Comcast Lied to FCC, Blocks BitTorrent Traffic 24/7
Written by Ernesto on May 15, 2008New data on Comcast’s interference with BitTorrent traffic shows that the company misinformed the FCC this February. Comcast has always argued that BitTorrent upstream traffic was only blocked during periods of heavy network traffic, this turns out to be a lie.
BitTorrent throttling is not a new phenomenon, but it is getting more attention lately, because the number of people who use BitTorrent keeps growing. Up until today however, there has been no reliable data that revealed the scope of it.
Last week we reported on a new and reliable tool that tests whether or not your BitTorrent traffic is being limited. The tool is developed by the Max Planck Institute, who have released new data today. The findings reveal that the BitTorrent connections of half of Comcast and Cox’s customers are being cut. In addition, the data shows that these practices take place 24/7, disproving Comcast’s earlier statement to the FCC
“Comcast’s network management practices (1) only affect the protocols that have a demonstrated history of generating excessive burdens on the network; (2) only manage those protocols during periods of heavy network traffic,” Comcast wrote in a filing to the FCC last February.
This is far from the truth. As can be seen for the graph below, there is little difference in the percentage of blocked customers throughout day. Furthermore, the data shows that there is also no difference between weekends and weekdays. BitTorrent is simply blocked all day long, no matter how busy their network is.
The Max Planck Institute tested the connections of 788 Comcast customers, 494 (62%) experienced a slowdown of BitTorrent traffic. Comcast is not alone though, well over 50% of the Cox subscribers that participated in the study were also throttled. The good news is, other ISPs don’t seem to restrict BitTorrent traffic on a wide scale.
Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, said in a response: “Consumers have no reason left to trust their cable company. This independent study confirms that Comcast is still blocking its customers from using popular applications — despite the FCC’s investigation and widespread public outrage. And worse, the harmful practice appears to be spreading through the marketplace.”
After being pressured by the press and thousands of upset customers, Comcast has announced that it will stop targeting BitTorrent transfers, (somewhere in the future) and promised to invest in its network capacity. For the time being the company will continue to throttle BitTorrent users.
We have asked the FCC for a response, but they had not yet responded at time of going to press
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140 Responses
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i still haven’t ever managed to test my connection
“For the time being” … yeah, sure.
What fuckin’ douche bags. It angers me much when our government lets companies like this run ramped and do as they please with little to no regulations. As a pirate, if we were to lie to the FCC or in court, that’d be perjury. If they do it, it seems to be fine and they get away with it. What complete and utter bullshit. I don’t even have Comcast, I have Road Runner amd they don’t throttle at all.
I would ask what time its supposed to be ok to use the bittorrent protocol, then every 10 mins call and complain its not working.. complain enough and you might get free service.. lol.
…and nobody is surprised.
Comcast will fail :)
Virgin Media all the way!
Maybe Senator Arlen Specter wasn’t receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from Comcast he’d be investigating this instead of that silly NFL cheating thing…
Assman is right, we already knew this, now we have the proof. Hopefully Comcrap will get penalized for this.
comcrap lol
Hopefully is the keyword…I think we all know in the back of our minds how this might turn out.
i have bell and is sucks ass just as much as comcast so hopefuly they will be punished and bell will end their throttling
hmmmm the test servers are still busy…ill try again next week. sigh……
i have comcast and my torrents are ok. and bittorrents are still more or less pirated dowloads which are illegal. you cant penalize a company for blocking illegal trafic that interferes with their network and customers that need the bandwidth for other (legal) things.
besides…if u dont like comcast switch to dial up or DSL…have fun
I have not been able to run a single test they are so busy. Die comcast, die!
“i have comcast and my torrents are ok. and bittorrents are still more or less pirated dowloads which are illegal. you cant penalize a company for blocking illegal trafic that interferes with their network and customers that need the bandwidth for other (legal) things.
besides…if u dont like comcast switch to dial up or DSL…have fun”
You are an idiot - it isnt about what is in the pipes but simply getting what you pay for - if they block torrents what will be next - what happens when they begin blocking everything IMs, emails, posts, etc - simply because they can and people like you let them with your scracasm “besides… if u dont like comcast switch to dial up or DSL” bite me
To be fair, Comcast HAS seemed to “stop targeting BitTorrent transfers,” at least on my Minneapolis connection. As of around a month ago, I can upload reliably again, and according to that test I’m not being throttled. Hope it’s not just a fluke.
..and in the end we all know that no matter what comcast says it’s total bullshit….
@Annon
Actually no, it’s not OK for Comcrap to LIE to the FCC.
The content of the bittorrent traffic doesn’t matter, Comcast’s problem is that they have LIED to THE Federal agency that regulates their business.
Ouch!
If they had been honest and told the FCC that they were blocking all upstream bittorent traffic, fair enough. Bad business, but at least it would have been the truth.
But Comcrap didn’t do this.
Comcast told the FCC that they were only blocking traffic at peak periods. LIE
Comcast then told the FCC that they were halting the bittorent blocking. LIE
It doesn’t have anything to do with pirated content, it has to do with lying to the Feds. A very, very, big no no.
People have Gone To JAIL for lies like this. Although in this case, Comcast will probably just suffer financially.
I suspect the reason Comcrap “claimed” they were stopping the blocking was to defuse calls for Net Neutrality. But by lying about their blocking to the FCC, they have actually given a MASSIVE amount of ammunition to the pro Net Neutrality forces.
Nice aim Comcrap, you just blew off your big toe.
Thx to The Max Planck Institute!
I will say this when I left this morning for work I was downloading a large file at 10 Kb/s and when I came back it was downloading at 500 kb/s so maybe they took the blockage out now that they got negative press?
” Comcast will fail :)
Virgin Media all the way!”
???
right… You’re aware that they both seem to be anti net-neutrality, right? At least Comcast recognizes that in order to please its customers it has to at least appear to support net neutrality.
“Cough” Rogers…
Yet another reason I refuse to support corporations like Comcast. Local business FTMFW! Click! > Comcast.
annon: you cant penalize a company for blocking illegal trafic that interferes with their network and customers that need the bandwidth for other (legal) things.
Except that…
A. BitTorrent traffic is no more or less illegal than HTTP traffic.
And B, BitTorrent doesn’t interfere with their network. But please, keep on believing it does. You just drink that Kool-Aid right up, son.
In the mean time, everyone else should feel no less than dutified to penalize Comcast until that fat sack of corruption begs for mercy.
annon: besides…if u dont like comcast switch to dial up or DSL…have fun
You may be a sockpuppet, but that’s the first sensible advice I’ve heard all day.
If you don’t like having your torrents crippled, or you don’t like supporting corporate ghouls who are all too happy to violate the rights of their own customers just so they can kowtow to the MAFIAA crime-ring, then stop using Comcast.
Even if your only alternatives are DSL or motherfucking dial-up, stop rewarding Comcast with your monthly Internet bills. All these hypocrites who decry torrent throttling, and yet refuse to leave Comcast because “the alternatives are slower, boo hoo” are the reason why they’ve been able to get away with this for so long.
And don’t for a second pretend that it wouldn’t hurt Comcast if they left. I know it would, you know it would, and even Comcast knows it would. That’s why they decided to lie that they’re going upgrade their network and stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic at some unspecified point in the future. They realise it would damage their revenue stream.
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