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Comcast, Cox Slow BitTorrent Traffic All Day

Posted by timothy on from the enhancing-consumerness dept.

narramissic writes "A study by the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems found that Comcast and Cox Communications are slowing BitTorrent traffic at all times of day, not just peak hours. Comcast was found to be interrupting at least 30% of BitTorrent upload attempts around the clock. At noon, Comcast was interfering with more than 80% of BitTorrent traffic, but it was also slowing more than 60% of BitTorrent traffic at other times, including midnight, 3 a.m. and 8 p.m. Eastern Time in the U.S., the time zone where Comcast is based. Cox was interfering with 100% of the BitTorrent traffic at 1 a.m., 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Eastern Time. Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice downplayed the results saying, 'P-to-p traffic doesn't necessarily follow normal traffic flows.'"

3 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. I have Cox High Speed by Ninlar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is horrible. My experience is that all of your internet traffic grinds to a halt while running a BitTorrent client for more than a couple hours. It takes forever to even load a web page. I usually have to kill my BitTorrent client and wait about five minutes for things to return to normal.

  2. Sounds about right by bersl2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Cox is my ISP. Sometimes, after using BitTorrent, regardless of what is being transferred, my cable modem's connection to their system will be severed, and it will not return for a time which more or less seems to be directly proportional to the time spent using the torrent.

    I remember that someone here on /. told me that they had the same phenomenon happen to them when using VoIP.

  3. Re:Looking the other way... by copponex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is no excuse for the 'college student' you refer to to skip a few keggers and get his needed software legally, rather than pirate it. I was referring to what is commonly known as reality. Of course there is no excuse for him breaking the law in your eyes, just like there's no excuse for a senator to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks for helping companies land government contracts. But these things happen anyway.

    Both Gimp and Inkscape are lacking in the areas required in the professional world... so your analogy continues to be wrong. That's the case today. In the imaginary scenario, he's just arriving to college - he won't graduate until 2012. Are you in a position to formally declare that there will be no OSS graphics package to compete with Adobe? Keep in mind, in 2004 Avid was the undisputed king of the video world, becoming worried about a company from Cupertino...

    Him being a rockstar in Gimp or Inkscape has just about the same value as him being fantastic with Paintshop Pro or Windows Image tool when it comes to the real world (i.e. useless). If only Hemingway had used Mont Blanc pens instead of whatever pen he did use, he could have really been an artist! And can you believe Jackson Pollock used off-brand paint?

    They don't need to be 'more honest'; you need to be more informed before you mouth off and display your ignorance. Well, you didn't totally backslide into ad hominem. But you did make yourself look petty.