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

[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

[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

[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

[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:I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

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: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.

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.

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: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?

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: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.

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.