Comcast Throttles BitTorrent Traffic, Seeding Impossible
Written by Ernesto on August 17, 2007Over the past weeks more and more Comcast users started to notice that their BitTorrent transfers were cut off. Most users report a significant decrease in download speeds, and even worse, they are unable to seed their downloads. A nightmare for people who want to keep up a positive ratio at private trackers and for the speed of BitTorrent transfers in general.
ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for almost two years now. Most ISPs simply limit the available bandwidth for BitTorrent traffic, but Comcast takes it one step further, and prevents their customers from seeding. And Comcast is not alone in this, Canadian ISPs Cogeco and Rogers use similar methods on a smaller scale.
Unfortunately, these more aggressive throttling methods can’t be circumvented by simply enabling encryption in your BitTorrent client. It is reported that Comcast is using an application from Sandvine to throttle BitTorrent traffic. Sandvine breaks every (seed) connection with new peers after a few seconds if it’s not a Comcast user. This makes it virtually impossible to seed a file, especially in small swarms without any Comcast users. Some users report that they can still connect to a few peers, but most of the Comcast customers see a significant drop in their upload speed.
The throttling works like this: A few seconds after you connect to someone in the swarm the Sandvine application sends a peer reset message (RST flag) and the upload immediately stops. Most vulnerable are users in a relatively small swarm where you only have a couple of peers you can upload the file to. Only seeding seems to be prevented, most users are able to upload to others while the download is still going, but once the download is finished, the upload speed drops to 0. Some users also report a significant drop in their download speeds, but this seems to be less widespread. Worse on private trackers, likely that this is because of the smaller swarm size
Although BitTorrent protocol encryption seems to work against most forms of traffic shaping, it doesn’t help in this specific case. Setting up a secure connection through VPN or over SSH seems to be the only solution. More info about how to setup BitTorrent over SSH can be found here.
Last year we had a discussion whether traffic shaping is good or bad, and ISPs made it pretty clear that they do not like P2P applications like BitTorrent. One of the ISPs that joined our discussions said: “The fact is, P2P is (from my point of view) a plague - a cancer, that will consume all the bandwidth that I can provide. It’s an insatiable appetite.”, and another one stated: “P2P applications can cripple a network, they’re like leaches. Just because you pay 49.99 for a 1.5-3.0mbps connection doesn’t mean your entitled to use whatever protocols you wish on your ISP’s network without them provisioning it to make the network experience good for all users involved.”
Customers on the other hand like to fully use their connection, and don’t agree that traffic shaping is the correct solution. One reader commented: “If you pay for an internet connection, that’s what you should get from your ISP — an internet connection. Not a connection that will let you browse the web and check email, but little else. If an ISP has issues with the amount of data a customer is transferring, then the ISP needs to address that issue with that customer, and not restrict every user in one class of traffic.”
I guess this battle will go on for a while and I would advise Comcast users to try setting up a VPN connection to get around the traffic shaping, other users who find out that they are throttles might try BitTorrent encryption first, that seems to work quite well in most cases.
More details about the Sandvine application can be found here.
Previously: BitTorrent Anime Downloaders Identified, $3500 Bill in the Mail
Next: TorrentPod Episode 43
440 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Pages: « 1 … 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10 11 12 13 14 … 18 » Show All
Comcast is a Content Provider like Rogers they Provide and manage the Content, Get an Internet Provider that does not do Content and you will be fine in most cases
Throw Minneapolis, MN (Fridley, MN) in the mix. Either suuuper slow or just nothing at all. Its sad. Throttling blows!
Stories like this scare me , I’m glad norwegian ISP’s dont do this , and that monthly download limit was cancelled some years ago. On the other hand we pay more for less compared to our neighbour country Sweden. But when I hear stories like this I can’t complain.
Any company these days that thinks it can keep up with the solutions of collective intelligent internet users in the market is a fool. There will always be a solution for the “bandwidth hogs” to exploit. First we could change the ports, then it’s SSH and VPN. There is always a way.
How long have the music industry and film industry been trying this? How many new piracy protections and lawsuits will it take before they understand? Give people all of the facts, and let the market determine the winner. Don’t suck people in and then pull the carpet out from under them. Don’t make people pay 11 dollars for a movie to find out how terrible it is. Don’t expect that people are going to pay the same price or more for music they download as they would pay at a store for the physical album and the cover art. Don’t treat people like peons, when we buy something tangible (such as a CD or movie), don’t fight us for the rights to own that piece of the greater mass production of the art completely.
The same goes for ISPs, when we pay for something, either make it well-known what we are buying, or give us what you made us believe we were paying for. Looking a little less evil might actually help with those people who believe they are entitled to all you can give them because you are taking all you can from them in exchange.
I am a comcast suscriber and upload with near to no problems. I use a wireless router that is connected to before the comcast modem. Maybe that helps? Perhaps connecting straight to their modem is what is allowing them to do this? I’m not sure and am not a internet traffic/network pro, just my 2 cents.
Comcast is always doing stuff to piss off their customers….though I have Comcast I have not noticed any problems with my seeding or downloading.
“iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –-dport $TORRENT_CLIENT_PORT -–tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP”
Doesn’t work. My seeding starts ok but I am still disconnected fairly quickly from the other client.
Using Kubuntu / utorrent / wine
I don’t know if this has anything to do with the seeding problem that some are experiencing, but I live near Cleveland, OH and there was a segment on the news this weekend about vandals cutting a major internet trunk in Cleveland, trying to steal copper wire. Bet they were pissed when they realized fiber-optic isn’t made of copper! Anyway, it said that this trunk line was an ultra-high bandwidth line owned by a company that leased the bandwidth to Time Warner and Comcast. They said the line routes from NYC through Cleveland, Washington D.C. and Chicago. Like I said, I don’t know if this helps, but the time-frame fits, so I thought I’d throw it out there.
If this happens to me at suddenlink, I will instantly close my account and never look back. Its up to me what I do with my money and bandwith.
For idiots who think that Bit Torrent is only used for copyright infringement (not “illegal” — nothing “illegal” about them — they just infringe on someone’s copyright)… World of Warcraft distributes their patches via bit torrent.
Besides, there’s such a thing as common carrier safe harbor laws which prevent providers from being sued for what end-users do. Duh.
15 references to this post
Pages: « 1 … 4 5 6 7 8 [9] 10 11 12 13 14 … 18 » Show All
Add your response