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
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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.
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