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Verizon, Comcast Say They Are P2P Friendly
An anonymous reader writes "Verizon and Comcast announced they will not 'block or throttle Internet traffic delivered via peer-to-peer networks' — essentially proclaiming that they are now P2P friendly. The decision came as a result of a test conducted with Verizon and Pando Networks, testing the benefits of a P2P/ISP partnership. During the test, the amount of P2P content delivered to Verizon subscribers from inside its network grew from 2 percent to 50 percent. This shows ISPs need to work with P2P companies to improve content delivery and manage traffic. Verizon also announced it will be looking at ways to use P2P technology to deploy new features on FiOS TV." Just the same, read on for one approach to mitigating likely tightening restrictions on P2P network use.
Another anonymous reader writes "RIAA/MPAA have recently been targeting torrent aggregators like PirateBay, because the aggregators are the vulnerable components of the BitTorrent protocol. A new open-source project to thwart such attacks was announced on p2p-hackers and released yesterday:
Cubit, a new open-source p2p overlay, enables the Azureus BitTorrent client to look up torrents via approximate keyword search... Cubit completely decentralizes the lookup process through an efficient, light-weight peer-to-peer overlay that can perform approximate matches. It performs searches without relying on any centralized components, and therefore is immune to legal and technical attacks targeting torrent aggregators."
I'll believe it when I see it.
ISP conflict will remain, it will just become more subtle and more neutral.
You see, 50% is not good enough from the ISPs viewpoint: That still requires just as many bits crossing the ISP's boundry as if the content provider used UNCACHED HTTP.
In practice, many (most?) ISPs use transparent HTTP caches, so having 50% of the data stay internal is still no good, as on popular files (eg, a big youtube video), 99% of the traffic stays internal for HTTP.
Even PERFECT P2P requires at least one outbound copy for each inbound copy, so a PERFECT P2P system will require 2x the traffic crossing the border when compared with HTTP thats cached.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Jeepers, no more bandwidth throttling? Thanks Comcast!
How much extra will you be charging us for that?
My torrent stops registering massive packet forgery and my uploads stop getting throttled to 1/5 the original speed after 5 seconds from initialization. As well as my web-browsing speed, and my gaming speed, and my windows/ubuntu updates speed...
At the same time Comcast announced a $10 increase of their Internet Service Bill since the P2P Friendly service is very costly.
Their P2P throttling down to 30 KB/s is down right filthy. I wish something would be done on our front as well.
What would really be great is if Cubit would eliminate all the nasty tracker ads. They are very annoying for people like me who are just after software, not porn.
And looking at the current batch of lawsuits, I'd say now is the time to start supporting Cubit in all the major clients (I'm thinking particularly of KTorrent...) So please work on it if you have the skills, and bug people who do if you don't (that would be me).
The government can't save you.
Most consumer level service comes with an Acceptable Usage Policy. Mine says that (this is paraphrased) "At the sole discretion of big cable company (not comcast), users may be terminated for abuse or excessive usage".
So, we'll move from throttling to arbitrary caps. Maybe after XXGB your speeds are cut to 1/10th. Or maybe (like my cable company), they can just say "Well, we don't want you as a customer any more".
Explicit caps? We can complain or not subscribe if they're low- I'm for that if somebody is downloading 300GB+ per month, using my node. But the idea of "Well, you downloaded 'too much'" is just as bad as lying about throttling.
In the same way that Yearning for Zion was Family Friendly.
i was just wondering, if either ISP
route "multicast" to their customers?
my DSL connection doesn't understand "multicast".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multicast
I don't believe any of it. Where is the proof? Nowhere, that's where!
Lying bastards.
I hope it's not this kind of P2P.
It has been my experience that in some ways DSL is superior to cable. I remember when cable first came out everyone who got it thought it was great. Then their neighbor got it, and their other neighbor got it, and suddenly it became obvious that the entire neighborhood was on one shared pipe and a single bandwidth hog could ruin it for everyone. It doesn't seem like much has changed in the last decade. With DSL you can count on getting the bandwidth that you pay for but the peak available bandwidth isn't as high as cable. On cable you might get some really high peak speeds, but the cable networks haven't been designed to sustain high transfer rates for long periods of time.
He's obviously a spinmeister working for the company.
When people buy a product or service they expect it to work reasonably. It's like saying that a car that doesn't anymore explode into flames is now 'friendly'... The word he so boldly uses don't even appear on the FA. Save your spam for eggs and bacon.
I believe in actions, not words and hope more people would follow suit.
Does that mean I should stop throttling their 'traffic' when one of their vehicles is the only one behind me on a single lane road?
Interestingly enough, this Team Fortress issues seems to have resolved itself in the last week and a half. I imagine this is due to a Team Fortress update, as I did not update the firmware in my router-- but this is an extreme coincidence.
Is BitTorrent traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?
* 2 out of 2 BitTorrent transfers were interrupted while uploading (seeding) using forged TCP RST packets. It seems like your ISP hinders you from uploading BitTorrent traffic to our test server.
* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.
* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 713 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 720 Kbps.
Is BitTorrent traffic on a non-standard BitTorrent port (4711) throttled?
* 2 out of 2 BitTorrent transfers were interrupted while uploading (seeding) using forged TCP RST packets. It seems like your ISP hinders you from uploading BitTorrent traffic to our test server.
* The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.
* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 661 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 741 Kbps.
Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?
* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all downloads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 713 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 661 Kbps.
* There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all uploads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP upload on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 1353 Kbps while a TCP upload on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 1403 Kbps.
If you read the article carefully, this is not about allowing unfettered P2P on their networks at all. They are deliberately obfuscating the issue. They leave the door open for blocking, filtering and "shaping" (ie. TCP resetting) any protocols they want. This is kind of like Verizon Wireless proudly announcing "We are radio phone call friendly" when the issue is whether to support GSM or CDMA.
Verizon's senior technologist talks about "working with P2P companies", which is radically different than allowing anyone to write a P2P networking app that does (fill in the blank.) Then goes on to say that work needs to be done on P2P DRM.
All in all, the tone of the article seems to confirm that the fight for network neutrality is far from over.
In the final analysis, protecting aggregators won't matter unless we get genuine 'net neutrality. The ISPs will switch to a 'whitelist' of content providers. In other words, if you want your content delivered, you will pay, become a 'partner', host ISP banner ads or whatever. All others will grovel with the lowest QoS. This sidesteps accusations of throttling 'undesirable' services. Everyone gets throttled and will have to pay to get out of jail.
I don't think the big ISPs have anything special against P2P services (that they don't have against anyone else). They just want to extract money out of them. With big players like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, that's easy to do. There's advertising revenue that can be quantified and the ISPs can skim off of. P2P just happens to be a big enough consumer of bandwidth that the ISPs would like them to pay to play as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
Didn't they also say that they were only blocking p2p traffic at peak busy hours? Then they were caught doing it all the time? Action speaks louder than words.
If you're around Ottawa or feel like going there, there's a "Net Neutrality Rally" on May 27: www.netneutralityrally.ca.
My ISP (Teksavvy) emailed me a couple hours ago saying apparently most of the Teksavvy staff is taking the day off to go to the rally so please only call in with tech support questions if it's really important.
That's pretty cool if you ask me.
- Andrew.
www.clarke.ca
It's not just about inter-ISP traffic, the ISPs are concerned about the traffic in their own networks as well. P2P among an ISP's customers puts a load on the internal network, especially inter-region traffic.
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
I try to run a small business from my house, and Comcast terminates my TCP connections after they upload somewhere between 5MB and 7MB of data. It can be hard to scp software upgrades to a client computer under these circumstances.
I have called them on it and they say that it is part of my usage agreement, which they have the right to modify without notifying me.
Does this mean that if you stay within the Comcast network that MediaSentry can't illegally find you any longer?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It irks me that ISPs get away with claiming that encouraging local premium content caching on customer-owned equipment is "P2P", or "friendly" for that matter. Then again, we're not the target audience of this; telecom regulators and legislators are.
Robert X. Cringely once said that wireless telcos are in the business of creating billable events. What you see here is broadband ISPs desperately trying to do much the same. By convincing governing types that the P2P the public wants is faster fulfillment of paid-for premium content by donating hardware and cycles to the cause, those continuing pressure for proper net neutrality are somewhat discredited.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
I'm sure the recently covered lawsuit against Comcast had nothing to do with this decision? :P
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
If you are using p2p to get content from services they can make a profit off of, sure they are friendly.
If you arent, well too bad for you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For FIOS, the ActionTec can be configured with your router as the DMZ host, which effectively puts your router on the internet, though with one layer of NAT/forwarding.
You can also replace the ActionTec with any other router, which gets an address via DHCP. You just have to clone the MAC address or call Verizon to tell them to reconfigure their router to talk to your MAC address. I believe that some of FIOS TV's capabilities depend on the ActionTec router (e.g. VOD).
All very friendly and easy, if you know networking.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Fox, Wolf Say They Are Rabbit Friendly
You are correct. Verizon FIOS apparently does not cache if this pages does what it claims to do. I didn't look at the source.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
RIAA friendly and MPAA friendly
It's not an english word. Voila is a french word that literally means "here is". Therefore, the link you provided has no application in this case. I suggest you look at this link instead, because what your defending is this: Wa-lah is not a word. Not even slang. It's just... oh hell, click the link.
And steve balmer aint gonna throw any more chairs.
Read radical news here
They are as P2P friendly as Colonel Sanders is chicken friendly.
I've seen these threads for ever about "Comcast" throttling P2P downloads and people like the poster above saying they slow all P2P to 30K/s and forever I've guess I've just sort of laughed these news stories off and thought these posters more of crazies.
:)
Where do you people live that you have Comcast and your P2P is only 30K/s?? What P2P client are you using?
I mean, I won't say what I'm downloading, but I've had Comcast for a while and have been downloading torrents for, well I guess it's been "years" now and I get 1/2 megabyte a second on most torrents that have a good amount of seeds. I mostly even just use the built in client in Opera (lastest beta) as it's just easier. I have no loyalty to Comcast for sure, but I have to say WTF when I read this stuff. My friends and I guess have it good here in Oregon.
Bell even throttled Cranky Geeks to 30 KB/s on me. The throttling is horrible, and the way they are doing it, you can't easily switch to a competitor. They throttle the competitor's connections too!
Tip: If you release and reacquire the PPPoE connection, it appears to temporarily fool the throttling software.
Additional tips would be appreciated.
One of the better ways to block ads -- and some malware -- is to use a "personal proxy" such as (for MS Windows) the Proxomitron or (for *ix and MS Windows both) Privoxy. I used the former years ago on MS, and now use the latter, Privoxy, based on the old Junkbusters proxy code but vastly improved since then.
These "personal proxies" normally run on your own machine, listening on the loopback interface (127.0.0.1) for connections from various HTTP clients. As proxies, they are client agnostic (so Firefox is fine, so is Konqueror, so is IE), as long as said client can be configured in some way to use a proxy.
They work as a rewriting (as opposed to caching) proxy, using a configurable ruleset to intercept and rewrite or block both outgoing and incoming headers and content as desired. For ad-blocking, a double-layer approach is taken. First, as a page is downloaded, many references to ads will be rewritten, either deleted from the page, often with a tiny-text note saying what filter did it (this is what I do with many of my own filters, as it aids in debugging if I get it wrong), or rewritten to replace the ad with a placholder (safer for the general case as it doesn't disturb the layout of the page), often with an "override, go there anyway" type link (just in case). Since the placeholders are local and the the deletions obviously aren't going to have the browser expending additional bandwidth downloading content that has been entirely erased from the page the browser sees, that's all saved bandwidth.
Second, the proxy can be configured to block access to certain sites (say anything doubleclick related, to use one common example) entirely, and to block but with override possible in other cases (say anything with *ad* in it, since that's pretty broad when you have "road", "adsl", etc, altho the default filters are already smart enough to not block those real obvious things). Thus, even if an ad reference gets thru, when the browser attempts to load it, either because it's part of the page, or because you perhaps accidentally clicked where the ad would have been, it'll block (with or without override option) the fetch, saving more bandwidth.
The most obvious malware this blocks in a lot of the tracker stuff, which is often interwoven with ads to the point they're the same thing anyway. However, quite apart from any browser based scripting and cookie and popup blocking (for instance), the proxy has its own configurable settings. Of course, it can be set to block other stuff too, some of which it does by default (with for privoxy, a low, medium, and aggressive setting, for those not wanting to fool with individual rules), some of which you'd create your own custom rules to deal with, as appropriate. It's sort of like Firefox's greasemonkey, but more powerful. The fact that it's all browser agnostic is pretty sweet too, for those of us that use multiple browsers.
If you want to see what a page looks like "unfiltered", or just want to browse without the filter, that's possible too. The proxies have a "bypass" mode that bypasses the normal rulesets, simply forwarding the requests and replies as they come. Most browsers also have a proxy bypass toggle as well. It's also easy enough to set some things to use the proxy, without setting everything to use it. For instance, while the proxy could be configured to ignore them (and would generally do so after a bit anyway, as the stream exceeded the max-size-filter setting), you probably don't want it proxying streaming audio or video, as that's just a waste of resources. Just don't setup those clients to use the proxy. OTOH, back on MS Windows, I DID find it handy to run my spinner.com streaming client thru the proxy, since it killed the ads that way.
As an example of some of the other stuff it can do unrelated to the above, I personally prefer light text on dark backgrounds, while most of the web is setup in the reverse, light/white background, dark/black text. While it is possible to set preferences in most browsers, those who
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
As I write this via my Comcast link, a yellow box in my GMail window informs me that it thinks my "network administrator has blocked GMail chat." This happens semi-reliably when my housemate is torrenting (affected services include parts of GMail as well as FTP and VNC). Encryption solves this. Currently it appears that Comcast's BitTorrent blocker cannot reliably tell the difference between the individual streams and simply sends nukes indiscriminately at connections originating from the same modem where torrent activity has been detected.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
i burst out laughing when i read this article, not only because its probably not going to happen, but because the things people are sharing via P2P are mostly illegal. this would be like if microsoft took off their genuine advantage thing