Comcast Helps Fix Pirate Bay Connection Problems

MagusSlurpy writes "Far from blocking The Pirate Bay, Comcast was just one of several ISPs on which TPB was unreachable today. Comcast reached out to the torrent site, and its engineers provided technical support, eventually determining that the connectivity issues stemmed from a reverse path filtering issue at an intermediate ISP, Serious Tubes Networks."

Comments

Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

So are all the people who bashed Comcast gonna man up and admit they were acting like bitches and eat their crow?

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[guyminuslife]

No, they still suck. However, it's a promising move toward a possible redemption.

(I doubt it, though.)

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Channeling the average /.er: *ahem* Comcast probably broke the connection just so they could fix it and look good... typical corporation trying to ruin everything for everyone and increase their share price.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Vectronic]

Or... they could have been "helping" in the hopes of gaining some sort of information they weren't aware of, making their blocking/limiting/crapiness that much more effective.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Comcast and fuck you.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

I admit it freely, I jumped to the conclusion that Comcast did something else to kill the internet. I humbly apologize to Comcast this one time.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

NEVER!!!

(but props to Comcast anyhow)

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Bengie]

I now have more respect for their engineers, not their management.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Seumas]

When you establish a pattern of fucking with the network and lying about it, having the worst assumed about you when circumstances are shady comes with the territory. Did people reach the wrong conclusion? Yes, apparently. Were they wrong or was it irrational to do so? Not particularly.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Runaway1956]

Uhhhhmmmm - I never did bash Comcast - but I'll admit that I thought they were probably being dicks when I read the story early this morning. Sorry, Comcast. I'll wait til you are bigger dicks before thinking bad things about you!

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Dahamma]

You know, I want to hate Comcast as much as everyone else, but I am paying what I consider a fair price (it's a promotion, but a *2 year* discounted promotion) for a huge selection of HD TV channels, IP phone service, and consistent 30Mbps down/ 3Mbps up Internet access.

I do admit their customer support isn't always the most useful when something goes wrong, but they have always tried to help (and when they eventually did have to send a tech to fix the line, he was very competent). Gotta give credit to almost all of the front line employees I have interacted with. I'm sure their lobbyists and execs are appropriately evil, but I haven't had to deal with them (or their policies) yet...

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

oh no its teh comcast conspirahsy *angry fist shaking*

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Kaenneth]

Maybe I would have bashed them, but last night I couldn't connect to the Internet at all on my Comcast connection, so I was unaware of this other problem.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[sco08y]

Were they wrong or was it irrational to do so? Not particularly.

Jumping to conclusions is pretty much the very fucking definition of irrational.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[JustOK]

1) get you hooked
2) you can skip step 2
3) profit

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Idbar]

It's very interesting that took another source to show the previous summary was wrong (note also, that the previous summary indicated it was Comcast fault).

What seems worrisome is that not many people came out to say that there were problems on other networks too. Does that mean that people in the Comcast network tend to use TPB more? or does it simply mean that Comcast is so big now that everyone around you seems to have a subscription with them. Where were all the Verizon people indicating they had or not problems?

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

their pipe is bigger than yours.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

The report didn’t go unnoticed by Comcast either. In a response to the issue Jason Livingood, Executive Director Internet Systems Engineering at Comcast, told TorrentFreak: “Please note that we do not block websites and we are NOT blocking The Pirate Bay.”

Looks like Comcast management saw the problem and addressed it even before Pirate Bay asked for help. Unless you don't consider Executive Director as management.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[letherial]

Yep, i am going to 'man up' i quickly blamed Comcast for being a bitch for the recording industry, so they proved they are not a bitch, instead, they just give hand jobs every once in awhile. I do wonder what made everyone start blaming them in the first place (hint, stopping torrents)

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you have a mat!

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[DavidRawling]

Were they wrong or was it irrational to do so? Not particularly.

Jumping to conclusions is pretty much the very fucking definition of irrational.

You're right, we should never infer a future or new behaviour from an existing verified pattern of behaviour - yeah that's just so irrational. Or perhaps you're suggesting that the application of network "management" policies is completely random? No I think in this instance, accuse first and apologise later is justified.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, it's fair now, in your 2 year deal, you're getting hooked up.........for now.

I've been in the same place for 3.5 years now, comcast is the only non-DSL option for internet, and the only option for TV (no satellites allowed on the condo buildings...). When I moved in, I only got a 1 year intro rate, but it was pretty fair then too. Once that year is up, your bill more than doubles, almost triples in some cases. They'll get their money back on your 2 year deal 6-12 months after that deal is up, unless you're lucky and are still in the phase of your life where you can move again and get a 'new account' or something, or you live in a state where there aren't gov't granted monopoly regions (are there still any?). Most likely, once your intro deal is up, you'll start frothing at the mouth like the rest of us, and wonder how you ever came to think they were alright...I've been there.

For what it's worth, I kept the cable internet and bought a Roku...now I pay even less than that intro rate for a more pleasurable viewing experience. Short Hulu commercials and none in Netflix. All the DVR convenience, none of the hard drive/FF through commercial hassle. It's streaming, so sometimes it'll pause to catch up, but it doesn't happen nearly enough that I'd ever regret switching. In fact, a box upgrade would probably solve the problem since I only went mid-grade to start.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[hot soldering iron]

You apparently don't know what fucking irrational is... or maybe you do. Hmmm....

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[geekmux]

So are all the people who bashed Comcast gonna man up and admit they were acting like bitches and eat their crow?

Uhhh...yeah. I suppose we'll all owe BP an apology if they helped drive the price of gas down 50 cents too...right?

Sorry my friend, but one good deed does not erase a lifetime worth of consumer fuckings.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[0100010001010011]

Engineers are not business managers. Engineers aren't the ones that decided to go with the 250GB cap, they aren't the one answering subpoenas by the MPAA. I'm not holding my breath if one of these guys gets fired or the engineering manager that green lit this project gets 'reassigned'.

Most engineers that I know are tinkerers and love to solve problems whether it is mechanical, electrical or software. I'm sure they saw it as a challenge.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[nbehary]

I saw quite a few people pointing out that there were problems with other ISPs without reading too far into the comments on the last story. And initially I, like others, had no doubt reading the summary that it was true. I was wrong, and stopped worrying about it.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Dahamma]

We'll see... I'm not totally Comcast-clueless (or a first time Comcast customer after having moved many times - now I'm just less mobile since I finally bought a house ;). The increase (based on current rates at least) will be more like 50%, not 2-3x.

Anyway, we'll see if I keep the cable TV (the largest portion of the bill) once the deal is over. Don't really need a Roku, since I already have a PS3 and XBox that both do Netflix, Hulu, and video/music sharing from a local server...

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Dhalka226]

Yes, they were.

Slashdot users spend half of every day bitching about how Joe Average just isn't discerning enough. They don't support the politicians and policies that Slashdot Joe supports, therefore the conclusion is that they just accept whatever is spoon-fed to them. Slashdot Joe is immune to advertising because he's just too smart, but it's a multi-billion dollar industry so the explanation must be that Joe Average just can't resist the urge to buy any shit they see on TV. Joe Average and everybody like him are "sheeple," a term that, if not invented here, certainly crops up everyday. It goes on and on and on, every single day.

Sometimes things can't be verified, or at least can't be verified with an average person's resources. Sometimes, it's as simple as dropping to a fucking shell and typing "ping thepiratebay.org" with a non-Comcast ISP and realizing that people are being "sheeple." Which do you figure this was?

Not everybody attached to this story was wrong. From the sounds of it, there was a progression where at some point, non-Comcast users could still reach the site while Comcasters couldn't. But by the time the story hit Slashdot, it was already bullshit and not one person in the entire chain of posting this story, including paid "editors," bothered to see if it was true. Then the vast majority of Slashdotters, many of whom posted some idiocy about how superior they are yesterday and will do so again tomorrow, jumped right on the bandwagon, unable to be bothered to spend literally ten seconds of their own time to verify what they're being told. Then there's people like you, defending it. Gosh, it can't be that you were in the wrong, it's just that Comcast sucks soooooo much that assuming they're wrong without spending ten seconds to see is the logical thing to do! No, sorry. Own up to the failure. Own up to this site, at least today, being no better than the "sheeple" they deride. This is a technology website for god's sake. If we can't be bothered to take ten seconds to see if we know what we're talking about... well, we deserve being put in our place by situations like this, don't we?

Defending this is just juvenile. This wasn't Comcast's failure--neither the problems with TPB nor everybody else jumping to conclusions because ten seconds of their life to verify fact and fiction is just too much to ask. It was the failure of the people jumping to those conclusions, period, and like the OP said, they should shut up and eat their crow.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that when I'm downloading something from itunes at 1.2 Mbps, I can't even surf the web? It consistently gets 25 Megs with speakeasy, but when I actually try to download something it throttles it.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[hairyfeet]

Have you tried re-signing? I had the same thing happen with me at Cox (boy is that name appropriate) and like you it was pretty much a choice of that or dialup, as the DSL in this area is lucky to hit 756k down (and AT&T told me basically tough shit we're not spending on fixing the lines. must be nice to have a monopoly) so I told them I would have to cancel the account as the price jump was ridiculous.

Lucky for me the girl manning the desk was a little college girl whose PC I had worked on and she told me while they don't actually tell anybody this you can ask to re-sign and get the same 'introductory rate" for however long the contract is for. So now I just go in every two years and re-sign another contract for another 2 years at $100 a month for the whole smash (TV, Phone, and 2Mbps net) and all is gravy. Sure you can't just walk away without paying a $250 cancellation fee since you're under contract but since there isn't anything else to be had in this area it isn't like I'm going anywhere.

So tell them you want another contract or you're walking. I have a feeling that Comcast will be just like Cox and as long as you're willing to sign they're willing to deal.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[steelfood]

Were they wrong or was it irrational to do so? Yes, yes they were wrong to jump to conclusions with only the bare minimum knowledge of the situation.

FTFY.

It's not wrong to assume the worst based on past behavior. But it is wrong to start crying foul before attempting to figure out what really happened, and if the assumptions have any merit.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[jjinco33]

I have had bad experiences with Comcast in the past, but recently my local telco's DSL service began dropping my connections to web pages. Only when attempting to load any web page would I have an issue, and it was across multiple computers. The Qwest helpdesk people would not believe me that my Netflix streaming, games, and torrents were all fine. Finally I called Comcast as the only other provider in my area and the sales lady let me speak with one of the Internet Support guys for about 10 minutes. They are not blocking ports or screwing with my torrent traffic and stated the only 2 restrictions on my account are they will block port 25 if they see more than 999 messages per day on it (which I can call and have them re-enable as it is a SPAM blocking measure) and I cannot go over 250 GB data transfer per month. So far I am averaging 20 - 25 GB per week according to my router running Tomato. Maybe they are being smaller assholes since they had the deal with Xfinity, I don't know. Also, I pay for a 12 Mbps connection and consistently receive over 30 Mbps down and 5 up, where as I was paying for a 12M/896k DSL connection before and getting 7M down if I was lucky, 750k up. Ping time decreased about 15 ms on the game servers I play on as well. I have to say, I have only had them about 3 weeks this time, but am quite happy so far.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[tobiah]

yup

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[mwvdlee]

Those evil bastards!

First they provide a good service for a fair price. Then when you're used to it, they keep providing the same service.

How dare they!

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[im_thatoneguy]

I agree. Comcast is an evil corporation that I'm sure is out to destroy the happy future I hope to see... but they're the best ISP I've ever had and by golly they always just worked.

I wish I could get comcast at my new residence.

I doubly wish I could get some city owned Fiber but it's still only in the planning stages. But I would settle for an evil corporation who is probably going to use all of their clout to destroy emerging IP delivered TV services.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

you realize that for engineers to work on that issue at least one management guy has flipped the green switch.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[AliasMarlowe]

You apparently don't know what fucking irrational is...

A number like sqrt(2) or other real number which cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers? I think that's what I learned back in junior high, many many moons ago.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but how the fuck do you fuck a number? Irrational or otherwise? Blowup doll?

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[AliasMarlowe]

Yes, but how the fuck do you fuck a number? Irrational or otherwise? Blowup doll?

It has to be an imaginary irrational, obviously. This is Slashdot, you know.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's how tech support works at Comcast:

Me: I have no connection
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: I already did that.
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: Yeah, that didn't work
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: Still nothing.
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: Can I talk to someone else?
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: *click*

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[JustOK]

...and the price stays the same?

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[delinear]

Not necessarily - could be that they have some contingency plans in place to handle loss of service to popular sites, and those plans don't distinguish based on politics only on traffic (as it makes financial sense to help fix one website instead of having to field thousands of support calls), so the site goes down, the engineers follow the plan and restore it and some management bod sees an opportunity for some personal glory and jumps on it. Not saying that's the case, but your assumption, without knowing the full facts, that management must have given this the green light is just as flawed as the original assumption that management wasn't involved.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[realityimpaired]

Your connection is probably doing what Rogers does here in Canada. They're actually adveretising it as such, too... when they see "extra" bandwidth available, you get a quick burst of speed before it drops down... the result is that when you do a speed test, poof, you get 25meg, but as soon as you try to download something that's more than a couple of megs, you lose the speed boost and get a more realistic measure of your line speed. Works great for watching Youtube/Vimeo, but sucks balls for anything larger than that.

I probably get better throughput on my 5meg DSL connection than you do on your cable connection, because my DSL provider doesn't play shenanigans like that.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[somersault]

Did you check up on TPB yesterday (if you're not a Comcast customer), or did you want to just go on a rant..?

thepiratebay.org doesn't respond to pings btw. The website is up, but for a lot of posters the site will likely be blocked anyway if they're at work.

In case you're wondering, I wasn't one of the guys complaining, as I live in the UK.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[somersault]

No, you'd owe them an apology if you blame them for something they didn't actually do.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Bengie]

In a lot of companies, engineers get told what to do and not ask what they would like to do.

I have similar feelings for Intel. They make a great chip and they have awesome fab tech, but their sales is strait up evil with how they "compete" against AMD.

It's possible that Mr Executive Director Internet Systems Engineering is a good engineer and truly loves to fix things, but more than likely he's also on a choke leash and follows exactly what he's told while not being able to give his opinion.

This is how I feel about Comcast's current actions... "Even a thief may donate his pocket change to a just cause"

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[MBaldelli]

From TFA:

The report didn’t go unnoticed by Comcast either. In a response to the issue Jason Livingood, Executive Director Internet Systems Engineering at Comcast, told TorrentFreak: “Please note that we do not block websites and we are NOT blocking The Pirate Bay.”

Looks like Comcast management saw the problem and addressed it even before Pirate Bay asked for help. Unless you don't consider Executive Director as management.

I don't entirely believe this given my experience working inside Data Service Providers. I've called over to various regional NOC/SOCs (both within the ISP that I worked at and others that I had contact phone numbers to) and when it comes to backbone issues (speed/throughput, hand-off and even routing issues), unless they're getting an alarm from somewhere, they generally don't know that there is a problem. And even then they don't always get the necessary alarms to tell them this is a problem in the first place and will blithely go about their business without a second thought.

Given that this story hit the news what most probably happened is this. End-user (residential and even business) Customer Support was getting an influx of calls regarding connectivity issues to Pirate Bay. Various reps that are knowledgeable as to who they can contact about this as well as managers noticing a trend in calls sent the necessary data over to the NOC with proof of potential routing issues contacts were made and eventually the issue was resolved.

This Executive Director simply took the credit for whoever in the NOC was able to determine the problem and get the issue resolved.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Thugthrasher]

Whereas I pay an unreasonable price (at least when compared to people I know who live in other cities and don't have Comcast), don't have another choice if I want high-speed internet and have never had a good experience with their support. Our HD DVR failed because, for some reason, there was a 20-year old part in there. The technician was shocked, as he didn't know they even USED that part anymore. In fact, he said he wouldn't have known what exactly it was if he hadn't been with Comcast for a long time. Our entire neighborhood's internet was out for 3 days. On day 2, they were STILL telling me it was my router.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[dotancohen]

Actually, according to Serious Tubes Network (the ISP in question), Comcast did _not_ help them:
http://serioustubes.org/

Important news:

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[moppop]

As soon as you're nearing the time when the deal is up, call a sales guy and see if you can work out another deal. You're not under a contract, so if you can dangle termination over their heads, you can ususally find some representative that will either lock in that price or reduce the raised rates a bit.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[cpu6502]

>>>I want to hate Comcast as much as everyone else, but I am paying what I consider a fair price

I'm glad you brought this up because I don't consider it "fair" at all. I don't have Comcast but I used to, and it only cost 30/month plus tax or ~$32 . Now the same connection would cost 60 + $5 for four TVs == ~$80. That's a ridiculous increase.

Another ridiculous increase happened for my parents who used to pay $7/month for limited locals-only service, and now it jumped to $20/month. Nuts.

And Comcast internet is not much better. If I recall correctly it costs an extra $30 on top of the television service. For comparison my DSL hookup is only $15 for comparable speed.

Comcast also provides poor service. I remember when my brother discovered TCM was moved to a higher ~$100/month tier. Comcast gave almost NO notice that this was happening (one week), even though they are required by the FCC to give 90 days. They've also been caught cutting people's net access for exceeding Unpublished caps, which the FCC scolded them for doing.

Comcast is too expensive, too monopolistic, and too willing to ignore existing consumer laws They have the same attitude 1970s AT&T used to have ("We are the only choice you've got. So deal with it.")

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Taibhsear]

First they provide a good service for a fair price.

This is about Comcast. What company are you talking about?...

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[gauauu]

Here's how tech support works at Comcast:

Me: I have no connection
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: I already did that.
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: Yeah, that didn't work
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: Still nothing.
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: Can I talk to someone else?
Them: Unplug your modem, wait 30 seconds and plug in your modem.
Me: *click*

I had an experience like that a year or two ago. I was ready to drop Comcast. But then, more recently, I had a better experience:

My connection was intermittently dropping. I called the support, they sent out a tech support guy. He was 10 minutes later than the time estimate they gave me, for which they gave me a month of free service. He was extremely friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful. He fixed the problem, and then signed me up for another free month of service for the hassle. I was impressed.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[pnutjam]

Same here with AT&T, downloading a 100 MB file is slower then when I had comcast, but downloading a 1GB file or torrent is much faster, the speed is fairly consistant.

Wish I had faster upstream. Can anyone comment on whether the Uverse experience is more DSL like or more cable like? Relating to the above differences.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[penguinrecorder]

Anyway, we'll see if I keep the cable TV (the largest portion of the bill) once the deal is over.

I've had the same "9 month" promotion price from Comcast for about 2 years now. Not quite sure why, but I'm not complaining.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the response of Jessie Jackson when someone says nigger in public and then apologizes.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you know, for the Sanctimonious Slashdot Joe, you know the one....the one who daily posts something with indignation and at the same time amazingly ignorant hypocrisy.

Don't worry bro, it's cool to proclaim people "sheeple" and remain ignorant of the important fact at least initially IT WAS *ONLY* COMCAST ISP experiencing the outage.

But hey get informed with only half the facts and start lambasting everyone for doing the same.. it's the Slashdot way.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Agent0013]

Sometimes things can't be verified, or at least can't be verified with an average person's resources. Sometimes, it's as simple as dropping to a fucking shell and typing "ping thepiratebay.org" with a non-Comcast ISP and realizing that people are being "sheeple." Which do you figure this was?

Not everybody attached to this story was wrong. From the sounds of it, there was a progression where at some point, non-Comcast users could still reach the site while Comcasters couldn't. But by the time the story hit Slashdot, it was already bullshit and not one person in the entire chain of posting this story, including paid "editors," bothered to see if it was true. Then the vast majority of Slashdotters, many of whom posted some idiocy about how superior they are yesterday and will do so again tomorrow, jumped right on the bandwagon, unable to be bothered to spend literally ten seconds of their own time to verify what they're being told.

When I read through the thread yesterday, plenty of people had posted that it wasn't just Comcast that was having issues getting to TPB. So you seem to be doing the same idiocy you are claiming other were doing. Did you spend literally ten seconds reading though the thread to see what people wrote? Or did you just want to be superior today, and will probably do so again tomorrow.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[realityimpaired]

I can't comment on ATT, but I do know that Bell Canada, which uses the same technology for their FibeTV service, will put you on a 27/1.7 VDSL connection by default, and you can pay them extra for a 27/8 connection. Bell will also let you pay extra for faster download speeds.. usually it's throttled to 6mbit with the other 21mbit set aside for the up to 4 TV streams, but you can pay for a higher throttle speed, up to the full 27mbit when the tvs are off.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what the above means, but I do now that I (a Comcast customer) was unable to reach TPB with a browser until I wrote a short php script which relayed the connection through httpd:
<?php
        $oldquery = ( !empty( $_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"] ) ? $_SERVER["QUERY_STRING"] : $tpb );
        $query = ( substr( $oldquery, 0, 2 ) == 'q=' ? $tpb . 'search/' . substr( $oldquery, 2, strpos( $oldquery,'&')-2) : $oldquery );
        $home = 'http://' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . $_SERVER["SCRIPT_NAME"];
        $page = file_get_contents( $query );
        $page = str_replace( $tpb, $home . '?' . $tpb, $page );
        $page = str_replace( 'action="/s/"', 'action="'. $home . '?url=' . $tpb . 's/"', $page );
        echo $page;
?>

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[groslyunderpaid]

You apparently don't know what fucking irrational is...

A number like sqrt(2)

If you are sqrting after fucking, I would call it abnormal, but not irrational...

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've never fucked a ten, but one night I fucked five twos, and that oughta count."

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[lostthoughts54]

i have been moderately satisfied with my Comcast. They do have their occasional issue but i have had steady service for the last 3 years. Not only has my price not risen, i am still paying my "first year" bundle cost + $5 to $10, but my service rarely goes down. when it does it is usually minutes before its back. Much faster and more reliable than my old DSL through century-link where a sprinkle ment my speed drop to lower than 56k. i usually butt heads with Comcast about things like TPB. I was also one of the people to call foul yesterday. So i was wrong and i happily admit it.
Comcast did something right for once. Lets encourage that instead of screaming at them for their past BS, show them we appreciate when they put forth effort.

Sidenote:they could have reacted so openly simply to avoid confusion. With Anon still going(if a little rocky), the last thing u want is people thinking you are censoring. either way if the community reacts correctly, hopefully we wont need watchdogs like Anon.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[overlordofmu]

or you live in a state where there aren't gov't granted monopoly regions (are there still any?)

You repeat misinformation about the industry (although probably only because of ignorance, not malice). You complain about the industry. Then go on to explain how you continue to purchase the full price service and how well it works for you.

What are you trying to tell us, AC?

The Telecommunications Act of 1996, on a federal level, outlaws exclusive franchise agreements for cable companies for the entire US. There hasn't been a government granted "monopoly" on cable anywhere in the United States of America for going on 15 years now. But you state the opposite of the truth; specifically, you state that there is amost nowhere in the USA without a "gov't granted monopoly". Everyone in the USA lives in a state where there are zero goverment granted cable monopolies (except when the municipality itself is the monopoly - meaning a city/county owned cable system).

There is a groupthink to hate on cable companies and this "monopoly" misinformation seems to get repeated in every thread about a cable company, dispite being demonstrably false. You are repeating some nonsense you like to believe without regard to things like facts.

The limitaion of no Sat TV is something you chose when you decided on your condo.
You admit there is DSL but you prefer cable internet.
The internet service is now full price and you chose to keep the service at that price.
The service seems to work for you and provides not only internet but TV from third parties via said internet.

I don't like how expensive my favorite whisky is. However, I like good whisky and pricey or not, it is worth every penny.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[sco08y]

You apparently don't know what fucking irrational is... or maybe you do. Hmmm....

I said the fucking definition, as in I gave your mother the fucking definition of a sore asshole last night.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[sco08y]

Were they wrong or was it irrational to do so? Not particularly.

Jumping to conclusions is pretty much the very fucking definition of irrational.

You're right, we should never infer a future or new behaviour from an existing verified pattern of behaviour...

I didn't say what you should or shouldn't do. "Should" did not enter into my post, the entirety of which is quoted above, nor does it enter into this post.

No I think in this instance, accuse first and apologise later is justified.

There's never a justification for a false accusation. Our whole system of law is seriously distorted by false accusations, to the point where teenagers taking a pictures of their nasties will be labeled sex offenders for life. Our politicians are all lowlife scumbags or power-hungry psychos because the normal people stay home rather than have their lives put up like a circus and deal with defamation every waking hour.

Every little false accusation just adds to it.

You're going to do it anyway, because you're irrational, and you're not actually going to do anything but bitch and gripe anyway, but I'm just here to tell you you're full of shit and part of the problem.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[cthulhu11]

o TV service != Internet connectivity. o I'm skeptical that your DSL speed is truly comparable o Go price out a frac DS3 and tell me if you still think Comcast's prices are outrageous for the speed you get. o I've had my share of bad experiences with *residential* Comcast service. A handful of years ago as I was escaping my first marriage, I had to stay with a buddy for a while. At that time, my employer wouldn't go for a DS1, so Comcast was what I had. Some days service would be down for fully half of the time, in increments of .5 to several hours. It was especially bad when it rained. Comcast claimed they would escalate if it wasn't resolved in three visits, but it took five and a lot of screaming. Until then, I'd call and they'd try to blame my switch, tell me to unplug the modem, etc. They'd send out two or three first-tier techs to the 10-unit building on a single day, without seeing the big picture. This went on for months, which as a telecommuter was majorly frustrating. When I did get them to send out an actual engineer, they found both that a neighbor had faulty equipment that was sending nasty reflections upstream, or something like that, but also that their pole-mounted box was leaking, which accounted for the correlation with rain. Once they fixed that, it worked as expected. o When I moved here, a DS1 to our POP was an option, but 1.5 MBit/s these days can be frustrating. The telco touts advanced DSL, but the CO is 11,000 feet or so from me, so I couldn't get jack from them. Comcast again appealed from the bang / buck ratio, but I'd since read that signing up for *business class* service makes all the difference, so I did. $89/mo for nominal 20/5 speed. The install was done by a contractor, I think, but two guys showed up who were clueful. They didn't blame my Apple desktop, didn't claim that I needed MS Windows to install crapware, and didn't have a problem with me having my own switch. They hooked it up, ensured that the modem could configure and set up the connection, and gave me the customer u/p for the router. Since then it's mostly worked fine. Not as many 9's as if I had a DS1 into our POP, but acceptable. Occasionally there's an outage and I have to call them, but just as often I'll get a recorded call from them telling me status. There are occasional routing weirdnesses, and I had DNS issues until I switched from our own resolvers to theirs.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Anonymous Coward]

Say what you want, but compared to other cable companies such as Time Warner Cable I love Comcast. Not only has their HD service been good and rock-solid reliable, but they allow me to perform HD bit-perfect FireWire captures from *every* single channel except premium movie channels! Compare that to other cable companies such as Time Warner Cable where they encrypt abosolutely everything that they are legally allowed to (it's unlawful to copy-protect the Over-The_Air broadcast networks).

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[dotancohen]

Nice. What was the contents of the $tpb variable at the beginning of the script? That first line implies there was already something there.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[cynyr]

Does your DRV box work? does the sound volume remain relativity consistent even ignoring the commercials? does your Comcast DVR cause your TV to reboot around once an hour?

All of the above are not issues when streaming netflix all day saturday via my PS3(when PSN was up of course).

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[cynyr]

Except at the city level. Many cities in my area have granted comcast exclusive right to wire up the city in exchange for doing the whole city, including outlying parts. City government==government.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[cynyr]

ohh hey that's because they turned off PPPoE for your part of the network. It is not officially supported. set up your dsl modem to handle the connection(PPPoA) and then DMZ your router. I was having exactly the same problem as you a few months ago, and switched my setup and it has been running great since.

Re:Hahaha have some crow

[Dahamma]

I don't have a Comcast DVR, I have a 3 tuner Moxi via Cablecard and it's great. Even supports recorded and live viewing on another TV via a network-connected "Moxi Mate".

Do you have Comcast? If so, they are the ones enabling your day-long Netflix streaming session as well :) Netflix, VUDU, Pandora, etc all work fine for me, precisely because my connection has been a rock-solid 30Mbps since I got it. Though honestly Netflix's selection is pretty crappy, no new release movies or TV. Depends what you like, I guess, but it's not a solution for everyone.

Not that I am particularly defending Comcast or anything, I just haven't personally had any issues so I have no reason to rip them...

I'm confused.

[BitterOak]

Does this mean that Comcast isn't evil after all?

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Re:I'm confused.

[gman003]

More like "They weren't evil in this specific instance". As an ex-Comcast customer, I know they are more than capable of evil - they just know not to do so when they'll get caught.

Re:I'm confused.

[betterunixthanunix]

No, it just means that they are afraid to draw attention to the fact that they are evil, you know, when their merger with NBC is being scrutinized. Best if they look like they really care about keeping the network neutral and just carrying bits, so that nobody thinks of asking what might happen when NBC's competitors try to stream their video over Comcast's little corner of the Internet.

Re:I'm confused.

[dgatwood]

Even evil must sometimes do good. For example, you have to earn trust before you can breach it.

Re:I'm confused.

[x*yy*x]

Oh grow up. Now that they helped customers in an issue that wasn't related to them at all and really wasn't such a big deal, you can't even take back your words and admit they did a good job. I'm pretty sure comcast has some clever slashdotters working for them too, just like I'm quite sure out of 80k Microsoft staff and out of 25k Google staff some of them most likely hang around here. If you can't even admit your mistakes, at least thank the likely fellow slashdotter who probably helped getting it working while you did exactly what now?

Re:I'm confused.

[pushing-robot]

Rule of Aquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

Re:I'm confused.

[betterunixthanunix]

...and what mistakes would you be referring to?

Sorry, but when it comes to large and powerful corporations, I have a lot of trouble trusting them to help people who actually harm their bottom line. Comcast has throttled BitTorrent in the past, they own TV stations whose shows can be found via TPB, and they are busy trying to make sure that the government does not pass any regulations that would impede their ability to throttle or filter traffic. Now suddenly a technical problem strikes TPB, and people immediately ask if Comcast is doing this deliberately; Comcast can ignore the problem and let "Serious Tubes Networks" deal with it, or they can help out and gain some positive PR.

Gee, why would I think that Comcast was not just trying to get some good PR here?

Re:I'm confused.

[Technician]

Between Netflix, VOIP, and tons of commercials, Cable TV has been taking a hit in the downturn in the economy. They need to keep their Internet subscribers. This is more important to keep their triple play customers. Between FIOS and other competition, their market is seriously eroding.

Re:I'm confused.

[memyselfandeye]

Rule of Aquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.

Rule of Acquisition #285: No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule of Acquisition #1: People who quote rules of acquisition will never get laid.

Re:I'm confused.

[celle]

"Friendly Reminder: Apple, Google, Nintendo and Valve are the for-profit corporations a Slashdotter is permitted to like."

Friendly Reminder: There are NO for-profit corporations that a self-respecting Slashdotter is permitted to like.

Fixed that for you.

Re:I'm confused.

[Isaac Remuant]

Rule of Acquisition #1: People who quote rules of acquisition will never get laid.

People who post anonymously about not getting laid have already given up... wait.. .what, damn........

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but Pirate Bay still is.

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there are. How about Mouser Electronics?

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple??? You probably rape baby worms for a hobby AND a profession.

Re:I'm confused.

[Confusador]

Wait, Red Hat is evil now, too? I know we rejected Novell, but I must have missed that memo.

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but when it comes to large and powerful corporations, I have a lot of trouble trusting them to help people who actually harm their bottom line

Who here is harming their bottom line?

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

That article is almost 4 years old. How does it apply today?

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Important news:

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Source: http://serioustubes.org/

Re:I'm confused.

[MrNemesis]

And of course the following corollary:

If you can't beat them, beat them; they'll be expecting you to join them at this point.
- The League Against Tedium

Re:I'm confused.

[JonJ]

Wait, Red Hat is evil now, too? I know we rejected Novell, but I must have missed that memo.

Try reading a RH story sometime, the Ubuntulovers bash RH mercilessly. And when they're not being active on the flaming front, all the Slackware guys who had one bad experience with gcc2.96 back in 2000 will chime in and tell you how clueless RH is. It's disgraceful.

Re:I'm confused.

[somersault]

Try reading his next sentence ffs.

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Best Civilization strategy ever!

1. Declare peace.
2. Build up a massive army, while the other side directs resources elsewhere.
3. Attack.
3. IF (NOT $WIN) GOTO 1

They always fell for it. And they had no other choice anyway.

Re:I'm confused.

[Bing Tsher E]

We had a visit at our local LUG from the top people at Red Hat back in about 1997. After the presentation we could ask them questions. I asked one of the executives (a woman from marketing, I think) if I could make copies of my Red Hat 4.3 CD-ROM to share with my friends. I got a rather dirty look in response.

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

I repeat my question. BitTorren/TPB don't threaten anyone's bottom line. Have you been dipping into the Comcast koolaid?

Re:I'm confused.

[somersault]

If they value certain programs enough to torrent them and spend time watching them, there's a non-zero chance that they value them enough to have had paid for them. Even if just one person torrented a series instead of buying the DVD release, that is "hurting their bottom line". I barely even know who Comcast are btw, I live in the UK.

Have you been dipping into ideals that make you feel less dirty about being a leach (I don't care if you "seed" too)?

Re:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, someone here clearly doesn't get the bigger picture. And I'm pretty sure that someone isn't me.

And no I don't partake in so-called "piracy" (boy if that isn't a misnomer), although I am an online content-creator and I very well understand (and obey) the rules.

Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[blair1q]

The Pirate Bay isn't exactly a possible source of revenue, so Comcast wouldn't have a good reason for throttling it, even if it soaks up bandwidth like a spark-gap transmitter.

But Netflix? You have to wonder if Comcast would send the network engineers out first, or the bill collectors.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Maxtastic]

Comcast probably had 500+ calls in queue and were getting hammered on the issue by their customers. I am sure there was supervisor or manager in support that was driving them(Pirate Bay) to get this fixed and get the calls out of their queues.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[X0563511]

You just might when you're convinced the ISP decided to block it.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[LordLucless]

Yes, but you have a clue.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a lot of people. It only takes a fraction of a percentage of people to increase cost conscious queues.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was at work answering support calls today - trust me, nobody called about this. Nobody.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[mysidia]

Yeah, because when a single web site isn't working the first thing I do is call my ISP and ask them to go fix it.

You're posting on slashdot self-selection. Remember... If 1% out of 10 million customers decide to call in, that's 100,000 people.

Look, there are always some crazies that call in when $random_website is down. You'd probably be surprised at the massive volume of calls an ISP gets from farmville players if Facebook has a 60 minute outage.

Suffice to say, the resounding answer is yes, people do that crap. And if the ISP isn't very tolerant of them, nice, helpful, and telling them they're doing something, they get irate, and maybe switch ISPs.

Not only will they call in, but they'll demand an immediate fix. Even after the CSR respectfully informs them the circumstances and the ISP isn't responsible for the outage; apparently to joe consumer every ISP has a copy of every site on the internet, every ISP runs their copy of all websites, and if any site is broke, their ISP is to blame, and they are deserving a month's refund for their 2 hours of not being able to access $site_that_was_down.

Also, good luck getting the customer to pay reasonable compensation for utilizing support's time for an issue the ISP's not liable for; "cost of doing business",.

A similar bothersome artifact is website hosting customers calling the hosting service provider, claiming it's an emergency, to complain that their 'site is broken', or e-mail isn't working, and they want an immediate fix + refund + repair instructions; when the issue is their ISP connection is broken, or their ISP just started blocking port 25.
In any case, they lack the skills, apparently to investigate/research what's happening, and immediately jump to accusatory blame of random providers, hoping yelling, cursing, and strong words, to whomever they don't have to spend an hour on hold to reach, will just make everything fix itself.

Bonus points for cl00bies that call the emergency number of hosting providers at 3am on $1/month e-mail supported bulk hosting accounts to complain about ISP or user-inflicted issues such as broken software, issues that result from virus on computer, corrupt preference files, blue screen when opening mail client/booting computer, or plain inoperative mail client software, and demand the hosting provider treat as emergency and walk them through fixing their personal issue (without the user paying extra for 'computer repair' / 'personal assistance' not covered by $1/month bulk e-mail or web hosting agreement).

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

I worked on an IT helpdesk and people did ring when they couldn't get a single web page. We had a resolution written specifically for this "problem" it occurred so frequently.
Some people call their ISP if anything at all related to their computer goes wrong.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

^--- I work for an ISP. 100% true.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Comcast cares about customer calls, even if they get 500 of them?

ROFLMAO.

I'm convinced the people who answer the phones and even most of the "technicians" they send to your home are all theater. It's a fucking cable coming into people's homes. If they can't get that right there's no way they can get all the routers to provide traffic and they often don't manage that.

Where's my Mobile Broadband, Verizon?

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We received 20 complaints about David Hyde Pierce's trouser malfunction. As you know, each phone call equals one billion viewers...so that means 20 billion people were offended."

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[SeaFox]

The Pirate Bay isn't exactly a possible source of revenue, so Comcast wouldn't have a good reason for throttling it, even if it soaks up bandwidth like a spark-gap transmitter.

Anything that causes customers to use copious amounts of data (be it torrenting or streaming video) is a potential source of revenue for an ISP that has transfer caps and overage fees.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[AK Marc]

In this case it was actually the ISP's fault (though not Comcast, but one of the upstream providers). So the correct action was to contact their provider.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bull-Fucking-Shit. I know it's warm and fuzzy to think that the call center, and the actual company are in some small way connected... They aren't. I know for a fact that a significant amount of comcast's "call center" traffic goes through a company called Stream International. The comcast tech support call center is on Murray Blvd in Beaverton Oregon. Comcast does not have a corporate office there. The "customer service" center is either in the same building, or across town (it varies). The only phone line that goes to COMCAST is the one that goes to the sales people, and even then, I'm not sure they actually work for comcast.

The managers at Stream have exactly 0 contact with comcast proper. If there is a problem, we let them know by sending an email to the NOC. They ignore every single one. In 2 years, I never saw a response of any kind. I'm pretty sure they don't even check the account. Stream does get updates from the NOC though, if the NOC found an issue, and fixed it, they send a note saying so. They do not say anything until it's fixed. Even if that's going to take 4 hours.

So even if the call center was falling over from the traffic (and I've seen outages take out a 1600 seat call center with traffic flood), comcast is only, at best, vaguely aware of that. Usually long after the fact, like at the monthly numbers review.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Bucky24]

You assume that Comcast cares about having long call queues. Have you ever tried to call them? 20 min+ wait times every time I have.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[Bucky24]

it's not a source of revenue, but it can be a source of expense, especially if traffic to and from the site is using a lot of comcast's bandwidth.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[blair1q]

You have to consider the elasticity or inelasticity of the demand curve.

People already pay for Netflix streaming, so Netflix has a vested interest in keeping that pipe open. They will pay more (they have a steep demand curve) if Comcast starts messing with their bandwidth.

Nobody pays for Pirate Bay (except n00bs and other pirates who donate to them), so if Comcast starts messing with their bandwidth, 99.9% of the customers will just walk away, and Pirate Bay doesn't have money to cough up, so the amount that Comcast would be able to get them to pay is almost the same as the zero they pay now (flat demand curve).

Netflix's steep, inelastic demand curve makes them a prime target for Comcast to induce payments. Pirate Bay's flat, elastic demand curve makes them a waste of the effort.

So all we're seeing here is that Comcast will, if it gets enough identical complaints from end-lusers, check the box to keep them from calling their congressmen.

Re:Does this mean Comcast is not evil?

[blair1q]

What does bandwidth cost, if you still have enough to go around?

Zero. Zero dollars incrementally.

Unless PB is somehow running Comcast's needle up to the peg, and I highly doubt that it can even if a new Peter Jackson movie rip comes out, it's no skin off Comcast's ass how much it's using. And since PB has no money to pay for what it's using, it's not a lost opportunity cost to let them go on using it for nothing.

Now, Netflix, on the other hand, with its fat pipe of cashflow, is a huge opportunity cost for Comcast to convince them that the bandwidth they're using is liable to go sideways several times a day unless they pay for Type-B franistans on the grafting splices.

Wow

[lothos]

I'm surprised to hear this, but good for Comcast for lending some technical assistance.

Re:Wow

[betterunixthanunix]

Why are you surprised? Do you think Comcast wants people to start pointing at them during net neutrality arguments, when their merger with NBC is still so controversial?

Re:Wow

[lothos]

Because I've never seen Comcast go out of there way to help out a website before? Do you expect them to hand out free tech support for every website that has problems? THAT is why I'm surprised by this.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

A controversial website loaded on other ISPs, but not Comcast. Regardless of whether it was their fault, it still looked bad for them.

Seriously?

[bky1701]

"Serious Tubes Networks"? What is it, an ISP run by /b/tards?

Although, really, it is rare to see a company, especially (like) Comcast, actually doing something good for users. Going out of their way to fix the connection to the Pirate Bay - that's a pretty ballsy move, and they should get some credit for it.

Re:Seriously?

[jaxtherat]

"Serious Tubes Networks"? What is it, an ISP run by /b/tards?

Looks that way! http://serioustubes.org/

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Serious Tubes Networks"? What is it, an ISP run by /b/tards?

Although, really, it is rare to see a company, especially (like) Comcast, actually doing something good for users. Going out of their way to fix the connection to the Pirate Bay - that's a pretty ballsy move, and they should get some credit for it.

As an ISP, its their job to fix issues like this, they really don't deserve much credit for doing their job. However, they did take quick action, which is something that they really weren't obligated to do. Kudos to the techs involved.

Re:Seriously?

[Kjella]

The best part is that TFA calls them a Tier 1 ISP. If these guys were running the Internet backbone, I'd short my stocks in everything Internet-based right now.

Re:Seriously?

[fred911]

``I'd short my stocks in everything Internet-based right now``

(OT) But first you have to sell your current stock, canÂt be short on something you posses. Then a tax issue....ect..

Re:Seriously?

[LordLucless]

If they optimize their network as well as they optimize the images on their website, I can see why they ran into trouble.

(For those who are capped and can't afford the bandwidth anymore, that's a ~350kb, 250x400 image)

Re:Seriously?

[MightyYar]

My favorite is one of their server packages has this item:
"DMCA and copyright claims will be ignored"

LOL.

Re:Seriously?

[bradgoodman]

Wow.

They certainly are! Their tagline is:

Serious Tubes Networks
We know the internet is not a big truck

WTF??

Re:Seriously?

[stms]

/b/tards?! But they support lulz.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

From their FAQ (http://serioustubes.org/?page_id=12)
>Do you liek Mudkipz?
>We love Mudkipz
 
Serious Tubes confirmed for /b/tarded.
If only I lived in San Jose, I'd send my resume....

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the FUCK AM I looking at?!

Re:Seriously?

[snowraver1]

Not only that, they move OVER9000!!!! packets per second over their network. [In FAQ]

Re:Seriously?

[Kakari]

Man... I just came back here with the same link in my clipboard. Thank you for finding it too.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the FAQ:

Do you liek Mudkipz?

We love Mudkipz

How much data flow through your network?

Over 9000 packets per second

I love these guys already. If I ever have a need for a co-lo or dedicated server, I know where I'm going.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an ISP run by people supportive of the Pirate political agenda / coming from a Kopimi background. They provide "serious tubes" to people who'd rather do their won routing as well as their own legal handling of stuff like DMCA crap [=non-swedish legal crap thrown at a swedish site].

Re:Seriously?

[silanea]

Comcast did it not for the users but because

1. they were likely drowning in support tickets about the issue, and "wontfix" would have left many of those affected with little desire to stay with Comcast;
2. even if they would love to see TPB go down they will want to investigate and fix any unintentional connectivity problems - "evil" management aside, they still run a network for a living;
3. they would be utterly retarded to hand any ammunition to the anti-monopoly/net neutrality camp right now by letting this issue stand or worse: not responding at all.

Comcast did what any half-sane company would have done. They did not go out of their way, they simply did their job. Though I grant them that considering the state of consumer ISPs they did a really good job.

Re:Seriously?

[joost]

They have posted news about this event on their home page:

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We donâ(TM)t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Right under "We welcome open source projects, non-profit communities and anything that supports free speech and lulz."

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quoted from Serious Tubes Network website:
Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Re:Seriously?

[pongo000]

According to the Serious Tubes folks, Comcast had no part in fixing the problem:

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid being traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Note to Slashdot: Fix your screwed-up "hidden comment" selection and allow comments to be recursively unhidden, please.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot their FAQ page: http://serioustubes.org/?page_id=12

Re:Seriously?

[Bing Tsher E]

Hey, that's a metal-conduit shielded interconnect. They're supposed to be heavy, man.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to pnogo000: Quit using that bloated convoluted dynamic interactive ajax crap for discussions and go back to "classic", it's under account/discussions. Problem solved.

Re:Seriously?

[Bucky24]

Well they have a point... the internet ISN'T a big truck.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. An ISP that runs its website with WordPress. Version 2.9.

not a very safe choice; there are a couple of exploits on places like exploit-db.com.

Re:Seriously?

[pongo000]

Whoever you are, you've made my day. The world is right again, thanks!

Of course Comcast "helped" TPB...

[Frosty Piss]

Having TPB "down" seriously impacts the business model of the folks suing alleged p2p down-loaders. There for, it was ESSENTIAL that they have one of their proxies "help" TPB straighten out their issue. A lot of lawyers livelihood depends on TPB connectivity.

Re:Of course Comcast "helped" TPB...

[Lehk228]

more like undermines comcast's business model, if you can't download phat warez why would you need a 5, 7, 10, or 15 megabit pipe? i have cheap ass-dsl 1.5megabit and i pay 30 bucks for it, i just play games and web browse online, no torrents so i don't need cable internet.

Re:Of course Comcast "helped" TPB...

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of business models...

"Comcast Helps Fix Pirate Bay Connection Problems"

Will now be available on Google searches thanks to Slashdot. I am sure happy-go-lucky suing individuals won't notice...
It's all irony man, all irony.

Re:Of course Comcast "helped" TPB...

[Combatso]

some of us use the internet for more than piracy and playing games... and we like to have the bandwidth to do that..

Re:Of course Comcast "helped" TPB...

[sorak]

Speaking of business models...

"Comcast Helps Fix Pirate Bay Connection Problems"

Will now be available on Google searches thanks to Slashdot. I am sure happy-go-lucky suing individuals won't notice...
It's all irony man, all irony.

The law has a special exemption protecting ISPs from being sued for doing their job. I'm too lazy to look up the exact law, but there is a reason the RIAA isn't suing them for all the filesharing that takes place on their networks.

Re:Of course Comcast "helped" TPB...

[mcnoch]

Well, and on a more serious note one should remember that sites like TPB attract also some serious attention from LE. It is sometimes surprising what the FBI and other agency are able to do to protect the success of some operations with a Group I authorization.

Comcast Doesn't Need the Bad PR.

[DrSlinky]

Comcast has nothing to gain by blocking The Pirate Bay, and plenty to gain by helping address the filtering problem. By addressing, and helping to fix, the problem, Comcast has gained a little positive karma in the online community. By blocking The Pirate Bay, they'd only be buying more bad PR, while not actually doing anything to address the problem of torrent bandwidth usage. After all, block one torrent site, and users will just use another site.

Re:Comcast Doesn't Need the Bad PR.

[Anonymous Coward]

By blocking The Pirate Bay, they'd only be buying more bad PR

I hope you are correct because that means going against P2P has a negative effect. I wonder if it is more of a legal issue of an ISP blocking sites.

I'm confused...

[John Pfeiffer]

On the one hand, I want to say "Oh, cool. I couldn't reach it earlier today." and on the other hand, I have to wonder if we've passed into BIZARRO WORLD.

"Serious Tubes Networks"

[atomicbutterfly]

What, really? There's an ISP called that? If they were formed after Ted Stevens's immortal words then I honestly can't feel any anger towards them at all.

Re:"Serious Tubes Networks"

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out their website (serioustubes.org) ... especially the FAQ section. It looks like this company is run by a couple of 15-year-old 4chan rejects.

(Heh: captcha is "miseries", speaking of 4chan =P)

Re:"Serious Tubes Networks"

[The Dawn Of Time]

Well hey, on the upside, they are also incompetent.

Good job Comcast

[Nidi62]

If you are going to bash a company when it does something bad, you should also applaud it for doing something good. Kudos to you Comcast. That being said, your internet still sucks, but it's the cheapest in my area ;)

Outside my window

[nurb432]

What was that.. a flying pig?

I'm not one that blamed comcast out of the gate as i dont think they would ever stoop to that level, but this is really, um, surprising.

Re:Outside my window

[Seumas]

Except they have stooped to that level in the recent past and after months of denying it, finally admitted it and were called to task for it by the FCC. That is precisely the reason why everyone jumped to the worst conclusion when everyone with Comcast was having trouble reaching TPB and everyone with another provider was (for the first many hours of the incident) not having a problem.

If you're known as the neighborhood trouble-maker, it's your own damn fault if everyone looks accusingly at you the next time there is some trouble that you actually didn't make.

Um..

[bp2179]

With and ISP name like that, I think someone in Comcast's PR department has a BOFH excuse generator

COMCAST helped fix it?!

[Scutter]

That's terrific! When MY Comcast internet is down, it takes me two days on the phone just to get them to admit that there's a problem. Even when I tell them what the problem is and how to fix it, I STILL can't get them to fix it.

Re:COMCAST helped fix it?!

[Sinthet]

To their credit, they don't listen to what random customers tell them to do over a support line. Even if they did listen to you and it ended up fixing the network, that'd be a dangerous precedent to set. This isn't a personal attack against you btw, sorry if it came across like that.

Re:COMCAST helped fix it?!

[Scutter]

To their credit, they don't listen to what random customers tell them to do over a support line. Even if they did listen to you and it ended up fixing the network, that'd be a dangerous precedent to set. This isn't a personal attack against you btw, sorry if it came across like that.

I can appreciate that they don't know me from Adam and I don't expect them to take my advice about how to fix the problem, but when I tell them my cable is out, I don't want to hear "No, it isn't."

Re:COMCAST helped fix it?!

[Jimmy King]

Have you ever called them? While you're correct that they can't just start making changes because the customer said so, if they understood how a network or the internet works they could understand what he's saying and start going through the proper channels to have things looked into. I've done my time in phone support roles, both public facing and internal, for multiple companies and that was true at all of them. When you call these guys it's pretty clear that they don't know how any of this stuff works or what any of it means and they just want to go through their scripted "troubleshooting" which they don't actually understand and get you off of the phone. One time when I tried to provide an example the support person had to go ask their supervisor what FTP is. Seriously.

I've since given up. I just wait for the issue to get caught and corrected at the higher levels. Calling support doesn't get it fixed any faster but it sure does waste more of my time.

Re:COMCAST helped fix it?!

[Anonymous Coward]

When you call these guys it's pretty clear that they don't know how any of this stuff works or what any of it means and they just want to go through their scripted "troubleshooting" which they don't actually understand and get you off of the phone. One time when I tried to provide an example the support person had to go ask their supervisor what FTP is. Seriously.

...And?

You want to pay $150+/month *just* for low-end Internet service? Because that is the ultimate outcome of hiring knowledgeable people. Knowledge commands a great value, and no business that wants to stay in business is going to hire expensive people to deal with low-level support, when an extreme majority of calls coming in are from people who can't distinguish their monitor from their motherboard.

Re:COMCAST helped fix it?!

[Bengie]

My friend had issues with Comcast. Internet would randomly lag, sometimes cut out. After 2 months of it, he complained right up the tree, as high as he could go. He finally got a tech to come out, the fixed it, they upgraded his package to 60mb, gave him HBO, and all of that for 6 months free. He didn't pay a dime for those 6 months and never had a connection problem again...outside of overall network problems.

Not as good but similar story for me with Charter Comm. My wife and I rarely watch TV, just a few select shows and Cartoon Network when going to bed. That was $20/month extra for the extended cable. We called up and said we didn't watch much and we would rather save the $20. They chopped off $15 and gave us Showtime for free. It's hard to turn down extended cable for $5/month, so we kept it.

Re:COMCAST helped fix it?!

[Jimmy King]

Since phone support is a revolving door anyway, maybe they could try to hire people are very entry level but are technical and possibly pursuing a technical career, who are trying to move up the chain, work part time while in college, etc. Whether the employees leave because they know what they're doing and found something better or because they're burnt out and don't care anyway, they still left and you have to find some new help.

Sure, not all the employees are going to fit that, it would be impossible. Not everyone was someone after a technical career when I was doing that work, either. In my experience, the non-technical people were more likely to try to learn and in the very least pass calls over to the more knowledgeable people when needed if there were more knowledgeable people around.

I'm not expecting them to be able to configure a router, but they're providing technical support for an ISP, they should at least have enough knowledge of computers and networks to understand that there appears to be a problem and maybe they need to pass it up to the next level of support if they can't resolve or quite understand it. I've been there, I did that work for a few years, I'm not asking for anything unreasonable.

Innocent until...

[Caerdwyn]

A nice, well-deserved boot in the face to everyone who prejudged, and who therefore should never be allowed onto a jury.

Re:Innocent until...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, please.

1. Everyone is prejudiced - just about different things. Despite that, we somehow manage to fill juries.

2. Comcast has given people reason to be suspicious. Kind of hard to call prejudice, given their track record

Re:Innocent until...

[Anonymous Coward]

A nice, well-deserved boot in the face to everyone who prejudged, and who therefore should never be allowed onto a jury.

I take it you've never got home from work one day and found port 80 http redirecting to a sad face and a message to call your ISP to get told off about stealing a movie from a company you've never heard of in a country you don't care about?

You know what I said to them? Fuck you, prove it, and turn my internet on or I'm calling up your competitors.

Re:Innocent until...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about prejudging, it's about giving the reason that, based on past behaviour, is most probable. In Comcast's case IMHO it wasn't unreasonable to expect them to block TPB.

And the jury thing is just ridiculous. You can prejudge all you want, as long as your final vote is solely based on the evidence.

Good for business

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not motivated by goodwill.

Please remember they charge for bandwidth.

I guess The Pirate Bay is good for their business.

Engineers

[jra]

That's who fixed this.

I guarantee you that, just like in television and telephony, *once you get to the actual engineers*, they're really nice, sane, helpful people, who want to give you what you want to get, and are paying good money for (as long as you, yourself, are sane -- this is why there's 3 tiers of triage before you get to one).

But their job is not to worry about content, it's to worry about transport.

And, by and large, we don't.

Re:Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

I do ISP support. You can be a ass or the nicest guy on the planet. I'm only going to be interested in fixing your issue if its interesting. The rest get half a second of consideration before I mentally stamp it with "this guy is an idiot. won't fix." or flame a lower level tech for passing it up.

Re:Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as you, yourself, are sane -- this is why there's 3 tiers of triage before you get to one

And, of course, by the time any sane person has navigated through all the organic voice playback machines installed in cubicles so as to get to the engineer, they will no longer be sane.

Re:Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

We are network administrators: data is just protocol overhead.

Who was willing to call comcast?

[Anonymous Coward]

What customers were willing to call up comcast and say "WTF! I can't go to this website and download my warez."?

Has to be a Honeypot

[Anonymous Coward]

Last feature in each of the server packages; "DMCA and copyright claims will be ignored"
See here - http://serioustubes.org/?page_id=63

Evidence here: http://serioustubes.org/?page_id=12
Question #3 - Do you liek Mudkipz?

We love Mudkipz

This has to be a honeypot. No way these people are being peered. What really happened today?

Re:Has to be a Honeypot

[compro01]

Their AS number looks legit. RIPE NCC shows that AS 50066 belongs to a company by that name.

http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?form_type=simple&full_query_string=&searchtext=AS50066&do_search=Search

Re:Has to be a Honeypot

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is, it's been a long time in the making - according to WHOIS records, the domain has been registered by the current owners (in Sweden) for almost 2 years now...

Re:Has to be a Honeypot

[Seumas]

Well, they're based in Sweden. Has Sweden enacted their own DMCA laws recently or something? If not, then of course they ignore them.

This makes me think of a joke

[TheRecklessWanderer]

I heard a joke once.

it went like this.

How many cops does it take to beat a confession out of a suspect?

Answer: None, he fell down the stairs.

A whole food chain of idiots.

[goodmanj]

I'm sick and tired of Slashdot editors blindly reposting everything that comes down the firehose without stopping to check whether articles are dupes, PR volleys, or just plain wrong.

Look at it this way. Anyone in the chain of publication of the original story, from the orginal commenter on Engadget to Engadget's editors to the anonymous coward who submitted to Slashdot to the Slashdot editor who approved it, could have done what I did: "ping thepiratebay.org" from work, and find it was down outside of Comcastland too. Then they would have had a *real* headline: "Comcast falsely accused of jamming ThePirateBay."

I hear that investigative journalism is too expensive for major news outlets to handle these days, so it's up to bloggers and websites to do the journalism. But when nobody can be bothered to type a 1-line bash command, what's left of the Fourth Estate is in deep shit.

Re:A whole food chain of idiots.

[Seumas]

TPB was not down outside of Comcast land, initially. For several hours when the initial reports were being published online, nobody could reach TPB from Comcast, but they could useing a proxy or VPN and those on other networks could reach it. It wasn't until hours later that the same behavior started to appear on other networks. In light of those circumstances and prior Comcast behavior, it's not entirely irrational that people started to question if they were intentionally blocking them.

So, no, what would have happened in your example is that someone with Comcast would have tried to reach TPB and failed. Then they'd ping it and fail. Then they'd login via another network and ping it and it would work.

Re:A whole food chain of idiots.

[goodmanj]

Pinging TPB from outside Comcast didn't work for me when I read the article a few minutes after it was posted here.

Re:A whole food chain of idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

could have done what I did: "ping thepiratebay.org" from work, and find it was down outside of Comcastland too. Then they would have had a *real* headline: "Comcast falsely accused of jamming ThePirateBay."

So what you are saying is, when you pinged TPB from and got a ping reply, then pinged from home on a non-comcast connection and got a reply, then pinged from comcast and got NO reply... You would out right LIE and try posting a story that TPB was down, despite the fact you got ping replies from everywhere else?!

You have some nerve bitching about real news outlets when you are willing to state such obvious and testable falsehoods...

Re:A whole food chain of idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... you just managed to troll yourself to a +4 Informative, or someone's playing DNS games with you.

TPB doesn't answer ICMP Echos even when it's UP, so who the hell were you pinging?

Re:A whole food chain of idiots.

[geekoid]

Then go away.

argh slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

So someone screwed something up with slashdot between last night and today. Now all of the lines that show the first part of the replies is only half visable.. the top half. This is now showing in chrome on the PC as well as the android mobile browser. Very annoying (as in you only see the top half of each letter until you click to expand the reply)

Re:argh slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Two quick fixes you can use:

1) For PC, uninstall Chrome. Install Firefox. Fixed

2) For Phone, toss Android phone in the ocean. Buy an iPhone. Fixed

The issue isn't Slashdot, it's shitty Google programming.

Re:argh slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, same issue in FF 4.

Sorry, it's slashdot.

f'ing pro?

[Anonymous Coward]

pro from a pure tech pov? amirite?

Oh You Wonderful Deflated Man!

[Greyfox]

Don't make me take back all the mean things I said about you on my blog!

Missed the memo

[ukemike]

Apparently the engineers from comcast that provided help didn't get the memo. So I'll summarize, "Do only evil." There now now it's fixed.

Speaking as tech support...

[Repossessed]

Not really, Comcast only pays a couple dollars an hour less than other tech support setups in the area where the workers really do know their shit. They would need to actually provide training (the horror), but that isn't that expensive if you can be arsed to treat your employees like human beings so they don't jump ship for a job that pays less just so they can go to the bathroom without risking losing their job, and can at least rely on having their paycheck show up on time.

what the fuck?

[kelemvor4]

Is today backwards day? In other news, satan showed up and solved world hunger.

Re:what the fuck?

[Opportunist]

He's only doing it so these people can survive longer and have more chance to sin and finally end up in the warm, cozy place.

With some organizations, you just can't help looking for the evil in their good actions. I mean, Billy is the archetypical philantropist and still you can't help but wonder what's his intentions are.

Comcast is solving this issue which was apparently caused by their upstream provider and still, when looking at a few posts here, a lot of people are trying to find out what nefarious scheme is the reason for it. The idea that CC doesn't have any real interest in keeping their users from accessing something but have a vested interest in keeping their customers at least so happy that they don't bother their support lines with questions about it (which would constitute Occam's Razor in this context IMO) seems to be considered impossible.

Pavlov's dogs disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called conditioning. If Comcast is always living up to the worst expectations, then it's hard not to assume the worst when someone suggests further shenanigans.

It's a perfectly natural response.

For example, if every time a bell rings, someone punches you in the face - (eventually) you'd get the idea to cover your face whenever the bell rings.

Re:Pavlov's dogs disagree

[sco08y]

It's called conditioning. If Comcast is always living up to the worst expectations, then it's hard not to assume the worst when someone suggests further shenanigans.

It's a perfectly natural response.

For example, if every time a bell rings, someone punches you in the face - (eventually) you'd get the idea to cover your face whenever the bell rings.

Wow.

I've rarely seen that much fail packed into such a short post.

what if i bash the pirate bay?

[decora]

they promote the culture of greed and corruption that is at the center of the financial crisis.

did you visit slashdot.org/recent ?

[decora]

and vote the story down?

no?

why not?

how much time a day do you spend reading slashdot?

now how much time to do you spend in the recent queue voting down crap stories?

now, how about if i asked you to pay me to do this? would you pay? no?

that's what i thought.

Re:did you visit slashdot.org/recent ?

[rastos1]

did you visit slashdot.org/recent

I do. Occasionally. Now do you know that during a recent update of UI on /. the link to firehose vanished from the main page? Until I got really bored and wandered into my account settings to discover that it has to be re-enabled there I could get there only by vaguely remembering the URL slashdot.org/firehose.pl or something like that. Additionally the coloring of entries changed from various levels of red to only two colors. So I don't see whether someone else already expressed interest in some submission. Next I've seen ten submissions in a row being spam. Shouldn't be the captcha in submission system improved? And finally it is terribly slow and clumsy. It can take half a minute on FF 4 and 3Mbs connection to switch from one submission to another. I also have yet to discover when a submission text collapses - whether it is after timeout, or after expanding another story.

TL;DR I would do that more often if it was not PITA

Whoops

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry I incited all my other ACs to DOS Comcast. I tried telling Anonymous it wasn't Comcast's fault, but they've since splintered off into a a bi-partisan flamewar revolving around whether Mustard Man or Raver Girl first lost the game.

PR Victory for Comcast

[macraig]

It was obvious that Comcast wasn't actually causing the problem, so this is a clear PR win for Comcast. Here they are being the white knights and saving TPB from obscurity.

Comcast FIXED something? In one day?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I had them out last (because they wouldn't let me plug in a cable modem), they couldn't tell the difference between a switch and a router (which are labeled) and I ended up fixing it anyway, how the fuck did they help anybody? Unless it was literally resolved by 'turning it off and on again', these weren't the average Comcast technical support people.

My guess, they installed a dedicated packet capture connection on the pirate bay server which logs IP addresses matching to the Comcast user database directly to the **AA servers. Sorry Comcast, I'm not falling for your 'good will'!

Could you please stop being irritating!

[Opportunist]

Dammit! We finally have figured out who is good and who is evil in the whole filtering spiel and then Comcast does something like that! Make up your friggin' mind, do you want to be good or evil! You're confusing the hell out of us poor geeks!

(See? You can come up with some dirt to throw at Comcast even with this material, you just gotta look harder)

all you bashers

[geekoid]

owe Comcast an apology.

They were legally obligated to

[iamacat]

Otherwise they would lose protection as the common carrier and become responsible for all the content on their network. Syrian government is much more evil than the Pirate Bay, but you are still allowed to call them on the phone or look up their website on Google.

Re:They were legally obligated to

[nedlohs]

Bullshit.

If amazon.com is down because someone at Amazon pushed the wrong button, Comcast has no obligation to do anything about it.

If some unrelated ISP screwed some routing up Comcast does not have to help them fix it.

Re:They were legally obligated to

[Combatso]

Syrian government is much more evil than the Pirate Bay, but you are still allowed to call them on the phone or look up their website on Google.

Win a free trip to Guantanamo!

Re:They were legally obligated to

[iamacat]

To maintain status as a common carrier they would need to follow the same policy for pirate bay and amazon. Do you believe for a moment comcast would not try to investigate if amazon was unreachable?

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are.

Regards

Magma Hindenburg
CEO Serious Tubes Networks

Re:Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are.

Regards

Magma Hindenburg
CEO Serious Tubes Networks

I herd u liek mudkipz. Is this true?

Not strange

[Anonymous Coward]

Support is what companies do, when there service does not work.

This holds true, if its ThePirateBay or BBCs website that does not respond for the companies customers.

Why so surprised? .. the other way around It would be more surprising .. no help to PiratBay.

Serious Tubes says Comcast didn't fix it

[lawnsprinkler]

According to their homepage:

Important news:

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Comcast didn't help Pirate Bay

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Serious Tubes Network
 

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

No they didn't

[Anonymous Coward]

According to serioustubes.org:
Important news:

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

They didn't fix anything - ST did

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://serioustubes.org/ ...

Important news:
Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Comcast did not help

[Botia]

According to Serious Tubes Networks, http://serioustubes.org/:

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Not sure I believe it yet....

[Palidase]

I am not sure that we have the entire story yet, on either side. From the Serious Tubes website:

Important news:
Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

Tubes: Serious Business

[Anonymous Coward]

(n/t)

Comcast is full of shit

[geegel]

From the front page of serioustubes.org

Comcast did not help us fix The Pirate Bay. The problem was GBLX using reverse path filtering. We shut down one of our transits because it was flapping. The result was that all outgoing traffic to GBLX got filtered even though the packets took the same path as before. The Pirate Bay is using different paths for incoming and outgoing traffic to avoid beeing traced. We don’t even know where their servers are. We resolved the issue by activating our other transit again.

 

kudos to comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

I have always had issues with comcast but I must say the fact that they did this really makes me see them in a different light... maybe there is hope for them yet?

A personal good deal doesn't make CableCos unevil

[xenoc_1]

So like many, by complaining you got a special, non-published deal. That's great for you, but it doesn't make for good public policy. It's like everybody getting a different "Insane Price" at Crazy Eddie because nothing was labeled. If anything, it's a datapoint added towards proof that they overcharge.

Only fix if "interesting"

[xenoc_1]

Well then you're an asshat and so is your manager who keeps you employed. I've written a lot of "uninteresting" code because it was MFJ to do so. If the problem is legitimate and verified (or if part of your job is to verify/replicate) then you bloody frakking well better fix my problem if it gets assigned to you, whether it floats your personal boat or no. Or if you supervise a team, task it to the appropriate team member and monitor their progress. Or if it's legitimate but below the complexity level your company pays you to fix, route it back down the food chain to the correct level of support.

The correct response to a bunch of uninteresting problems beyond your personal boredom threshold it for you to quit and hope in this economy to find a more "interesting" job elsewhere. While somebody who knows the difference between "job" and "personal interest" takes your place and fixes the paying customer's legitimate problem.

Re:Only fix if "interesting"

[Bucky24]

It sounds to me like parent doesn't do support so much as engineering. I am an engineer for an ISP, working in the engineering department. I tend to do the same thing sometimes, but only because I'm not a support tech. When I get support tickets then they are supposed to be things that our support department can't handle (which isn't much-they tend to be pretty good at lower level stuff). I've sent back tickets simply because it's something that they should be able to handle.

On the other hand though, I can't just send something back because it's boring. If it's something that support isn't equipped to handle I have to deal with it, no matter how un-exciting and dull it is.

Re:Only fix if "interesting"

[xenoc_1]

It sounds to me like parent doesn't do support so much as dickwaving.

you

[Anonymous Coward]

why did you cut off thepiratebay.org? I have always recieved it before. If I can get it with another provider I'll have to get one. You are not in the business of censorship. OR ARE YOU? This looks like the body of the subject to me. Or can you not read this?

work around for Comcast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is a work around for torrent down-loader. I was able to get the the torrent file from my phone then move it to pc so that i could down load file.... May 23 2011
DeeDog