Comcast Support Continues to Lie about BitTorrent Interference

Ernesto
November 1, 2007
54
bittorrent,
comcast,
support
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By now probably every Comcast customer knows that Comcast is interfering with BitTorrent traffic. The only ones that keep denying are the Comcast PR department and the support representatives, this leads to awkward situations to say the least.

Comcast Support Continues to Lie about BitTorrent Interference A lot has happened since we first reported back in August that Comcast was actively interfering with BitTorrent seeding. Comcast of course denied our allegations, even though we had proof.

However, it didn’t stop there, a few weeks ago the Comcast story got renewed attention when the Associated Press published a test that again confirmed our initial reports. That really got the ball rolling – a memo leaked in which Comcast support was instructed to lie about the throttling issues ( the memo leaker is still being hunted down). Additionally Comcast told their employees that they can be fired if they don’t keep their mouth shut and to top it off Congressman Rick Boucher has even told Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent.

By now you would expect that Comcast would admit that they are messing with the BitTorrent connections of their customers, but they aren’t. Here’s a chatlog we received from Michael, a Comcast user who tried to get some more information on Comcast’s alleged BitTorrent interference. Seems like the Comcast support team is still in the denial phase.

user michael_ has entered room

Michael>
Does Comcast interfere with legal Bittorrent traffic?

analyst Stephanie has entered room

Stephanie>
Hello michael_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Stephanie. Please give me one moment to review your information.

michael_>
Hi Stephanie, how are you?

Stephanie>
Thank you for contacting Comcast. I can answer your question today.

michael_>
I would greatly appreciate that.

Stephanie>
Comcast respects our customers’ privacy and we don’t monitor specific customer activities on the Internet or track individual online behavior, such as which websites you visit. Therefore, we do not know whether any individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site.

Stephanie>
Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.

michael_>
I’m not asking if applications are blocked. I’m asking if applications are interfered with in any way.

Stephanie>
We don’t monitor specific customer activities on the internet.

michael_>
But you must know the policies of your own company? Does Comcast actively engage in any interference of any protocols or applications?

Stephanie>
As far as I know, no.

michael_>
Who could give me a more definitive answer on the subject?

michael_>
I contacted technical support because I had assumed that you would know the technical details of Comcast’s network, such as equipment or software used to interfere with network traffic or applications used on your network.

Stephanie>
We rarely disclose our processes for operating our network for compeitive reasons and to protect against network abuse.

michael_>
You had told me you do not know definitively if any interference is occurring. Could you put me through to someone who would know that answer?

Stephanie>
As I have said, we rarely disclose processes for operating our network but we also do not monitor specific customer activity. As well, we are not blocking access to any applications such as BitTorrent.

michael_>
Maybe I’m not explaining myself clear enough. I use bittorrent to distribute custom linux distributions to my friends and colleagues. However, I find that I cannot seed these files. Is there any interference being caused by Comcast that could be causing this issue?

Stephanie>
We would not be blocking peer to peer access.

michael_>
It’s a “yes” or “no” question.

michael_>
Could my inability to seed be interference caused by Comcast?

Stephanie>
As I have said, we are not blocking peer to peer access.

michael_>
You are not answering my question though.

michael_>
Comcast is not blocking peer to peer connections, but is it interfering with the ability to seed torrents?

Stephanie>
The answer is no.

Stephanie>
I have confirmed this with a support agent, as well.

Stephanie>
Did you have any other questions for me today?

michael_>
No

michael_>
Have a good day

Stephanie>
Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Support, have a great day!

Stephanie>
Analyst has closed chat and left the room

The good news is that there are several ways to fight back and get BitTorrent up and running again. In this article summed up some of the workarounds that reportedly solve the throttling issues.

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unknown

I guess they advised their agents in advance to answer with as little information as possible.
Netmaster

Theses are pre-defined response. They are vague and meaningless.

I am not with Comcast but i am outraged to read such answers from a technical department. They really take their customers for idiots..

anyways.. good luck with Comcast user. Here in Canada, one of the biggest ISP here is throttling p2p traffic for a while and this is not going to change :-(
Anonymous

Would it be possible to take some kind of legal action if evidence is shown that they were lying the entire time?
john

Bell Sympatico in Canada has now publically stated that they are throttling Bittorrent during ‘congested periods’. Users are reporting being throttled to 30 KB/s. The method does not appear to be using TCP resets like Comcast.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r19361852-Straight-from-the-horses-mouth-admission-of-throttling
no

Way to harass some poor Comcast contractor.

You do realize that the people you contact on the telephone for Comcast support are as much int he dark as you, right? They’re not even employed by Comcast. They are employed by a call center which has a contract with Comcast to provide customer service.

Contract support centers rarely know much about the products or companies they support and most of what they do know or learn is acquired on their own by personally investigating or reverse engineering things on their own.

You’re talking to someone who probably sat through a couple days of training – most of which was on how to talk to customers on the phone and then given access to a series of scripts with a handful of typical questions and answers.

They are not in a position to answer obscure questions or more involved questions. Yes, it sucks – but it’s not like the call center person WANTS to screw you over or WANTS to be ignorant about something.
hEllo

You’re right ‘no’. It’s the higher ups that should be confronted about policy like this. They’re not very accessible though.
Cracker Jack

[quote comment="201555"]Would it be possible to take some kind of legal action if evidence is shown that they were lying the entire time?[/quote]
I would believe so, I don’t see why you couldn’t…. I mean they say that they don’t throttle, yet we have proof that they do, I think if you bring them so state court you could possibly do good by making them not throttle anymore, or they could admit it, and possibly block the whole thing since they came out with it… I don’t really know what would happen :-\ but then again, I too don’t use comcast so yeah…
santa

What is the point in bugging comcast about this? We KNOW they are blocking bittorrent seeders, and we KNOW they are lieing about it – put up or pack up.
Huh? What the @#$^%* is that?

Evidence suggests that they are lying fags…People should get organized and boycott Comcast…get your state senator involved…
Flood it

Sandvine must be updating their traffic shaping systems, as in some areas, even encrypted torrent traffic (that was still working fine after the initial blocking) are now also being affected and throttled down to 30Kb/s.

So, I recommend you start downloading whatever you want 24/7, using whatever protocol that maxes out your contracted bandwidth, just so they realize this is completely futile.

They want to save their bandwidth? Hit them where it hurts – use it as much as possible.
1) Download Ubuntu
2) Delete it
3) Goto 1
kornflake

i know my isp has noidea what i am up to i gave a rep my mac address and thay said i use 5 gig a month i can show my utorrent thats says much more closer to 200 up and 180 down
brian

sound to me like stephanie needs to get laid :p
donkey

im capped too im changing ISPs fuck `em btw oink is back up
SuperGeek

I just tried something similar with a comcast rep, here’s my chat log:

http://dump.no/files/8cfbbfea4f34/log.txt

That poor rep’s probably shitting himself.
Den_K

michael_ sounds like an agitated dumbass. comcast’s responses are annoyingly indirect but understandable.
i use ÂµTorrent 1.5 and seeding works ok after tuning the softwer and router(s).
comcast’s network is its own property so of course it does what it wants and the hardware/apps r secret. else more hakers would try. comcast has no obligations before the general public because internet is not a public utility. neither is cable TV because the 1996 telecom act prohibited restrictions on aerial antennae.
there are plenty of other ISPs with different practices/secrets. i use free wi-fi when discretion is necessary.
a naked woman in bed is better than computers.
gary

anyone got a spare What.cd or Waffles.fm invite
monsterfire8@gmail.com
comcrap

CC are a bunch of nazi
They are a ripoff
1. invisible cap
2. traffic shaping so user cannot use much bandwidth.
Anonymous

Childish questions from this “Michale” character. Makes the rest of the p2p crowd look like a bunch of punks…
system

It wouldn’t be the first time tech support didn’t have a clue.

For a laugh, try getting AOL to admit that they hijack all email on port 25.
Even when you can show them exactly which server you are ending up at when telnetting any address on that port, they deny it. Mention packet sniffing and they threaten to phone the police LOL.
Been a few years since I was with them, and they have changed owners in the UK so they might have stopped it, but can be verified easy enough by telnetting google or M$ on port 25.
limmey

OMG lovin the responses here…they are deffernatly priks in my mind..

http://galacticcentral.org
tbh

[quote comment="201629"]

They want to save their bandwidth? Hit them where it hurts – use it as much as possible.
1) Download Ubuntu
2) Delete it
3) Goto 1[/quote]

lmao >:D
TwilightZane

I dunno. I have comcast but I have NOT had a problem uploading or downloading at full speed. I have wondered though if they are applying the throttling in areas where there is no competition. Verizon Fios is actively available in my area and I did think about jumping over to them until Comcast offered me a better deal. When I heard of the bandwidth throttling issue, I sorta concluded I’d jump to Verizon if I noticed a difference. So far I haven’t.

Regardless this is another classic case of why net neutrality needs to be passed by our Congress (fat chance though). Corporate America shouldn’t be deciding what Internet traffic (be it bittorrent or CNN streaming video) should be getting preference.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/
Matt

it’s a customer service rep, they’re probably not sure wtf is going on, thus why you got told that. you probably just made her uncomfortable and wondering “what the hell” and trying to keep her job more so than anything else :)
Oink Refugee

I don’t agree. If Stephanie the phone teller doesn’t want to work there then she doesn’t. In the meantime Comcast is a bunch of *ssholes and so is Stephanie for lying.
Solitaris

some1 have Comcast IP list? i will start bloking them…
Anonymous

Solitaris, are you trying to do Comcast a favour or what? Most of the mentioned software has been upgraded, so that their interference is annoying but does not break the applications any longer. I’m surprised that this hasn’t been widely reported before because Comcast and others such as Cox and Cablevision have been doing this at least since July 2006 when it was proved for the first time that they are interrupting Gnutella connections. See here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_gdf/message/22675

Maybe they didn’t interfere with BitTorrent back then and that’s the news?
Chris

What disgusts me is not the fact that they’re interfering with BitTorrent traffic, but the fact that it is causing problems for casual day-to-day users of their internet service.

My friend doesn’t download shit, and I can’t send him files via MSN half the time due to comcast’s tinkering.

His internet also times-out a lot.
Jason

I’m a Comcast user, and have been for a few years now. I keep reading about this throttling but I do not see it on my end. I have a 16Mbps connection and I can consistently upload at around 150Kb/s when using BitTorrent. Can somebody explain why this might be the case?
Anonymous

Jason, do you have business account? Apparently, they are unaffected. Some areas are definitely unaffected, too. One can only speculate why:

1. Make it harder to prove?
2. They don’t have the necessary hardware everywhere?
3. They only throttle sub-nets with notoriously traffic-excessive customers?
4. You live in an area which has actually competing ISPs?
5. They assume you’re lawyer?
6. Sandvine is buggy?
Jason

I don’t think I have a business account.. but I have the highest “personal” account you can buy. IDK… i think it might have to do with the fact that we have heavy ISP competition.
podu

I got the same exact runaround.

All the Comcast reps are following the same script. I spoke to several reps at different times and got an almost identical word-for-word reply.

Before you ditch Comcast cable, make sure there is a DSL provider available — there often is not. :(
comcast employee

as an employee for comcast, i can say we only contract one phone support in the US, overnight, graveyard shift to canada, we have been given a specific response you can find on the comsumerist, and yes the question dances around a yes or no answer, i think its wrong, but technically with in the user agreement that comcast can implement software/hardware to maintain the structure of its network. encrypt your traffic, which you should do any way, use a program like tor and you wont have a problem, if your savvy their is always a way around things.
gumbo

TwilightZone: Nope, FIOS is making big strides in my area, but Comcast is still doing the RST packet interference. And this is finally going to drive me to switch to FIOS after not bothering for the past year. Unfortunately, that’s probably what Comcast wants, just a network of people who check their e-mail once a day and nothing else.
Chevron36

on a unique side note comcast is no longer filtering my seeds. I don’t know if this is cause the torrent has over 2000 leechers and i am connected to 10 of them at a time. or if comcast is actually letting me seed for once. my up speed is consistently 40-60 kbs. (i’ve capped at 60 cause any higher and i lose access to Internet)
Anonymous

comcast employee, please explain, why does virtually no other ISP except Cablevision and Cox need to resort to such filthy dreck as Sandvine to “maintain the structure” of their network? It’s interesting to note that Sandvine is only used in the USA, the land of the free. ISPs in other countries provide much faster, unlimited access and still don’t see a need to cheat their customers and their networks aren’t falling apart either.
Will

He’s full of shit that’s why!!

It’s all about network design and over selling.

Over selling should be against the law and Network Neutrality should be the law. Price points should be set by law as well. The “Internet” should be a public utility, just like the public switched telephone network. The 1996 act needs a major update. TV should be the same.

Then maybe just maybe we wont be left in the dust by China in the next decade.
gumbo

Do you have any idea how expensive your Internet service would be if overselling was against the law? It would be ridiculous, not to mention pointless. What about overselling the telephone network, should that be made illegal also (with the corresponding rate increases there as well?)

The US seems to be about in the middle as far as Internet connectivity in first world countries. Some countries blow us away (was it Japan that has 100mbps service?) and others are more expensive for much slower service or a low monthly cap. On the other hand, I’m not sure why Comcast keeps upping my upload speed (I seem to be getting a steady 65 kB/s lately) while complaining that their upstream is so congested that they need to resort to Sandvine.
Anonymous

Telephones are not used 24/7. That’s why you can oversell them. Comcast and most other ISPs promises you unlimited access. More and more people have been using their flat-rate access to the internet around the clock. Comcast should have realized that long ago. I’m sure they did. So overselling is certainly still possible but either Comcast has their math wrong or they are simply more greedy and willing to resort to dirty tricks unlike pretty much every other ISP in the world.
Anonymous

From the Comcast Terms of Service

” You shall ensure that your use of the Service does not restrict, inhibit, interfere with, or degrade any other user’s use of the Service, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an overly large burden on the network.”

So stop your bitching.
Anonymous

Because torrents slow down and congets the network you all have no right to bitch. Read the terms of service next time.
Anonymous

I dont know if im totally off base on this subject or not but I personally know at least 4 different people who have received e-mails from comcast for downloading movies from torrent sites and comcast told them to stop immediatly…so how can they (comcast) say that they dont monotor customers activity ?
Anonymous

41: They are just forwarding mails from the MPAA/RIAA. They only record which IP address was used by which subscriber at which time. The MPAA/RIAA only knows the IP address, so they have to contact the ISP to get their mails forwarded to the actual subscriber.
Who Knows

when using utorrent if I am connected to irc or yahoo, I keep getting disconnects. Soon as I stop with utorrent, no more disconnects. Bit of a coincidence CON Cast
0n1n3

If your connection is currently throttled, definitively, which is to say that your network is still up and your modem is a recent model, then search for something called IPSEC.
0n1n3

btw always call your ISP and ask them if they know of any defects in your current modem model. i was through this with time warner and it turned out they weren’t throttling me, i just needed a better modem & network because of their updates.
0n1n3

also if you change your network sometimes it can give you another IP, and the ISP is still looking for the old one. so basically you are paying for the cheap *basic* package instead of your real package because your ISP has you listed under another IP.
Bill

I am a comcast Technician and I use BitTorrent 24/7, I never stop seeding or downloading and have not received information that I as an employee am not allowed too or allowed to discuss it. I know there are limitations in you acceptable use policy that designates how much you can upload and download in specified time frames due to reason such as email bombs and leech ftp sites which can eat up larger amounts of bandwidth that you are allocated.
Todd

I suggest a lot of people that are bitching on here pull a couple of shareware programs off the web that will tell you which sites are monitored and by who, which in that case if the site is monitored now guess who has your IP address people like the MPAA, I used one for a while when I ran XP but now that I use Vista it doesn’t work and I don’t recall the program name but sites like PirateBay and mininova were monitored non stop! Just a suggestion but check it out.
Bill

Another thing I want to add. Since I am probably the only certified cable and RF technician here I suggest all of you that keep complaining about time-outs, lag, and throttling maybe call in for a service appointment and have your lines and signal checked. One major cause of bad connections has to do with large amounts of bandwidth use trying to be carried over shitty lines and modems. You can lose what we call “block sync” which in a way is signal interruption to your modem and no this can not be done from any office or computer, reason being, you can buy and cable modem in the country and plug it in and as long as you have “good” signal it will “block up”. continued…..
Bill

Also take into consideration our speed boost, I get a lot of knowledgeable people that don’t grasp the concept of it. You basically get to eat up all available bandwidth not being used for a specified area, which is based off the amount of HSI subscribers we have for that area. So you will get your 6meg or 8meg speed that you pay for but you may get a 2-5 times faster one minute and not the next because someone next door or 2 blocks down may also being doing the same thing you are and now you get to share that EXTRA bandwidth or you may go back to what you are only paying for. Remember speed boost is a free and NOT guaranteed service to all 6+ meg subscribers. So if you can take advantage when its available but don’t complain when you are back to 6megs because no one is paying attention to speed boost its automated. Just remember that being a technician in the field that fixes these problems I get to know all this information first so I know what to explain to the customer and how to fix it. RF and frequency ranging and repairing isnt an easy task so everything needs to be solid and perfect both in our system and your house. I have no problem with dl’ing and ul’ing BitTorrents and neither do my friends and were no special to the company.
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Stephanie

A.) It’s not lying if you don’t have any further information.
b.) I highly doubt getting laid has anything to do with it.
c.) Do you guys get off on harassing support representatives? It seems like it. Talking shit about someone who can’t talk shit back isn’t very nice…
And the final point;
d.) You’ll never know who will come across stuff like this.

Google abilities are absolutely wonderful, no?
Anonymous

Stop your pathetic whining. You all know that you arent using torents to up/download linux distros. Also, leave the techs alone, I too work in tech support, and 95% of the time, they dont give us further information.

So next time you feel like giving tech support a hard time, make sure to provide your work phone number for them so that they can return the favor and harass you at your place of work.

Bottom line is that if you dont like your ISP, change it. That’s the only way they will get the message
Mitnick_and_woz_were_l33t

Luckily I have Bright House. But I do have a few suggestions for all of you with Com Cast.

Pick up a book. Bare with me I know even the thought of reading hurts most peoples’ minds now. But it hurts so good! Pick up The Art of Deception by Kevin D. Mitnick it’s on social engineering. A dimwit who can add, can figure this equation out:

Social Engineering + Google + Google Work Group + Badly trained Comcast Employee = The answers you want

*Some variables in the equation may change depending on the users INT modifier.

When using social engineering, you must first educate yourself about the target, and the role you are taking on. Wikipedia is surprisingly helpful and accurate. And google is useful for everything.

Here’s a freebie scenario…

1)Use social engineering to get internal phone numbers.

2)Pose as an employee and tell a supervisor that a customer had a question regarding network throttling.

The customer came up to you when you were working on the cable lines at box (insert your cable box number here, cable box at the end of your street block, not the one in your home, do some research)

Mention you didn’t know how you should answer at that time so you didn’t tell them. But ask him how you should respond if asked again.

3)Mention you’ve heard inter-company
rumors of this, and you wanted to come to him/her to verify that you should not talk about throttling.

4)Depending on how they respond gauge your question accordingly. Jokingly ask “so do we actually throttle speeds for p2p, I know it it causes alot of problems with our throughput”

*Throughput is the amount of data sent over a line per some unit of time. Commonly confused with bandwidth. Bandwidth is the frequency spectrum at which the data travels.

*If you say bandwidth instead of throughput you will come off as unprofessional. An employee would know the difference!

And if you make whatever you want to type an image it is not picked up on search engines. Perhaps under images but those images have to be tagged manually first.

My email if anyone wants to talk with me.

corphack@hotmail.com

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Comcast Support Continues to Lie about BitTorrent Interference

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