that they are only killing "leeches/seeds", flows which upload vastly more than they download. If Comcast instead just shapes all large uploads, this will have effectively the same effect, without the visible political repercussions.
Likewise, if ALL ISPs agressively shape uploads, this kills the P2P business model nearly as sure as anything else.
Also, the lack of topological awareness does hurt BitTorrent, as well as the lack of cacheability. If the ISP is able to say that
a) BitTorrent-type protocols can stay in my local loop and
b) These flows are ones I CAN cache without being sued
BitTorrent type flows become far less objectionable.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Its kinda obvious, and other posters have stated it, but its important enough to state again.
BitTorrent the company is NOT BitTorrent the protocol.
This is much like the MS Gambit of saying that that as there are other OSes then they do not have a monopoly. It is like the **AA saying that their own pet DRMware internet services exist so they cannot be against music on the internet. It is like drugs companies saying that even though the patents have expired they still have the copyright on the name and process.
In otherwords it is a fanciful fiction that makes people think one thing while hiding another in plain sight. I bet my (metaphorical) hat this they will continue to throttle the bandwith for non-approved or non-compliant P2P.
What I don't get is how they're saying BitTorrent (inc) wants to distance itself from software piracy.
BitTorrent is a tool. FTP is a tool. Web/IRC/usenet/email are tools. They're all used for distributing a large portion of illegal content.
You know what else is a tool ? Bram Cohen. By incorporating/selling out, he has positioned himself as a target for this level of corporate bullshit. The reason people aren't suing the creators of FTP and IRC is because they're public domain protocols that predate the idiotic MySpace generation. Whoever "invented" FTP isn't touring the country giving seminars about how awesome they are and why they should be paid gobs of money.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
... because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world... Be clear- it's NOT a technological or engineering talent problem- it's purely a socio-policical problem, including the significant problem of extremely top-heavy and overly powerful huge corporations (like Comcast) and collectives (like RIAA.)I cancelled 2 days ago. Went with Dish Network and (gulp) Verizon DSL. Cheaper all around and I won't have Comcast messing with my inetrnet speed.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
First off. Wait till there is action on this. I still saw a 30% reset rate as of this morning seeding a torrent.
The phrase is : I'll believe it when I see it.
So I would not believe even for an instant this is anything other than trying to get people off their backs a little as anyone who found out about it has been majorly pissed off. Really, this is comcast, they have a reputation of doing shady and stupid things. Would anyone logically expect them to just turn a new leaf anytime before they have competition? I doubt it.
note: not intended as flame, please don't flame me, I welcome replies and opinions
Examples: Microsoft, Novell, Sony, United States, Dvorak, Natalie Portman
Does this mean my Google Maps will start working again?
If you can't support it don't sell it!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=497516&cid=22848256
I wouldn't be surprised if Bit Torrent and there partners threatened ComCast, maybe with a boycott or civil action.
I now predict that Bit Torrent or it descendant will obsolete BlueRay and Cable for recorded video content distribution, Even 1080i HD
Now not to tangent too much:
In the short term BlueRay will clearly kill off DVD, DVD-R, and HD-DVD had already just died.
I just talked yesterday with the only BlueRay disk manufacturer in the US.
They were talking about 500GB disks, so I think will be a long time before Bit Torrent will be able to compete with that. (Especially when spray on 4K Digital Cinema video walls come out in 20 years.. )
500GB BlueRay-R when it arrives sounds like a great media to back up my Torrent downloaded pirated movie collection.
But seriously how the heck can I back up 1TB Sata drives?
Now for the Wacky Idea: first run movies on Bit Torrent.
I have the rights to make a movie based on a famous SciFi writer short story who just passed away at age 90.
Can not share his name, but you can easily guess this one.
After 3 years of rejections from Hollywood, I was thinking that maybe we can fund the movie with donations and grants and release the movie freely (GPL style) over Bit Torrent and BlueRay and then see what it will take to get it played in theaters. I really think it would be so cool and set a whole new model for film production, copyleft movies. Am I a nut job or is this just crazy enough to work?
If you have any thoughts on that hit me up on http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/2008/03/now-for-wacky-idea-first-run-movies-on.html I tried posting this as a Ask SlashDot article but was rejected for some reason.
I have another blog post here.
http://johnsokol.blogspot.com/2008/03/copyleft-movies-can-it-be-done.html
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
Somewhat off-topic:
I've seen plenty of posts and comments and praise of using the BitTorrent protocol as a distribution model.
Isn't this however slightly comparable to the following:
It's discovered that a lot of new cables need to be laid in a city, but the traditional distribution methods (digging up streets or stretching overhead) is too expensive. So some smartass comes up with the idea of pulling cables through the gas mains. And it actually works. Because there's plenty of space.
Then the TV company wants in on it. Then the other TV company wants to be in on it. Then the electricity company wants to be in on it. Then each of them makes a plan saying "The water mains have spare capacity X, and we can fill that capacity with our stuff for cheap", and put down a lot of effort in planning and hiring teams and researching how they can make their cables faster, better, go around corners, etc.
Then the first company implements the plan, and suddenly there's no room for anyone else.
In short, if the tubes have capacity X, and the sum of currently independently planned filling is >X, and especially as there is no business model for allocating X between these (in fact, there is a very strong movement against allowing any form of individual capacity reservation) how can that end not with a train wreck?
True or not, they're still lying bastards!
I can't believe how perfect this was:
http://i28.tinypic.com/111rsyr.png
(But, no, I'm not on Comcast. Still funny.)
Why are we holding a grudge against Dvorak? or Natalie Portman?
I for one wouldn't mind that at all if it meant decent upload rates and being able to actually seed on some BT networks without getting kicked off because comcast throttles my upstream to 40KB/s.
"So why any sympathy for them now?"
To clarify from my last post, I am not saying we should sympathize with them. I am saying increased regulation is the wrong approach and will only prop up past methods of rights violations and increase future violations. The enforced legislation that brought us to this point - the only way a monopoly could persist - should be wiped out.
>> Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said.
Translation: Comcast will soon introduce bandwidth-limiting on port 80 too.
If BitTorrents were ubiquitous I guess it would be a lot tougher to identify (& hinder) "bad" v. "good" usage. I'd love to see product updates, open source d/ls, trial s/w, etc. migrate to this - not just because it makes more sense from a network prospective but also indirectly supports net neutrality.
JAGga.me ----> Producing video games addressing emotional health and wellness issues affecting teens.
It would have been easier to follow if you had used a different brand name, like say trucks?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
"The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it"
Like this will ever happen... Now don't go on the "holier than thou" kick and say "Wait... I d/l Linux Distro's and Music from non-label startup bands"
C'mon... The bulk of torrent is piracy at it's best... People can hide behind the facade of only offering a piece of data but call a spade a spade. Offering up the 'part of the file' for a DVD rip for Michael Clayton, a cam version of "Horton Hear's a Who", the latest software/games for your favorite PC/Mac, or the "Music" file that the RIAA wants to suck your every dime to recover how much you are hurting that poor artist...
People are pissed they can't get their pirated stuff quicker is why this whole thing came to be. That, and the AP thought they 'caught a new "MA Bell" controlling their customers.
What people should really wonder is... "Will they now get integrated to figure out a better way to track torrent distro's and start linking IPs to customers and start really going after those illegals"
In the end, my only curiosity is, this: If they try to legitimate BitTorrent, will it all just end up going the way of Napster?
Argh Matey!
Everyone should just switch over to AT&T DSL. You can get 6.0 Mbps downstream for 35 bucks a month (I know, I know, if it's in your area...). But if we slowly start giving our money to companies besides Comcast, then eventually we won't have to deal with this crap (and waste our time discussing it) any more. I made the switch to AT&T DSL, and guess what? I haven't had a service outage yet, and my ping kicks ass :D. With Comcast, I'd be down for a day about once every two or three weeks.
I think that this is an ongoing experiment by Comcast to test methods and especially the political limits of throttling P2P. Like a child testing the limits of parental authority and patience, they have pushed at the boundary until they have judged that to continue might risk immediate consequence. They are backing down only because other corporate players and the FCC are getting involved. They will take the ground they have gained and what they have learned and return later to try again. I wonder how long it will take for them to realize that making geeks hate your internet service is like making kids hate your breakfast cereal?
Of course Comcast can play nice now. Now that TorrentSpy has died and The Pirate Bay is in court once again.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I mistakenly feared slashdot users would have one less thing to whine about now. But the real difference is instead of "Comcast sucks because they do this!" we'll be hearing "Comcast sucks because they once did this!"
Sony put a rootkit on some CDs.
They pulled it of, and made nice.
Sony put a rootkit on some thumb drives.
They pulled it of, and made nice.
If a company does something sleazy once, they are likely to do it again. This is why I avoid Sony and Comcast.
Gotta love it. "Fighting congestion" not actually reducing the congestion at all, but in fact doubling the amount of data being pushed around the internet.... Bleh....
You know, it's funny. I once did some work for Australia's monopoly Telco, Telstra.
As you may or may not know, Australia has had issues with having decent links out to the rest of the world for some time. (Partially due to us having to pay for traffic in both directions, where usually most international links will only pay for incoming on either side, and with the population disparity, that winds up being expensive for us.)
I was talking to one of the guys in their web services group, and I made a remark about there being poor links to the rest of the world. His reply was "If you can get to telstra.com, where else do you need to go?"
The sad fact is, that any ISP that's also in the game of delivering content is always going to have this view. IMHO, it should be illegal for an ISP to be it's own content provider, and give itself preferential treatment, even if it's not a monopoly.
Apparently their threats of not giving a damn about what the FCC said was a very poor idea and they were threatened in a way that scared the holy hell out of them. They decided to play nice with torrenting very fast to save face, while this is totally PR bullshit and disingenuous it does prove something went down in a corporate back room somewhere between them and the FCC.
I think this may have something to do with BitTorrent DNA. It's a content delivery network. It's comes with BitTorrent 6.0.3. I think someone at Comcast had the bright idea that if data has to travel less distance (hops) then it would improve network congestion.
what are we holding up against Natalie Portman?
Easy solution: version numbers or a "plus" naming scheme. Release a new ordinary car version (software version) called "car 2.0" or "car plus". Tell users they should upgrade to the new version, which should be easy: software users like the latest versions. Then publicize the issue by saying, "evil highway (evil company) does not support car-2.0 or car-plus traffic."
Looks like pay extra to use YOUR "Unlimited Bandwidth" for Bit Torrent service and P to P in general will be here sooner than later.
Bram Cohen invented BitTorrent, this Asswin Naven is just a corporate suit. He doesn't deserve recognition for anything because he hasn't done a goddamn thing except rip control of the world's most important protocol away from its creator. And Asswin has corporate interests at heart, which is why Bombcast is willing to deal with him. Gee, full disclosure from the press? Guess it doesn't happen any more.
So, telcos are backward enough not to implement fair-queuing per customer or per their subnet? That's the only thing I can think of if it is so much "unlimited". Disrupting other users is not an issue if you just have basic, neutral queuing on your network.