Slashdot Mirror
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."
So are all the people who bashed Comcast gonna man up and admit they were acting like bitches and eat their crow?
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.
No.
"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.
Great Intellect...
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.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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.
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.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
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?
Palm trees and 8
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.
Rule of Aquisition #76: Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
...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?
Palm trees and 8
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.
The truth shall set you free!
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.
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.
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