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Sandvine CEO Says Internet Monitoring a Necessity

Khalid Baheyeldin writes in with a CBC interview with the CEO of Sandvine, Dave Caputo (bio here). Sandvine is the Waterloo, Ontario-based company that provides the technology that Comcast and other ISPs use to overrule Net neutrality by, for example, injecting RST packets to disrupt Bittorrent traffic. Caputo says, among other things, that Internet monitoring is a necessity. Some of the comments to the interview are more tech-savvy than the interviewee comes across.

8 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Beating Sandvine by Misanthrope · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://redhatcat.blogspot.com/2007/09/beating-sandvine-with-linux-iptables.html [blogspot.com]
    If you are running linux or a linux based router with iptables give this a try. My speeds returned to pre-sandvine levels.

    "If you are using a Red Hat Linux derivative, such as Fedora Core or CentOS, then you will want to edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables. First, make a backup of this file. Next, open this file in your favorite text editor. Replace the current contents with this, substituting 6883 with your BitTorrent port number:

    *filter :INPUT ACCEPT [0:0] :FORWARD ACCEPT [0:0] :OUTPUT ACCEPT [0:0]
    -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
    #Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround
    -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 6883 --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
    -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
    #BitTorrent
    -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 6883 -j ACCEPT
    -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport 6883 -j ACCEPT
    -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited
    COMMIT

    Reload your iptables firewall with service iptables restart. You should now see a great improvement in your seeding.

    If you are using Ubuntu or another non-Red Hat Linux derivative, then place the following in a file and execute that file as root.

    #!/bin/sh
    #Replace 6883 with you BT port
    BT_PORT=6883

    #Flush the filters
    iptables -F

    #Apply new filters
    iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
    #Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround
    iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
    iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
    #BitTorrent
    iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
    iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT
    iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited

    Your firewall is now configured and you should have great upload speed now. You will have to run this script every boot, by the way. One easy way is to call the script at the end of /etc/rc.local."

    1. Re:Beating Sandvine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      This doesn't work. Sandvine sends RST to both sides of the connection, so even if you drop the packet the other end most likely will see it and end the connection.

  2. Re:What the fuck is 'churning'? by Zerth · · Score: 3, Informative

    Churn is an industry term for the percentage of your users will leave for somebody else and the percentage of their users that leave for you. Frequently these users are the same damn people swapping back and forth.

    So despite gaining and losing lots of users, everyone's base stays roughly the same, like a churning ocean, but each one of those churners costs you $X every time they switch sides(freebies, paperwork, number portability, etc).

    Apparently this is now the superlative of "discontinuing service", i.e. "you guys suck, I'm leaving for your competitor."

  3. Re:Of course it's needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'm pretty sure you get modded down for posting as 10 different people and having conversations only between yourself. That's how shilling works.

  4. Re:How about selling what you have? by Wildclaw · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cogent-McBandwidth-Gets-Cheaper-95203/

    $7/mbit (of course talking about decent volumes here with the cheapest provider and I guess with fiber already in the ground)

    However that should give you a clue how much everyone is overcharging everywhere. The expensive part is the digging, but it is good (money earning) business to charge big money for small traffic volumes on lines that in reality could support far higher volumes. Not to mention how inefficent a big part of the industry is.

    Atleast that is the only way I can explain how some countries are managing to supply such nice bandwidth to their citizens without getting economically ruined.

  5. Re:Churn is nothing new by IgnoramusMaximus · · Score: 3, Informative

    That's the dumbest term I've heard since people calling single enemies "mobs" in online games

    That's MOBs for you, not "mobs". It is an ancient MUD game engine acronym which stands for "Mobile OBject". One of those archaic game lingo terms which still survives but the origins of which most of the young whipper-snappers do not have clue about.

    Now about that lawn of mine ...

  6. Re:Gotta love those statements. by Jerry · · Score: 2, Informative

    For $40 you get a guaranteed MINIMUM bandwidth of X with a potential to burst to Y.

    And "backward" countries like China (Hongkong) offer 100MB of bandwidth for $48. That's their "entry" offer.

    Taxpayers funded the gov organization (DARPA) which created the Internet. How did it come to be "owned" by the corporations? The same way the White man stole the land from the Indians. When you own the law you make the rules.

    --

    Running with Linux for over 20 years!

  7. Re:Full of $*&$% by call-me-kenneth · · Score: 2, Informative
    Look, it's really very simple. If you really want *unlimited* bandwidth, - well, you don't, you probably want to top out at 8Mbps or whatever the headline number is, and be able to run that flat out both ways 24/7. Here's a little exercise for you. (1) calculate your 95th percentile usage rate. (2) research the cost of transit or backhaul to a proper NSP (rather than a retail ISP). I think you might get a rather unpleasant surprise. THAT is the market rate for what you are demanding.

    Now divide that number by whatever you're prepared to pay for it, say $360 pa. Divide your market rate transit bandwidth by the same figure. That's the amount of bandwidth you'd get if your $30/month was actually buying you the right to run your connection flat out 24/7. Oh look, it'd be a pretty poor speed for dial-up. Oh noes, the internet is exploding!!!! Gawrsh, if only there was some way to make use of the fact that most people don't actually want to run their connections flat out 24/7, and charge them a cheap rate for short bursts of high-speed data, multiplex thousands of similar users into one aggregated traffic flow... oh look, you've just re-invented the retail ISP market. Congratulations.