BitTorrent Inc. + Comcast = Love, Peace, Harmony…Not!
Written by enigmax on March 29, 2008When Robb Topolski made the initial discovery that Comcast was interfering with BitTorrent traffic, he couldn’t have imagined that it would lead to an FCC hearing or, more importantly, to apparent reconciliation this week between Comcast and the rest of the world. Thing is, Robb doesn’t believe a word of it.
Ever since the news broke that Comcast had been using ‘hacker-like’ techniques to hamper BitTorrent traffic, Comcast’s name has been dragged through the mud, with claim after claim of dirty tricks, lies, half-truths and strategic omission. It seems that nothing could go right for the company. Until this week, that is.
Apparently, everything in the Comcast garden is rosy these days, with previous arch-rival BitTorrent now working things out together over afternoon tea. However, not everyone is celebrating.
In 2007, Robb Topolski discovered and documented the Comcast interference, informed TorrentFreak and we published an article which ignited the whole debate. It’s safe to say, he’s been following this one closely.
Here are his thoughts on the Comcast / BitTorrent reconciliation:
—–
I’m probably a key figure as to why we’re all talking about Network Neutrality again. I was having a problem uploading on Gnutella in early 2007. I tracked it down to Comcast using Sandvine-injected RST packets. Blog stories led to press stories which led to independent confirmation. And here we are today. Peace and harmony? Probably not.
Today Comcast and BitTorrent seems to have solved world hunger — and I’d love nothing more than to be optimistic about it. But I cannot be. As they say on Slashdot — show video, or it didn’t happen. This deal is treachery, relies on how much we can trust the word of Comcast, and leaves the public interests out in the cold.
I think it’s strange that anyone believes a word that Comcast says. This is the Comcast that:
1. Told the FCC in 2005 that they would not degrade traffic in order to convince the FCC that network neutrality regulations were not needed.
2. Started degrading P2P traffic the very next year, and failed to tell anyone what they were doing.
3. Used a system that utilized forgery, and successfully placed blame on the other peer instead of Comcast.
4. Denied it when caught.
5. Then changed their story when the denials were not believed, but still never came out and said what they were doing.
6. Then they justified their actions by throwing their other Cable-Internet brothers and sisters under the bus with their “they do it too!” defense
7. Then stealthily changed the AUP days before an FCC filing where they referred to the new provisions.
8. When the changed AUP started getting press attention, they stated that a prominent story on Comcast.net alerted millions of visitors of the change and accused Marvin Ammori of crying wolf. (Google cache proved that nothing alerted users to the changed AUP until the day after the press started asking questions.)
9. Then they packed the Harvard FCC hearing.
This company has not demonstrated that you can trust its promises, nor can you believe its assertions. Comcast just used BitTorrent Inc. as a tool to try and defang the FCC.
BitTorrent Inc. is a content provider. Vuze, who actually DID make a complaint and petition to the FCC, is a competitor. Neither BitTorrent, Vuze, nor Comcast represents the interests of 12 million Comcast users nor the The Internet Society nor the public. And this middle-of-the-night deal was made without their input.
Nothing has changed. The RST interference continues. It was a wrongful act. BitTorrent Inc. has no right making a deal with Comcast allowing it to continue to commit wrongful acts until it finally decides it is ready to stop. The correct relief is to stop the interference immediately and to FULLY DISCLOSE what it did and to accept responsibility for those actions. (Even today, Comcast’s Policy VP refused to answer questions about the interference.)
Their word is worthless. Until the interference stops, I have no reason to believe it will. Until either meaningful competition returns to broadband, or until sufficient government regulation enforces Network Neutrality, we have no reason to think that this agreement will last through the night.
Robb Topolski
—–
TorrentFreak confronted Ashwin Navin of BitTorrent Inc. with Robb’s comments, and he told us: “We decided to collaborate with Comcast because they agreed to stop using RSTs, increase upload capacity, and evaluate network hardware that accelerates media delivery and file transfers. We’re at the beginning of the formal collaboration, but Robb’s work was instrumental to identify the offending practice. We need him and the community to keep an eye on ISPs across the world.”
“Our work with Comcast will benefit all P2P development because Comcast has agreed to manage traffic at Layer 3 (the network layer) rather than Layers 4-7 (the protocol/application layers). This is a core component of the neutrality debate,” he added.
As always, time will tell…
Previously: Norwegian ISPs Refuse MPAA’s Request to Disconnect Pirates
Next: Ridiculously Useless Bittorrent Software
62 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
He’s got a good point - Comcast isn’t to be trusted. If they want to be trusted, they need to earn it first, after all the corporate lies.
everybody that uses comcast just needs to boycott the company and move onto other more free isp’s. what better way to take out the bad guy then to completely remove his resources. they need our traffic to make money. take the traffic away and it’s like taking a lollipop from a kid.
@anon:
You may say that, but in my area its comcast or poor service/stability DSL.
In the states ISP “choice” consists of 2 carriers if you’re lucky. The real issue is the monopoly that exists. At this rate using my cell phone as my modem and sole ISP may be the way to go. The speeds are catching up and the price is about the same. That’ll throw a wrench in the works. Let’s see what happens with the “white space” deal.
comcast needs to get laid :)
My home has Comcast as an ISP. I’m at school now but I’m going home today. I’ll see if this is legit or just shit.
10-to-1 odds that Comcast pulls a fast one and goes back to some form of traffic shaping while still finding a way to maintain their “promise”.
My block pumpin and I’m tryin to keep that hoe pumpin
If niggaz snitchin them I let them niggaz hold sumthin
If a nigga owe sumthin need a doctors note from ‘em
Or his throat from ‘em
figures.
is there any way to check if my isp is fluxing up any?=)
[quote comment="322247"]In the states ISP “choice” consists of 2 carriers if you’re lucky. The real issue is the monopoly that exists. At this rate using my cell phone as my modem and sole ISP may be the way to go. The speeds are catching up and the price is about the same. That’ll throw a wrench in the works. Let’s see what happens with the “white space” deal.[/quote]
same with me,better if u invest in those cellular modem,but consider carefully the reception u get in your area,cos it really depends on feng-shui. leave it in the right place,u’ll get low ping/hi-speed,wrong place,u’ll get less than 52k/bps.
[quote comment="322238"]@anon:
You may say that, but in my area its comcast or poor service/stability DSL.[/quote]
If dissatisfied Comcast users migrate to smaller ISPs that offer poorer, less stable service, the increased user load may very well force them to upgrade their infrastructure and subsequently quit sucking. Or at the very least, suck less.
A single user certainly wouldn’t tip the scales, and it would more than likely require a concerted effort. But, it’s far from being utterly hopeless.
[quote comment="322371"][quote comment="322238"]@anon:
You may say that, but in my area its comcast or poor service/stability DSL.[/quote]
If dissatisfied Comcast users migrate to smaller ISPs that offer poorer, less stable service, the increased user load may very well force them to upgrade their infrastructure and subsequently quit sucking. Or at the very least, suck less.
A single user certainly wouldn’t tip the scales, and it would more than likely require a concerted effort. But, it’s far from being utterly hopeless.[/quote]
but whats to stop them from throttling traffic if they cant make the upgrades
i could say “i told you so” but i think is obvious.
I dont care if they team up with batman, stop interfering and do what your name implies, INTERNET SERVER PROVIDER, not INTERNET SERVER MODERATOR.
[quote comment="322411"]I dont care if they team up with batman, stop interfering and do what your name implies, INTERNET SERVER PROVIDER, not INTERNET SERVER MODERATOR.[/quote]
Well said. i hope you’re listening COMCRAP!!!!
[quote]“If dissatisfied Comcast users migrate to smaller ISPs that offer poorer, less stable service, the increased user load may very well force them to upgrade their infrastructure and subsequently quit sucking. Or at the very least, suck less.”[/quote]
[quote]“but whats to stop them from throttling traffic if they cant make the upgrades?”[/quote]
If they start throttling, they will lose all of the customers they gained, plus more.
Just, like, comcast.
Ron Paul is in the race to the end;
GO RON PAUL !!!
Lmao, its serVICE not serVER ;)
I’ve repeated this dozens of times. One more can’t hurt.
As a former employee, at the corporate headquarters in Philadelphia, PA, I can absolutely assure anyone who is interested, Comcast is 100% evil.
Mark my words - within the next year (and if you’d like to bookmark this comment and come back in a year to tell me I was wrong, feel free, cause it IS going to happen) - Comcast will implement a system that monitors your bandwidth usage, and when you hit a certain amount (like say oh 60GB per month) you’ll be put into a walled garden (ie. can’t surf the internet you can only view one page). That one page will display this:
You’ve run out of bandwidth. If you’d like to buy more, you can make a one time payment of (probably $10) for an additional 20GB to use this month. Otherwise, please sign up for our bandwidth pig plan, which gives you 80GB of bandwidth per month - which is an additional (probably) $7.99 per month.
The system to do this is already in place. It’s up and running now. All they have to do is flip a switch. At the meeting to discuss this “plan” the (at the time, VP) started off by saying “If I read about any of this on DSLReports, everyone in this room will be subpoenaed”. That was the only time I had ever attended a meeting where they were so concerned that the project would be “leaked” before they could figure out some bullshit spin.
Here’s how Comcast works, in a nutshell. They have a billion lawyers. Those lawyers will research the shit out of every law, and then Comcast will do absolutely everything and anything up to breaking that law, without actually breaking it.
The only thing that Comcast is scared about is the media. That is the one and ONLY way that they ever implement any kind of change. If you get your problem into the New York Times, it’ll get fixed the next day. I can absolutely guarantee that the last few months must have been hysterical in the PR, Marketing and Customer Support departments of corporate. The frantic meetings where they try to figure out a way to snake out of the bittorrent debacle would have been amazing to sit in on, for the sheer sake of comedy. I’ve sat in on/participated in dozens of similar meetings (google “Comcast bitch dog”) and the excuses they come up with are hysterical. Lawyers and PR never cease to amaze me with the bullshit spins they can come up with.
ps. anyone at corp hq who thinks they’ve figured out who I am, I wrote this comment from an Internet cafe using TOR (google it) so don’t bother asking torrentfreak for my ip. Fuckers.
@ #19
jesus
christ
…
@#19
Thanks not surprising at all. They already cancel your account if you go over 90 gigs a month, even though their services are labeled as “unlimited bandwidth”. Its not hard to imagine them changing it to 60 and forcing you to pay more.
I pay my isp good money and i trust it to connect me to the internet and let me download [and upload, yes dear ...] stuff without any limitation.
So far they never betrayed my trust (that´s 6 years of filesharing…).
Any is that which fucks its customers over like comcast did is simply not trustworthy. If a PERSON would lie to you, betray you, stab you in the back like comcast, what would you do, eh?
Tiered service for cable is nothing new — it’s been a part of the DOCSIS capability all along, so I fail to see why Comcast was fearful of reading about it on DSLReports.
Your cable modem is under the control of the provider due to DOCSIS and it has always been this way as part of the industry plan. The only reason it hasn’t already been implemented is the fact that they knew customers would balk. Now bittorrent has given them the excuse they needed to “turn it on.”
Time-Warner is doing it in Texas and this will soon be widespread and a standard across the country.
Anyone who didn’t know about this just hasn’t done their homework and researched how cable modem systems via DOCSIS actually work at the customer level.
Comcast will be saying, “All ur modem R belong to us” and there isn’t anything you can do about it except pay for a higher tier of service (more bandwidth).
haha thank god i dont have comcrap!!
See section C.6.6 “ServiceClassName” in this DOCSIS 3.0 spec document regarding tiered service capabilities:
http://www.cablelabs.com/specifications/CM-SP-OSSIv3.0-I06-080215.pdf
While this is DOCSIS 3.0, the implementation has been there in all previous versions.
@#3
It’s the same where I live(Chicago). You have Giant Corporate liars in Comcast with generally fast service or Giant Corporate liars in AT&T with slower service. Your choice.
Also I have not any seen interference at all here in the midwest. I suspect they were testing it where traffic was highest. East coast\West coast.
Comcast is only as evil as all the other corporate companies. Obviously they are trying to maximise profit, using marketing campaigns that sail very close to the wind of advertising regulations. They are perfectly entitled to charge extra for “excessive” bandwidth use, provided their adverts and AUP say so.
If they’ve advertised “unthrottled and unlimited bandwidth”, then complain to the agency that governs advertising standards.
The throttling might not ever stop, but if it’s written into the contracts of subscribers, at least it is legal. We just have to keep an eye on the companies that do it without warning. If you truly want “unlimited bandwidth” and no traffic-shaping, you’re going have to pay extra. I’d advise going to another ISP if possible. Competition in the marketplace can only work if customers actually change to different suppliers instead of just complaining about they ones they pay.
@#27 (ArtyTorrent)
No, they’re (Comcast) a monopoly. Not all corporate/Fortune 500 companies are. Most (well a semi-significant number) have competition. Your only other option for cable TV, in North America, is satellite. And that’s assuming you live somewhere that faces the right direction etc. And your only other option for broadband is DSL, and that’s assuming you live within a certain distance of a plant.
You even said “go to another ISP, if possible”. In a lot of cases, it’s not possible. Until cable companies are forced to share their lines with other companies (a la Ma Bell), we’re fucked. And through various PACs, Comcast (and Time Warner, Cox, Rogers and Shaw) own the FCC. And by own I mean own.
Thanks for fighting for us Robb! Sincerely. :D
Fact is, Comcast have lied, and continued to lie and cover up the fact they are messing with bandwith, and couldn’t care less for the FCC
http://www.fileprompt.com
@19 “Former Employee” –
Thanks for the story. Their behavior matches exactly the corporate culture that you describe.
You’re not the first person to tell me about this part: “…a system that monitors your bandwidth usage, and when you hit a certain amount (like say oh 60GB per month) you’ll be put into a walled garden (ie. can’t surf the internet you can only view one page). That one page will display this: You’ve run out of bandwidth. If you’d like to buy more…”
The sad thing is that smart executives and career-minded employees avoid poisonous companies like Comcast. They leave, usually quickly. And they talk.
This has been a boon for Comcast’s opposition.
And the ones that don’t quit are rather quickly neutered. I noticed that we haven’t heard from Mr. “We Don’t Throttle” (Comcast PR-man Charlie Douglas) for several months. He reappeared from the dead on Thursday. Demonstrating, once again, Thursday’s BitTorrent announcement was all about fixing their PR problem.
@19 “Former Employee” — you’re awesome! Thanks!
I have Comcast as it’s really my only option since I moved recently. I have yet to notice any changes since their announcement. i did think I could actually get a worse service than Charter but Comcast is worse by far.
Someone’s been posting this huge list of trackers on digg comments. Turns out they’re pretty useful and the biggest list of this kind I’ve seen yet:
http://singularweb.blogspot.com/2008/03/list-of-public-and-private-bittorrent.html
Anyone know any other lists like this?
@#23 you can buy your own cable modem I had one from d-link so they can’t say they own it becuase I bought it from best buy not them. So how could they use that reason if you can buy your own modem? They more then likely will though I had good service from them but when I had to move they tried to say I two more cable boxes then my bill said and tried to charge me for a modem to.
Comcast are clueless. Check this out:
Their VP at a trade conference announced he was going to put cameras inside their set top boxes so he could see who is watching shows. Comcast is truly run by idiots: http://weblog.infoworld.com/robertxcringely/archives/2008/03/geek_week_evoti.html
and I thought things were bad ,here in India,
our ISP’s actively throttle speeds but never overcharge us, anyways its on 9$ for 2 mbps so who’d complain ?
Robb speaks the truth. These scum are not trustworthy.
In the city where comcast started, they screwed everybody over by offering non-digital cable and then moving the channels around so that you only get 15 channels that aren’t local infomercials. The city won’t make Comcast sign a contract and won’t hear offers from other cable companies. It’s either comcast or AT&T and they both suck. Of course, they are still doing the RST bullcrap here and I’m not even getting enough of “the stream,” as they refer to it(the onsite comcast techs don’t even know what packets are or what TCP is), to make two boxes be able to access the guide.
May that miserable corp be eaten alive by cellphone networks!
i took training to be a comcast rep once and i can see how people can get this idea that there lieing to you somehow but read your contract im willing to bet there is a clause makeing a vague refrence to an undesclosed amount of bandwith alotted for customers to ensure fair use of bandwith at all times for its other users. if you exceed the alloted amount and your the only one on your node there not going to give a crap as long as your not preventing another paying customer of there service.
that being said i hate them as much as you all but they just prey on us addicts of the internet who need are files faster =(
I left comcast for “slower” DSL and I am more satisfied with my consistently predictable download speeds than I was with the very frequent dns/connection/intermitancy problems that I experienced with comcast. Dump them.
we love all our customers
Bell Canada is doing the same thing as comcast and yesterday their PR spokesman was caught calling journalists “lemmings” on his facebook profile. Read all about it here:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20247550-Jason-Laszlo-Bell-spokesmans-real-thoughts-on-this-issue
Oh noes! I can’t get my stolen shit anymore!
Wonder how many of the people who think this is ok would be happy with others using their wife for sex? After all nothing is being stolen.
@post 19
What you said lines up exactly with Ashwin’s comments
““Our work with Comcast will benefit all P2P development because Comcast has agreed to manage traffic at Layer 3 (the network layer) rather than Layers 4-7 (the protocol/application layers). This is a core component of the neutrality debate,” he added.”
They are moving management to level 3 of the OSI model, the network layer which consists of routers. Apparently they will stop stop the packet inspection (upper layers), and simply focus on total bw (router level).
ahhh, the old “NOT!” joke, nice.
lets set an emp off in the comcast building
Another little Comcast blocking others tidbit:
I am supposed to receive email notifications called “Jackpot Alerts” from the State of Michigan Lottery. Well, I haven’t received any in a while and when I inquired about it via the “Player City” portal of the SOM Lottery site, it stated that Comcast is actually blocking those emails!!!
The site stated they were working to resolve the issue.
Hope Verizon or ATT come into our area soon!
Comcast (after nuking my current ISP, tookever) just recently said they increased line speed from 10 to 12Mbit in this area. I don’t know if upload speed changed at all I will have to check in detail. I also have not been throttled as much as in recent history but they might just be scaling back as this area is not high in population or file sharers it seems.
It blows to have comcast as your only real fast high speed ISP but surewest is stepping up in my area and is now running fiber optics by by comcrap.
Very interesting article I most say it does not surprise me comcast is crap first of all.. They lie about their prices an then raise your rates months before the agreed contract date if you are reading these goto the smaller isp company’s I did Clearwire is out there they may not be the fastest but if others go aboard they will have to expand.. Do Not support the Enemy let them suffer
[quote comment="322742"]@#23 you can buy your own cable modem I had one from d-link so they can’t say they own it becuase I bought it from best buy not them. So how could they use that reason if you can buy your own modem? They more then likely will though I had good service from them but when I had to move they tried to say I two more cable boxes then my bill said and tried to charge me for a modem to.[/quote]
Apparently you have no idea what “DOCSIS” is. You can buy your own cable modem, but if it isn’t DOCSIS compliant (to the standard that Comcast requires) they won’t enable that modem. Just buying your own modem does absolutely nothing. The modem will not work until you call them and give them the MAC address of the modem and then they run a diagnostic before it’s enabled. DOCSIS has you by the balls.
Comcast is my ISP and they still won’t let me seed any torrents. :(
Well looks like Comcast had alter motives
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/01/comcast_acquires_bittorrent/
just switched from at&t to comcast. After a couple days of ‘I can’t seed’ it appears comcast has let me do just that. i even put utorrent upload speed on automatic and watched the ul speed graph jump to 216kb/s (speedboost?) before sliding down to a wavy 45-49kb/s. now seeding speed is steady at whatever i set up to 46kb/s. It has only been about a week so I’m still waiting for the “you’re using too much bandwidth” letter or some kind of network interference.
“22 Mar 29, 2008 at 22:17 by 22
…. If a PERSON would lie to you, betray you, stab you in the back like comcast, what would you do, eh?”
@#22
Why… you would elect them to congress of course… lol…
:)
“39 Mar 30, 2008 at 15:34 by kersh
…i took training to be a comcast rep once and i can see how people can get this idea that there lieing to you somehow but read your contract im willing to bet there is a clause makeing a vague refrence to an undesclosed amount of bandwith alotted for customers to ensure fair use of bandwith at all times for its other users. if you exceed the alloted amount and your the only one on your node there not going to give a crap as long as your not preventing another paying customer of there service.
that being said i hate them as much as you all but they just prey on us addicts of the internet who need are files faster =(”
@#39
I’ve read my TOS and you are correct.. My problem still is… what is the amount they consider to be “excessive”…??
Ive heard it’s anywhere from 90 GB (my area) to as much as 300 GB in other areas…
Just friggin’ tell me the amount so that I won’t go over it instead of shutting down my service and threatening me with termination for a year for a repeat offense.. If I don’t know how much is too much, how can I avoid a repeat if you refuse to tell me in the first place…??
Comcrap just sucks is all..
And like the others have said, my choice is Comcrap or satellite… And satellite already said they cannot work for me because of the big buildings blocking me…. :)
Hey. I’m wondering the clouds as to what happened to that 1.
Pirate bay as always are doing well for themselves as always + P2P seems to going down fast. Well I always knew that torrents are slowly becoming more user friendly but I never thought personally they’re on the decline. The whole point of Comcast’s interference is try to make it an other Vuze Imagine but at the same time it was their idea. It’s a complicated world we live in (in) now days.
Still what’s this about all about it was all known from the begining. Have any 1 seen what interference did to Gnutella!?! Yikes.
where are the hackers when you need them?
Can flowers really elevate your mood? I think it’s the intention behind them thats the key. Flowers really make you feel appreciated.
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