BitTorrent Throttling ISPs Exposed by Azureus
Written by Ernesto on April 21, 2008Data collected by the BitTorrent client Azureus shows that Comcast might only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to BitTorrent throttling ISPs. Early findings show that customers from quite a few other Internet service providers experience an unusually high amount of TCP-resets.
ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for quite a while, but only since the Comcast debacle has this been picked up by mainstream media.
A few months ago Azureus petitioned the FCC, which led to a FCC hearing in February. One of the complaints from the commission was that there is little data available on the scope of BitTorrent throttling, a gap Azureus now tries to fill by collecting data on the prevalence of TCP-resets among ISPs worldwide.
Last month Azureus published a plugin through which users can help distinguishing the good from the bad ISPs, and today we have a preview of some early findings. A massive 1,000,000 hours of data from over 8000 users has been collected over the past few weeks. The preliminary results again confirm that Comcast continues to use TCP-resets to manage BitTorrent traffic on their network, but they are not alone.
The rest of the Vuze/Azureus report (pdf) includes the median reset rates for hundreds of other ISPs
| ISP | Country | Reset % |
| Comcast | USA | 23.72% |
| Cogeco | Canada | 19.13% |
| Emirates Internet | UAE | 17.86% |
| Cablevision | USA | 17.58% |
| Brasil Telecom Santa Catarina, | Brazil | 17.43% |
| TM Net | Malaysia | 16.80% |
| BellSouth | USA | 15.88% |
| Tedata | Egypt | 15.33% |
| Tiscali | UK | 14.89% |
| AOL | USA | 14.88% |
TCP resets seem to be more common for American ISPs, and Comcast leads the bunch. The Azureus team has sent a letter to Cablevision, Cogeco, BellSouth and AOL, where they request that the companies are open about their BitTorrent throttling practices. Thus far, the ISPs have not responded to the letters.
At the bottom of the list we see the good ISPs, mostly from Europe. There are other ways to throttle BitTorrent traffic, besides using TCP-resets, a list of ISPs who are known to limit BitTorrent traffic is available on the Azureus Wiki.
| ISP | Country | Reset % |
| Telecom Italia France | France | 2.53% |
| Orange Nederland | The Netherlands | 2.57% |
| WiLine | USA | 2.78% |
| Telefonica | Germany | 3.60% |
| Freenet | Germany | 4.21% |
It has to be noted that the data gathering techniques Vuze uses are far from optimal. The plugin detects all TCP resets on a connection and doesn’t make a distinction between BitTorrent and other traffic, and there is no control group.
The Azureus/Vuze team will continue to collect data, and stated:
“We believe that there is sufficient data to suggest that network management practices that ‘throttle’ Internet traffic are widespread. At a minimum, more investigation is required to determine whether these resets are happening in the ordinary course of business or whether they represent the kind of throttling practices which target specific applications and/or protocols, harming the consumer experience and stifling innovation.”
The preliminary results presented here do indeed indicate that Comcast is not the only ISP that uses TCP resets to slow down BitTorrent traffic. People are encouraged to continue using the plugin so more robust data can be presented in the near future.
Previously: Biohazard Bassist Blasts BitTorrent
Next: BitTorrent Tracker Software “Gazelle” Debuts on What.cd
101 Responses
WHAT A PACK OF ARROGANT PRICKS.
SOMEONE SHOULD ALSO TEST ‘EIRCOM’ IRELANDS MAIN ISP.
THEY ARE MONITORING MY PORTS RIGHT NOW
(EIRCOM WATCHDOG IN PEERGUARDIAN.)
WTF….
__
(:s)
Its unfortunate, but true.
My privacy is being invaded. Do I smell a lawsuit or two or a few? I think so. So be it you stinking ISP’s. ISP stands for Imbecile Shi__y People. Feel the power of the lady called “sue”!
Hey isp’s I really like to throttle something up your rectums you freaking jerks.
Not really surprising.
All the ISPs listed are evil, no wounder they are throttling the traffic, i would never choose one of those. o_O
I can totally understand that data, since the same thing happens to me. My ISP recently got bought by AOL, and I’ll change ISPs Very Soon Now. Since then I’ve been experiencing disconnects when I put my wire under full load for more than about 2 days a month. Upload seems OK, but they don’t like me downloading stuff. After about 2 days or even less of using my wire to download stuff at average speeds greater than 100 kb/s, they start to frequently disconnect me. Then I have to wait for a certain grace period to be over, it seems to be about 10 days or some time after the start of a new month.
AOL just sucks big time…
The RIAA and many other record execs are making quiet secret deals (with isp’s) behind closed doors. Paying them quite well to disrupt the sharing community in the world. I wonder if the i.r.s. will find out about these deals and tax the crap out of them.
Net Neutrality?
My arse…
I am from Canada and use a local ISP that has to rent its cable through Cogeco. And the throttling is HORRIBLE.
I have QWEST DSL, and I get full bandwidth, in some cases I get higher download speeds with BT than I do regular HTTP downloading
I wonder what’s the Comcast-speak doing here. Insertion of TCP resets is NOT throttling. Throttling works quite differently and isn’t necessarily especially with asymmetric connections.
AOL is sending resets? Are you sure that is not just because of dialup performance? or was the test done on AOL Broadband in the UK?
Most of AOL US is dialup. Also, AOL sold the UK biz to CPW almost 2 years ago now.
I didn’t see Teksavvy on that pdf document. Do they not throttle at all or do I not know how to read?
I was wondering how TimeWarner/Bright House Network is doing tcp reset too?
Didn’t see Mediacom CC but they should be up there as well. They’re worse than comcast.
Rapidshare + Orbit is there to rescue you.
which is why i love RCN.
Keep in mind the ISP/ASNs on the list had more then 20 unique users. Smaller ISPs might be doing it as well, but wouldn’t be listed until enough users in that area are sharing data.
I’ve long suspected that Virgin Media (Telewest Broadband) were up to this after myself and several friends have found it next to impossible to persistently seed on private sights
I am sure the RIAA and MPAA is behind the resets. Increasing and investing in the future by creating a better interent ramp is the correct answer: with Hollwood and the greedy fat dinosaurs threatening
isps its no wonder they can’t think straight. Isps have been threatened with legislation to force them to comply to policing the internet if they do not cooperate willingly like meek little pussys.
Bellsouth is in the southeastern US not Canada. Officially they have been taken over by AT&T, but much of the behind the scenes network stuff has yet to be fully integrated into AT&T’s systems.
http://www.SceneNotice.com
no mention about bell canada?
I never get throttle I share my stash on a private friend to friend network, http://www.Dargens.com . It is encrypted and spoofs SSL on 443 so IPS can’t touch it.
[quote comment="354415"]I didn’t see Teksavvy on that pdf document. Do they not throttle at all or do I not know how to read?[/quote]
Teksavvy doesn’t, but they are forced
to resell through Bell (Sympatico), and they throttle all traffic which is
not their own (and their own as well).
Oh, and a big EFF YOU to Wordpress “You Are Posting Comments Too Quickly. Slow Down.”
quote:@22
Apr 21, 2008 at 17:08 by SceneNoticeQuote SceneNotice
http://www.SceneNotice.com
HI TAKASHI
I think metered usage may be a possibility. Per for usage. Just like you pay for utilities like water & power. One internet cafe I went to in France made you buy a card. You got more time per Euro when less people were using computers and gave you less time per Euro when it was busy.
All-you-can-eat (”unlimited”) is a lie and its time ISPs put some truth in their advertising.
Nice. I guess I have the second best P2P friendly ISP in Portugal. Just 9.07%
Great Article, stuff like this is informative.
[quote comment="354512"]I think metered usage may be a possibility. Per for usage. Just like you pay for utilities like water & power. One internet cafe I went to in France made you buy a card. You got more time per Euro when less people were using computers and gave you less time per Euro when it was busy.
All-you-can-eat (”unlimited”) is a lie and its time ISPs put some truth in their advertising.[/quote]
Water is flat rate in Norway, but not electricity. Internet is also flat rate. Also, I get my max speed both up and down and my ISP (Telenor) don’t care if I download 20 GB in a week (which I’ve just done).
coming soon to an isp near you ;)
its greatttttttttttt to be on the verizon dsl network aint it?
LOL, the Cogeco forums on broadbandreports are a blast.. NOT. The corporate sympathizers and denial of bittorrent throttling runs rampant over there. Hundreds of complaints, all met by people who tell them they don’t know how to use bittorrent, resulting in flame wars every time.
Gay (in the bad way).
Glad my ISP isn’t on the bad list (TimeWarner Cable/RoadRunner), but then again I never experience any BitTorrent slowdowns or throttling of any kind.
Isnt there a way to defeat this? A way around this? Some tool to stop this?
The important question is, will users now transfer away from those companies or continue to reward them with their patronage.
wtf where is my fkn results, i run this plugin many weeks and no results!? btw ISP Irish Broadband Internet Services Limited.
fuck that, i’ll uninstall that useless plugin.
Getting disconnected a lot when i download, my ISP is Electronic Box in Montreal Canada. I guess they bought band from Cogeco or Videotron… and Internet by phone dont get to my house, im suposedly too far from the central, WTF im in montreal !
WTB The French Connection!
Any info about Australian ISPs?
if you don’t set up port forwarding through your firewall for vuze
your going to get high reset rates like this (20%)
A friend of mine works for the company that handles the throttling for Rogers in Ontario
@43: Why didn’t the cunt come clean and notify consumers of Rogers?
It doesn’t surprise me a bit that Cablevision (owners of Optimum Online) are the fourth-highest throttlers. What’s sickeningly hypocritical about this is the endless stream of commercials they have almost exclusively devoted to telling people how *zomg fast* their service is.
This doesn’t even address their practice of clandestinely restricting your upload to 150 kbps/18 KB/s (when you’re paying for 2 mbps) if you go over some arbitrary, undefined limit. They don’t even notify you that this is done and you have to call them up to get “uncapped”. Awesome service, this, eh?
Been using Comcast for years and have NEVER had a problem
I understand all this anger here. We should get esteem and not anger!
tmnet babi tmnet babi
@37 – The summary of the results only includes ASNs with more than 20 users. Your results should be in the summary section, and keep in mind the data us listed by ASN, which for small ISPs might be differnt from the ASN name.
Download the raw data, to see which ASN your in.
aol = timewarner, i have timewarner and ive never had any problem’s. hopefully it stays that way.
this same as cheating .
Cox is f-ing huge why the f aren’t they on there?
[quote comment="354415"]I didn’t see Teksavvy on that pdf document. Do they not throttle at all or do I not know how to read?[/quote]
You can’t read. They’re number 32 on the list. Horrible. Only Rogers Canada is worse where I am. Unbelievable. I would sign up with an ISP right now if they could promise me they wouldn’t throttle. I’d even promise not to pirate (for a while…)
I’m angry that Comcast throttles my connection from 6MB down to 800KB anytime I start uTorrent. I was going to switch to Bell South DSL but now I see that they’re also guilty. I guess my revenge will be to leave my computer on with uTorrent running 24/7. The cost of the electricity will be worth it.
throttle this throttle that….why is it such a big deal who the go between is in the ftp scandal. bo hoo “i cant get the new will smith movie any faster that 30kb/s!” ftp-ing movies is agents the law shit sorry to mention that out sharing rights are getting infringed upon.
Glad to not see Verizon on that list :)
I’ve had great luck with their FiOs service (they probably hate me with all the bandwidth I suck from them).
[quote comment="354493"]no mention about bell canada?[/quote]
RTFA and if your scroll mouse is broken, ctrl+F and type “Bell Canada” when reading the pdf.
@ Anonymous poster #13: Teksavvy does not throttle. Bell Canada (the ISP they purchase their bandwidth from) is doing meta-throttling on their behalf. Teksavvy is currently fighting Bell Canada to have the throttling stopped.
> Comcast throttles my connection
> from 6MB down to 800KB
Do you know the different between 6 megabits and 6 megabytes?
how about cox? I always get real good DL/UL speeds with them without any problems. I am also running business
speed at my home.
im on that shit load TM Net,punk ass ISP.i hope throttling come to an end soon.
i really hate the fact that in my area, your only choices are comcast or dialup. so we are BONED.
@ Post #13:
TekSavvy doesn’t throttle, they’re currently having their last-mile connections throttled by Bell, but they’re fighting that with the CRTC (government regulator). That’s probably why they were excluded, the company opposes throttling.
I took the liberty to put a link to this page on my blog since I’m a user of Brasil Telecom here in Santa Catarina. (Santa Catarina is a state on the south of Brazil, just in case)
By the way, thanks BrTelecom, for making my 2mbit conexion look like a 256kbit.
http://etafner.free.fr
Malaysia’s TM Net service is atrocious. They have a crazy monopoly over the country’s internet services and provide piss poor service. Throttled torrents, horrible international connections for gaming, really bad upload speeds.
rapidshare is good solution
http://www.makeoverfun.net
@Ezzy
p2p huh, doest that require u to have a fudging fast upload speed so ur peer can download at a decent speed?
ims only 50KB+ max >.<
They forgot to mention COX. On the dc.dc.cox.net servers they are throttling with reset packets making it very hard to seed data.
if you aren’t too poor, with comcast u can call them and ask them for a faster plan for like 5 bucks more a month. its not something they advertise on their website, but in Wash. DC area they have it, puts your speed at 24Mbit down, and 3-5 Mbit up.
upload speed even gets close to 10Mbit if other person is on comcast network. if you goto one of their offices they have a shitty little price list printed up, its just below where it says you can buy extra ip’s for 5 bucks a month. sucks to have to pay more, but no reset problems, seeding is ok
I would like a program that monitors as client. Then it would be possible to test with Utorrent too.
The worst fact in the report, I think, is that only 8000 people joined the effort.
All you whiners that can’t find your ISP in the list, don’t you realize that means you admit to not participating?
Shame on all of you that think a few of us should do all the work for you. PARASITES!!!!
I’m a bit sceptical of the usefulness of this test. I think what’s really needed is for someone to knock together something akin to a client/server package able to initiate transfer tests using many different protocols and ports. Then you could run straight comparisson tests to reveal protocol biasing, including the more-common bandwidth limiting.
Monitoring for resets isn’t a very good way of doing things at all.
The test may be correct but people shouldn’t draw the wrong conclusions from it. This doesn’t say anything about what speed you can get from downloading or uploading.
If u think they do it because they care about copyright, think again
tmnet malaysia chibai ham ka chan lan jiao
TELEFONICA IS SPANISH, NOT GERMAN.
And yes, Spain is in Europe.
while i know that att/nee’ bellsouth throttles me, i don’t think it’s vindictive. they have simply oversold the service. same situation as calling on mother’s day using a land line. what is unfair is the application: usuallly they choke only downloads, but sometimes only uploads. and then there are times bit torrent is no go, but rapidshare is just fine. this tells me the throttle isn’t automated.
I just hop there is a way to stop this.
[quote comment="355155"]I’m a bit sceptical of the usefulness of this test. I think what’s really needed is for someone to knock together something akin to a client/server package able to initiate transfer tests using many different protocols and ports. Then you could run straight comparisson tests to reveal protocol biasing, including the more-common bandwidth limiting.
Monitoring for resets isn’t a very good way of doing things at all.[/quote]
http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency/bttest.php
TMnet in Malaysia certainly throttles P2P traffic.
Anyway they have no competition…
http://tech-talk.biz/
[quote comment="355872"]http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency/bttest.php[/quote]
Yep, like that though as a standalone client & server application set that anyone could run to/from anyplace and run tests across many different protocols, including P2P, VOIP, encrypted streams, streaming media, and so on.
I’m too dumb to code myself, so…
http://www.neutralidadsi.org/2008/04/los-numeros-no-mienten-los-isps-chilenos-intervienen-las-descargas-p2p/
You’ve published results for the Top 10 TCP resetters. But, what about the eleventh, Banda Ancha SA from Chile (a.k.a. VTR, http://www.vtr.net ) Please, Vuze, send them some letters too!
fuck tiscali. im finally shot em thank god
Damn, I have Bellsouth.
Thought I was safe but now I know why I can’t get super fast speeds like everyone else.
Cool, I’ve been waiting for this report.
I’m on the list, and now I’m warned.
Thanks Torrentfreak and Azureus.
[quote comment="354781"]throttle this throttle that….why is it such a big deal who the go between is in the ftp scandal. bo hoo “i cant get the new will smith movie any faster that 30kb/s!” ftp-ing movies is agents the law shit sorry to mention that out sharing rights are getting infringed upon.[/quote]
um, are we discussing ftp or bittorent?
If you run Azureus on Window, install the plug in. At present OSX and Linux plugins are not available at present unfortunately.
I’m proud that TM Net is on the list of 10 bastard ISP
Score. Mines not on the list.
Thats good while I wait for Fibre to show up in AZ.
haha couldn’t agree more with u no.87
Unfortunately, they are the one around long enough not to bail out after 3 months of services. Well that’s what I known. I may be wrong :)
[quote comment="354372"]Hey isp’s I really like to throttle something up your rectums you freaking jerks.[/quote]
+10
they r doing the same in INDIA also
So err, why can’t the torrent programs just be programmed ignore the RST requests..?
Bell Canada not only throttled it’s own ISP traffic, but because of our dumb government, the telecommunication infrastructure that the tax payers paid for was given to Bell Canada to control, and now they are abusing that right by throttling the traffic of all DSL competition. Basically, it’s an anti-competitive move by Bell Canada and hopefully they get spanked hard by the Canadian government and lose their rights to control those lines.
Damn Canadian ISPs. Bell, Rogers, Cogeco, Shaw, Videotron, Telus, even the universities… They’re all doing it. Every single last one of them.
Fuck ‘em all. (And my university U of T is throttling YouTube too.)
Three words: Usenet with SSL.
I’d finally had it with the lack of seeds on public trackers and you’d probably have a better chance at winning the lottery than getting into any decent private trackers (i.e. blackcats games). Plus, even if you do get into a decent private tracker you still have to worry about dumbass ratios.
I’ve noticed more and more private trackers asking for “donations” and it wouldn’t suprise me if private trackers start charging some kind of monthly fee for access.
I was finally fed up and signed on with Giganews. Now, I download at 100% of my available speed, NO UPLOADING, no ratios, and no bullshit. Why donate to a tracker when you can sign on with Usenet? And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of anyone getting busted on Usenet. The decision is pretty simple for me.
The only disadvantage I can see that Usenet has over BitTorrent is that binary files only stay on the servers for 200 days. But even then if you can’t find what you want (which is rare for me) post a request and usually within a day it magically appears.
Giganews has SSL too so you don’t have to worry about anyone snooping on your traffic and trying to throttle you.
Yes folks, there is a better way. It’s called Usenet.
Usenet for life FTW!!!!!
I use Be Unlimited (Avatar Broadband) in the uk. Ranked at 13.19%. I long suspected they were doing this and now I know! There is a solution. Use the Relakks encrypted network. If you find that you get 10x the speed through an encrypted network as I do, its pretty clear your ISP is interfering. Not only that, but its cheap and available monthly so you can just try it and see! Best $5 I ever spent.
I get 10% resets during download (nominal) and around 50% when seeding….so median is definitely not right in my case.
I’m on the worst of the comcast side, as well aka Chicago suburb.
They have a million excuses too: “oh, its the weather” is a favorite, sometimes 3-4x in the same week after a tech comes.
comcast…
Ok so EVERYONE complains about comcast, but why?
Ive had comcast since i moved into my new house (2.5 years ago) and haven’t had any problems.
I am paying for a 4meg connection and when I open it up to full with no limits, it goes as high as 6megs (with no disconnects).
I am honestly not seeing this throttling and considering I have downloaded 400gigs worth of content in the past 4 months: I don’t see where it is coming from.
Enlighten me please…
I believe Virgin Media here in the UK does it, too. They have a throttling policy for times between 16:00-02:00 in general but for torrents it kicks in throughout the entire day.
Both Bell Canada (Sympatico) and Rogers cable are throttling bigtime. There is talk of legislating them to stop, and there was a fair size protest in Ottawa last weekend about the unfairness of invasion on net neutrality.
You can sign a petition at a website about net neurtrality for Canadian isp’s but I forget the url. Google will find it easy enough.
JFuA1F wrerrerreteee
vJ52VD eeeerrrffddgggggggccccc
27 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.