Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade

StonyandCher writes "More and more ISPs are blocking or throttling traffic to the peer-to-peer file-sharing service, even if you are downloading copyright free content. Have you been targeted? How can you get around the restrictions? This PC World report shows you a number of tips and tools can help you determine whether you're facing a BitTorrent blockade and, if so, help you get around it."

Comments

Re:Australia is lucky

[QuantumG]

There is nothing lucky about competition in the Australian broadband market. We forced the monopolist to open their network and we enforced the laws to keep the competition healthy. The fact that the USA is incapable of doing this is proof that they have lost control of their political system and they're the first to admit it.

The basic problem here is ...

[ScrewMaster]

that the cable companies don't consider (or don't want to have to consider) the consumer of their broadband offerings as their customer. They'd much rather have us be parasites on their network, parasites who happen to be targets of profitable marketing campaigns. The ad injection nonsense that a number of ISPs have launched is indicative of this attitude: we're just eyeballs attached to brains that view commercials.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[grommit]

You must understand that the advertisers don't care if we're just eyeballs attached to brains. They're mainly concerned with whether or not we have a credit card to purchase whatever they're selling.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[Darkness404]

Isn't that what all monopolies want us to do? All MS wants us to do is keep paying for needless Windows licences while they don't improve it much, pay for Office because MS can't be bothered to include a decent word processor, pay for Windows OneCare because they can't fix their swiss-cheese OS, pay for DRM-ed music because they belive that all anyone does with DRM-free music is share it (and of course we all know that transfering media from your computer to a CD-ROM/MP3 player/another computer is morally wrong!11!11!) All the oil companies want us to do is pay for the $4/gallon of gas while beliving all the "oil is scarce" nonsense. All the government wants us to do is keep being patriotic so they can go on witch hunts for "terrorists" on American citizens. To keep us in paranoia about how obviously they need to wiretap more American phones because they might be a terrorist. To keep help "keep crime down" by restricting our second amendment right to bear arms. All the record companies want us to do is keep buying a copy of a song for every device we own. To believe in all this "piracy" nonsense and how if you transfer your legally bought CD to a computer/MP3 player/another CD/Home server is now illegal. To believe that fair use is illegal. To make us believe that all "pirates" bring down the economy/cause global warming/are responsible for drownings/deface Internet sites or other outrageous things.

The fact is, monopolies are much like oppressive governments, they try to make the public not think. But to just exist and "consume" whatever crap they throw at us.

Re:The basic problem here is ...

[jamstar7]

That's mostly because we're not their customers, we're their product. Their advertisers are their customers.

Protest

[Pig Hogger]

Protest by paying the bill in pennies or any other kind of creative check-writing various tax departments have been the victim of...

Re:Protest

[Insightfill]

Funny. Comcast charges me $3.95 to pay with my credit/debit card.

The VISA Merchant Rules (Google cache - I'm having problems with the real link) on Page 15 says that they can't charge extra for a credit card transaction, but CAN charge a "convenience fee" (wink wink), but there are a bunch of rules on when they're allowed to do this. They're probably in compliance with all of them, but there's a small chance they've messed up on this one: "The customer must be given a opportunity to cancel prior to completion of the transaction."

Re:I feel very sorry...

[Darkness404]

So, what are you implying? That those who pay for a high-speed connection to the Internet shouldn't have rights to the high-speed part of it? So you are saying because I pay $XX per month to get unlimited access to the Internet at a speed of say ~1.5 MB/Second I have no right to demand use of that unlimited connection? I don't get what you are implying here, it seems like you are saying that what you pay for you have no right to use.

Re:I feel very sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you'll shutup when they come for your 3rd party VOIP.

Re:I feel very sorry...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's implying that anyone clueless enough to think they can get "unlimited access to the internet" for a measly ~$40/month deserves to get burned. People that dumb are the ones responsible for the subprime mess.

Re:Australia is lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

speaking of losing control of your political system, how much is the fine for owning a freaking laser pointer in Australia again?

pot, meet kettle.

Re:Australia is lucky

[iminplaya]

They didn't lose control. They gave it up willingly, for the sake of convenience. If they actually cared, they wouldn't keep on voting for the one who can flash the most cash. They would seek out and vote for candidates who aren't so allied with big business. But... it's more convenient to just vote for the guy that mass media presents to them. Then bitch about it till the next cycle, repeat. If they would admit it, they would be on the first step towards a cure. As it is, the 45 year decline will continue for at least four more. There is no end in sight. Australia doesn't really look any better

Re:not me

[rabbit994]

It's not car manufacturers, it's more like taxing someone who spends more time on roads then someone else, which is something we do already with Fuel Taxes and Road taxes against Semis.

I agree with throttling, I just wish they would be upfront about it. If they have bandwidth limit, then state it. If they block certain protocols, say so.

Don't elude...get a different ISP

[ucblockhead]

I don't have this problem because I am willing to pay more for service from an ISP like Speakeasy that does not do this. If you want these companies to change, you need to be willing to hurt their bottom line even if it costs you more.

Re:Don't elude...get a different ISP

[bagboy]

ISPs are glad to get rid of the unprofitable consumers... You'll be doing them a favor by switching as you'll tax the throttling equipment less and less and leave more bandwidth for others.

ISP

[codepunk]

A friend of mine runs a ISP, he has a very simple policy that works out
rather well. He does not go out of his way to regulate what people do
on the network until it causes a issue. Bit Torrent is a bandwidth hog
and attempts to evade filtering rather well. If he encounters issues
caused by a Bit Torrent user he just hands them their money back
for the month and drops them as a customer. This keeps the rest of the
network clean and the other customers happy. The profit margin on each
connection is so very thin that it just does not pay to mess with this
extremely small portion of the customer base.

Re:ISP

[Mr2001]

Bit Torrent is a bandwidth hog and attempts to evade filtering rather well. BitTorrent only "hogs" as much bandwidth as the human user causes it to. It's no different in that sense from any other application: other P2P systems, YouTube, email, whatever. If you want to spend all day uploading email attachments at full speed, you can do that, and you'll use just as much bandwidth as if you were seeding torrents at full speed.

On the other hand, you can set a low rate limit in your torrent client, and/or set it to stop seeding once it reaches a certain share ratio, and you'll only use a moderate amount of bandwidth.

There's absolutely no need to treat BitTorrent differently from any other application. You don't need to use "filtering"; just limit bandwidth. If a customer is using too much bandwidth, charge him for the overage or lower his cap. It doesn't matter whether he's running BitTorrent, LimeWire, or just sending a lot of emails: all that matters is his total usage.

Re:ISP

[Mr2001]

You know, you might be theoretically right here, but I honestly don't think you could (and certainly not in any remotely realistic workload) max out any DSL/Cable/+ connection doing email. In a "realistic workload", probably not. But you could certainly put your email client in offline mode, queue up a few thousand emails with big attachments, and then send them all at once. Presto: you're now using up as much bandwidth as you possibly can, at least until the queue is emptied.

The difference is that it's exceedingly rare--virtually impossible even!--for someone to use up as much bandwidth as they regularly do using BitTorrent/P2P. Thus, the ISPs target the most popular p2p algorithm, bittorrent. Yes, but that's a stupid way to deal with excessive bandwidth use. It's like looking at heavy traffic on the roads to and from the beach, and deciding to "solve" the traffic problem by closing the beach.

It's stupid for a few reasons. One reason is that it puts the cart before the horse: the network is there to serve users, not the other way around. The public works department needs to adapt to the fact that drivers want to go to the beach, and ISPs need to adapt to the fact that their customers want to share files.

Another reason is that it's just not a very effective solution. Filtering one specific application is more difficult and costly than imposing an overall bandwidth cap, and it sets off an arms race as new versions of the application evade the filters, and new versions of the filters detect the application again. And if the filter ever becomes 100% effective against one application, people will just switch to another one, starting the whole cycle over.

If people are using too much bandwidth, then restrict their bandwidth usage or charge them for it. It's just that simple. The only reason ISPs are wasting their time with these filters is so they can keep advertising an impossibly high level of service, knowing that none of their customers will actually be able to use it.

Re:ISP

[Moridineas]

No, they are A) enforcing an UNPUBLISHED bandwidth cap, What ISPs have unpublished bandwidth caps? As I noted in a previous post, I ran into some throttling with Cox, but that was their policy after talking to them. Who are the tricky ones to avoid?

and B) discriminating against a particular protocol instead of considering bandwidth alone. I'm not sure I really see the distinction? Assuming (and it IS an assumption) that the ISPs reserve the right to throttle or cap, what does it matter if its one protocol or the whole connection? Heck, I'd RATHER it be one protocol, so if I exceed my bittorrent allotment, at least web/email/etc are still snappy.

Or am I misunderstanding what we're talking about ...?

Re:Australia is lucky

[Maxo-Texas]

Not really.

You have to start with the party and take control at a much earlier stage.

In america by the time the voting for a candidate in either major party takes place, you've already lost to the corporations.

Canada is basically monopolized too

[tentimestwenty]

If you want broadband you've got basically 2 companies to choose from depending on where you live. Both suck. It won't be long before they really put the screws to people. Prices are going up and so are restrictions.

Canada too

[phorm]

For example, look at the recent shenannigans with Bell and those subletting their monopolized line-system. The regulating bodies basically just said that Bell is doing nothing wrong by throttling or otherwise screwing with the traffic of the 3rd-party ISP's customers, because there's no proof it will cause lost business.

Hello! The ISP's cannot provide the indicated level of services due to the interference of a third party. Screw loss of business, that's a pretty major way of screwing the customers, who now have absolutely zero choice for ISP's who aren't handing it to them up the tailpipe (Rogers, the non-DSL ISP, also throttles). So is it fair that customers aren't "leaving" because they're getting equally screwed elsewhere?

When I last spent time in Aus, I was amazed by how closely they kept tabs on their politicians and policies. North America in general could learn a lot from them in that regard.

Re:Switch ISP

[MarcoG42]

Feeding troll. Your car analogy sucks. Yes, if I bought a car that does 400 mph I should damn well be able to drive it that fast. There are tracks around the country where you can pay to drive as fast as you like. So, yes, that governor on the car I paid my money for is keeping me from enjoying what I paid for.

That's nice. You paid $5 for a, what?....15 year old movie? Some people would rather not pay $30 for a movie that just came out, though.

ISPs are obligated to deliver on their promises. If I get a cable internet connection that says it delivers speeds of 30 Mb/s down and / 5 Mb/s up and has unlimited data transfer and no restrictions that's damn well what I expect to get. I don't care if my downloading every piece of free software via bittorrent I can get my hands on is affecting other customers. That's not my problem, it's the ISPs. They need to upgrade their network, not interfere with the service I paid for.