Comcast Teams Up With BitTorrent and Promises Net Neutrality
Comcast has announced that it will lift the ban on BitTorrent traffic, which prevented its users from sharing files using the popular protocol. The ISP and BitTorrent Inc. will work together on finding customer friendly solutions for the congestion allegedly caused by BitTorrent traffic.
Comcast has announced that it will stop targeting BitTorrent transfers and has said it will invest in its network capacity. For the time being the company will throttle users who use the most bandwidth, not all BitTorrent users per se.
Comcast’s chief technology officer Tony Warner said: “Rather than slow traffic by certain types of applications — such as file-sharing software or companies like BitTorrent — Comcast will slow traffic for those users who consume the most bandwidth.”
Comcast hoped it could quietly interfere with its customer’s BitTorrent activities without getting too much attention. Unfortunately for them, their actions didn’t go unnoticed, and during August last year we broke the news that this ISP does indeed mess with its customers internet connections.
Comcasts actions sparked the debate about what “reasonable” network management practices are, and this eventually resulted in a FCC hearing last month.
It now seems that Comcast saw the light, and wants to invest in more Internet gateway capacity after all. BitTorrent Inc. announced today that it will work together with the ISP to optimize their software, so that it puts less stress on the network.
Ashwin Navin, president of BitTorrent Inc. told TorrentFreak: “We are happy that Comcast is increasing the upload capacity on its network and that they will stop sending TCP resets to BitTorrent clients. We plan to jointly test how ISPs can better address the large volume of P2P traffic and share our research with all ISPs and application developers. This is a huge win for the Internet community as a whole.”
Still, Comcast will continue to throttle heavy users, who actually use the bandwidth that was promised to them in their contracts. It is to be expected that Comcast and other ISPs will have to step away from the all-you-can-eat plans they have been offering for years, now that people actually start to use bandwidth they signed up for.
Previously: TorrentSpy Shuts Down
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“The ISP and BitTorrent Inc. will work together”
And also as we know MPAA is financing BitTorrent Inc. so this all seems to go just for the ‘right’ direction…
“Rather than slow traffic by certain types of applications — such as file-sharing software or companies like BitTorrent — Comcast will slow traffic for those users who consume the most bandwidth.”
Yea, cause /thats/ better. Notice no hard figures on what counts as “most bandwidth.”
Nothing’s going to change, now they just have more excuses.
I don’t think ISPs should ever be focusing on manipulating particular protocol types, rather, they should simply take a protocol-neutral stance and introduce general usage guidelines and rules to govern subscriber consumption habits. Afterall, wasn’t the problem here bandwidth availiability, than ‘the BitTorrent protocol’?
Now the question is: do I remove the “access-list 101 deny tcp any any eq 123 rst” rule from the router ?:)
“Now the question is: do I remove the “access-list 101 deny tcp any any eq 123 rst” rule from the router ?:)”
HAAHHA nice
“Rather than slow traffic by certain types of applications — such as file-sharing software or companies like BitTorrent”
They slowed down BitTorrent as a company? I doubt that but let’s not expect that a chief technology officer actually has a clue about technology. His title is probably misleading and he’s really just a bandwidth cop and injecting TCP-RST is the equivalent as using a Taser on his customers. Comcast gave BitTorrent a lot of free publicity which had exactly the opposite effect of slowing anyone down.
Comcast wouldn’t publish such statements if they weren’t shaking with fear and deep down in the shit.
So… Comcast: “We won’t penalize a specific protocol, now we’ll just discriminate against customers using exactly what they paid for”
THEY’RE PROMISING NOT TO BE NETWORK NEUTRAL RIGHT THERE.
Why i still don`t belive this bs? What kind of net are they using? From 15th century? :D
Does anyone have full text of the WSJ article that these quotes are pulled from? It’s subscription required ($).
They were quite happy messing with traffic until they got caught, now that they’ve been found out (and let’s not forget all those lies about not deliberately penalising BT in the first place) they’re pretending to play nice, and in turn going to punish ALL protocols that make the most out of their net connections.
I’m surprised Comcast has ANY non-casual customers anymore. anyone who plays online games, uses p2p, torrents or runs a server should be ditching them ASAP
Haha, they are indeed, still not offering a “decent product”. When someone signs a contract for a 1mbit up line, he should be able to seed (theoretically ofcourse) 1mbit up for 24 hours, 7 days a week. UNLESS they would start to advertise what their badnwith limit is, ex.: 50gb a month. Then at least you would know what you’re signing for. I can’t believe how a company actually wants to screw their users over like that. That’s like ordering 2 sandwiches and getting 1,5 with the companying saying: FUCK YOU! You’re only getting 1,5, but you have to buy this every month cause you signed a 2 year contract mwuahahaha.
/
At last some sh!t head in comcast thought that messing up with torrent users is like messing up with their companies profit….and their d!ck …!
For all isp out there…dont mess with torrent community! You dont need to know the consequence….will you?
http://www.hack5.blogspot.com
Anon
Vince wrote:
LMAO, you actually WANT what your PAYING for?? you actually EXPECT to get what they ADVERTISE??? CUMCAST has always been the first ones to kick a customer, you dont mean ANYTHING to them. They are like the RIAA, they are probably sitting there right now, trying to figure out a way to SUE their own customers, to boost revenue. They are gonna find a way to squirm around this one too.
WSJ articles are viewable when approaching them from Google News. So in this case:
http://news.google.com/news?q=Long+at+loggerheads,+cable+provider+Comcast+Corp&hl=en&lr=en&cr=us
Yeah, I agree; Comcast did not legit at all.
That 2 –> 1.5 sandwiches was a great analogy; they are still going to be unfair to p2p.
But, it is still progress; because now they are being equally unfair to the worlds of:
1) online video
2) online gaming
3) online radio
4) online telephone
5) online servers.
This increases the number of legitimate complaints significantly, and increases the odds of Comcast improving their infrastructure and reducing their restrictions significantly.
Its not a Total Win, but it is Significant Progress.
GO RON PAUL !!!
GO RON PAUL !!!
GO RON PAUL !!!
Comcast has always picked on the heaviest users. They send out letters to these heavy users that claim they are exceeding an unwritten usage limit. If you ask what the limit is, they won’t tell you. The solution is to have many more Comcast customers increase their usage, then the same people don’t show up in the top percentage of bandwidth consumers every time.
They charge for an unlimited service yet they limit you if you download too much.
FUCK YOU COMCAST. I’M WITH QWEST AND THEY ARE FAST AS HELL!
Comcast should have realized in their marketing strategy that if you offer an unlimited service IT BETTER DAMN WELL BE UNLIMITED!
april fools!
sounds like a good move comcast.
wtf were you smoking when you came up with the original plan?? fucking corporate execs out of tune with the digital world/news sharing concept.
they didn’t see the light, they thought of the fcc hearing.
I just ran a 12GB torrent thru Azureus with the new ‘Network Status Monitor’ plugin and the average RST ratio was 87%.
Who’s your daddy now (comcast)?
“Comcast hoped it could quietly interfere with its customer’s BitTorrent activities without getting too much attention.”
Those guys were seriously on crack, weren’t they? ;-)
“Comcast hoped it could quietly interfere with marathon runners by slowing them to a 3mph walking pace in a single file line without getting too much attention.”
Fixed, and yes, the drugs were rampant.
yeah fuckin right they are still limiting bandwidth usage still fuck comcast
Hennesy Wayans wrote:
um didnt he drop out like last month?
to me anyone that gets a contract thru COMCAST must be just as new to the internet, as a n00b is to torrents thinking that a movie (ex.10000 BC) is 3MB big (virus anyone?)my ISP promised me UP TO 6MB with no contract and ya know what i get ? THE FULL 6MB and then sometimes even 7MB
ALIANT RULEZ!!
COMCAST, GO FUCK YOUR HELMET!!!!!
but thats just my take on things………
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