Comcast’s BitTorrent Throttling Acceptable? Not Quite!
Written by Ernesto on January 24, 2008Today, Richard Bennett from the Register wrote an article in which he argues that Comcast’s BitTorrent interference is reasonable. Not only does this alleged expert make absurd claims, he also thinks it’s necessary to take on the EFF. Time for a rebuttal.
Last year, we were the first to report that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Comcast of course denied our allegations, and ever since there has been a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of Comcast’s actions. Today the Register published an article that begs for a reply.
Here’s one of Bennett’s conclusions taken from the article: “It’s acceptable for Comcast, as a matter of reasonable network management, to employ TCP Resets to prevent BitTorrent doing harm to the web browsing, standard file downloading, and VoIP sessions that are the typical behavior of the Comcast customer.”
This is of course a non-argument. The fundamental problem is that Internet providers offered flat-rate all-you-can-eat broadband access without considering that some users would actually use the offered product at full capacity. The providers’ tradition of selling a product at a ten-fold, known as overbooking, is starting to cause them trouble now companies, artists and their consumers start to utilize the benefits BitTorrent offers. But, is that the consumers’ fault?
Comcast, and other ISPs advertise with certain upload and download rates, conforming to simple DOCSIS capacity numbers. However, they miscalculated and found that there is more to the Internet than browsing, gopher, and email. Heavy-users broke their excel return-on-investment predictions and marketing campaign promises. Their flat-rate offers simply became too popular for the capacity that was bought and installed.
Maybe Comcast should start 2-new services “newb Internet”, designed only for emails, and “regular Internet” aimed at every single other person in the world who used the net for more than sending a text-only emails. That should make things more transparent.
Now they are whining and manipulating heavy users to undo the flat-rate contracts, instead of investing in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users do not slow down the Internet experience of others. They simply use the capacity they bought and show that the network capacity planning department screwed up.
There is one quote from the Register article that I agree with though: “Everyone who’s argued with religious fanatics has seen them dig in their heels and flail when confronted with challenges to their belief systems.” But the ISPs are the fanatics here, not the EFF who stands up for network neutrality.
Why?
I see a parallel with the entertainment industry here, clinging to business models that are outdated. Comcast should move on and invest in the future instead of throttling and interfering with the traffic their customers paid for. BitTorrent is here to stay, the files and the number of heavy users will only grow. Don’t fight your customers, think ahead and adapt!
Previously: Anti-Piracy Company Breaches Privacy, Ordered to Shut Down
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I wonder how I can convince my parents to switch ISPs without revealing what bittorrent is
not to mention that George Bush himself sees what he’s doing as ” God’s Work.” he said that, verbatum.
oh and btw, havent you ever heard of suicide bombings in the name of Allah? theyre pretty damn common seeing as how they happen EVERY SINGLE DAY IN THE MIDDLE EAST.
‘ no link between any fanaticism and crime ‘ hunh???
the rational people of the world seem to disagree with you.
You people need to learn how to spell.
This site tells it all.
http://www.ellacoya.com/solutions/control.shtml
I used to work for an ISP when I first heard of ellacoya and then did some research to find out its bandwidth throttling. When I first saw the website it has changed somewhat over the years, I’m pretty sure it controls any/every app/port and its bandwidth capability and highly doubt that when network traffic is at a low, they allow P2P to go into burst mode. Effective marketing but NOT.
If you offer an “unlimited” plan, it should actually be UNLIMITED. It is unacceptable to offer an “unlimited” plan, then throttle BitTorrent or cut off high usage customers. Either the ISP should offer an “unlimited” plan that is truly unlimited, or it should put in a clearly advertised hard bandwidth cap (e.g. 100GB/month) and charge users for excess usage. No protocol should ever be filtered unless it is for real security reasons (e.g. port 25). Remember that BitTorrent has legal uses, like downloading Linux ISO images.
Exactly…. just like the Creative Commons T-shirt that says:
YOUR FAILED BUSINESS MODEL IS NOT MY PROBLEM.
These assholes have oversold their service, on the assumption that the world is unchanging, new technologies will never emerge, no one will find new ways to improve peoples’ lives with broadband.
BZZZZZZTTTTTT!!!!!! Thanks for playing.
It’s called an “OH SHIT” moment. No different as the situation that would unfold if every account holder at Wells Fargo went to their local branch at 9am Friday morning and said “Give me cash for all the money in my account. I’m cashing out.”
Look you cigar-chomping fatcat executive assholes. You’ve been sucking on the tit of Bob and Mary Jane consumer for years, paying $49 a month to read email and fuck around on Ebay. Now that they’re actually starting to use the bandwidth they’re paying for, you’re like “Oh shit! What’s going on? How did this happen?”
You’ve been so fucking arrogant and greedy, swimming around in all the cash you’ve made, failing to re-invest it in the business, building out your network.
Well fuck you. I hope there’s a congressional panel created to investigate all this overselling and underperforming.
Assholes.
@#33
Uhh, first of all, all traffic over network is serialized, so basically all traffic looks like your first diagram anyway. While you can make it look like the third diagram to put it in layman’s terms, it’s misleading. Also, all traffic looks the same at the TCP level; only by looking at the data part of the transmission can Comcast determine (well, in addition to looking at the ports, if you’re using default ports, and traffic activity somewhat), so there really is no such thing as —- normal traffic and ==== p2p traffic, as you put it, from the network’s perspective.
Secondly, Comcast is already overselling its pipes with its HDTV channels, trying to push HD content highly compressed, yet getting people to be OK with it anyway. This is also eating away at your internet bandwidth, since they are only allowing internet traffic in a small window of frequencies on their cable network for internet usage, much like the problems cell phone companies are having with bandwidth over-the-air (and crappy voice quality as a result).
Third, let’s not fall into the trap of comparing ourselves to Japan again. Japan is a country roughly the size of California with about 1-1/2 times higher population density, as well as a different system of competition among service providers and a different expectation of service, as well as a different urban development system. Apples and oranges, my friend, apples and oranges.
Fourth, Comcast uses coaxial cables for much of their network, especially in older areas that haven’t been updated. Coaxial is, by definition, a broadcast network. Broadcast networks are, by definition, less reliable and slower than switched networks, especially when traffic density approaches maximum, due to collisions that occur on a physical level with sending signals on a broadcast network (see the difference between switched networks and broadcast networks for more information, i.e. 100baseT vs 802.11g). It’s no wonder they’re trying to keep traffic density down. Smaller bandwidth won’t help much in this case when the actual number of transmissions, not the payload-per-transmission, will not go down as a result of a lower bandwidth-per-customer scenario. Not that it’s right (in a legal sense) but, from a technical perspective, it makes perfect sense.
You people know the reality here. The reality is that the majority of bittorrents are illegal.
You ruin the data rates for the rest of us.
First you steal music and movies, and then you complain that your ISP is hindering your illegal activity in an attempt to restore capacity for the rest of the law abiding citizens.
Check yourself. Srsly.
@seems strange
The problem is that anti-religious fanatics are just as bad. Ever heard of communist Russia? An official atheist state that killed at least 20 million of it’s people (and would routinely torture and kill people for their religious beliefs). I’m afraid people kill whether they are religious or non-religious. The first and second world wars were certainly not fought or started by religious fanatics (though there were surely fanatics of some kind involved).
Comcast DOES NOT sell an Unlimited plan. If you believe they do you have either not read the TERMS OF SERVICE or yuo simply Ignored them or you dont comprehend what you are reading.
The TERMS OF SERVICE specifically say that your use cannot infringe on another’s use and that Comcast is the sole authority for deciding when it does.
The TERMS OF SERVICE specifically deny you the right to run a server of ANY type.
NO Argument by the BT community will change that fact that SEEDING is another word for SERVING.
I find it annoying that I can’t seed via my Comcast. That being said I can download just fine. And before I get hit with the moronic “what about Ratio sites” argument, um yeah those are usually full of pirated crap. Legitimate comapnies that are distributing patched via bt will not be affected by Comcast’s throttle of BT Seeding(servers).
Before you rant and scream all over the internet about Comcast being bad for denying access to what you didn’t purchase you should try reading the agreements you accepted when you subscribed. If you dont like it get a different ISP. I for one am glad that they are keep things in check instead of blindly spending money to upgrade to cover services that they are expressly not providing. If they did bills would just go up faster than they do now.
For reference yes I do use BT. Infact just a month ago I dl’d all 75 gigs of the full Mame cd set. My download wnet full speed and never stopped.
I read some of the comments, saw one from Canada and took a moment to think. Rogers one of the largest cable internet providers in the “great white north.” They introduced traffic shaping, port and packet disruption a long time ago and tones of people just left. For me I went with a local dsl provider and ignoring the odd hick-up in their service; they are the same price and I get popular torrents the same night. I wake up the next morning to a treat, yippy. What gets me about the US; is you folks do nothing about your problems, you just bitch a moan. As a consumer I took the only step I could when a huge “fuck me up the ass” ISP “started giving it to me like I was a high school cheerleader.” I left and took my business someplace else. I think the large ISPs in north america are running scared and shitting bricks; In the US for example customers are starting to figure out the the decade long government funding thir taxes paid for is a pipe dream.
The ISPs horded the funding and now more is going to be needed to supply current demand not to mention future growth; and they don’t have the cash to rebuild the system. Also with spectrum being freed up and auctioned, they see the dark horizon of an open wireless highspeed networking. So they are clamping down and tucking themselves in to a ball and lashing out at anything that is attempting to poke them. It is their death rattle of a sorts. There are too many examples around the world of how it should be done and soon their chapter in history will be nothing more then a footnote. Think about it for the longest time they have tried to kill off every competing form of technology, or self aware town, or unappealing bill or law that might threaten them. They have lied cheated and stole their way to a slow death and I for one wish them a speedy exit.
I’d been with Insight cable for the last few years. Late last year, I found out that Comcast was taking over Insight’s service. I promptly phone and told them to cancel my service the day that Comcast was to take over.
On Jan 1, as all the other folks sat around blindly, unaware they were now in business with a monster, I voted with my pocketbook.
My sacrifice is that I now use DSL. However, I have a much clearer conscious because I know I’m not giving a dime to those douches.
Of course they’re going back on their promises, which is bad, but the vast majority of the extra traffic comes from p2p or downloading unlicensed content (come on, there isn’t THAT much extra traffic from totally legitimate sources!).
One way or another, that’s copyright infringement, and before long the isps will get it in the neck from the artists/studios/record companies and be forced to do something.
I bet they can probably give everyone X days’ notice and cancel their contracts anyway, but of course we’d go elsewhere until all IPSs implemented some step to stop infringement.
It’s just a case that until someone discoveres a reliable form of DMS, the ISPs have every right to err on the side of caution.
[quote comment="271176"]Comcast DOES NOT sell an Unlimited plan. If you believe they do you have either not read the TERMS OF SERVICE or yuo simply Ignored them or you dont comprehend what you are reading.
The TERMS OF SERVICE specifically say that your use cannot infringe on another’s use and that Comcast is the sole authority for deciding when it does.
The TERMS OF SERVICE specifically deny you the right to run a server of ANY type.
NO Argument by the BT community will change that fact that SEEDING is another word for SERVING.
I find it annoying that I can’t seed via my Comcast. That being said I can download just fine. And before I get hit with the moronic “what about Ratio sites” argument, um yeah those are usually full of pirated crap. Legitimate comapnies that are distributing patched via bt will not be affected by Comcast’s throttle of BT Seeding(servers).
Before you rant and scream all over the internet about Comcast being bad for denying access to what you didn’t purchase you should try reading the agreements you accepted when you subscribed. If you dont like it get a different ISP. I for one am glad that they are keep things in check instead of blindly spending money to upgrade to cover services that they are expressly not providing. If they did bills would just go up faster than they do now.
For reference yes I do use BT. Infact just a month ago I dl’d all 75 gigs of the full Mame cd set. My download wnet full speed and never stopped.[/quote]
Agreed. Why doesn’t anyone here realize that BitTorrent isn’t really any different than old-fashioned FTP but with a distributed load? It costs $$ to run your own FTP server. Why should you expect to be allowed to seed for free (when it’s effectively the same thing)? Just because BitTorrent distributes the number of people acting as the server doesn’t mean that those people should expect to be able to do this for free.
[quote comment="270759"][quote comment="270744"]bittorrent traffic is a drain on network resources. It’s easy to sit back and demand that ISPs increase their bandwidth, but as soon as they did, bittorrent would fill it up again because you guys are bottomless pits.
pirates are simply replacing record labels as the new exploiters of the labor and resources of others, contributing nothing yet feeling entitled to everything for free.
Also, that guy from the Register is not a dummy. He is consistently opposed to the RIAA. The fact that you regard the Register as “the enemy” only demonstrates how delusional some of you have become.[/quote]
So its OK to mess up someones buiseness with TCP resets??? f*ck you!
Bittorrent aint just a stupid pirate tool its the best distribution method ever created for the internet, and yea ISPs sutch as Comcast need to provide more bandwith, thats what ISPs does and if it costs they can raise the subscriptions but they sure as hell cant mess with peoples usage! If Comcast cant compete (witch they sure as hell cant with European ISPs that have tons of bandwith from thin air havent they?) then they go out of buiseness!
They cant throttle users and mess with protocols just to be able to compete then they are obviously doing something very wrong! again frack you, if your work was being messed with im sure you would go out and r*pe anyone supporting them aswell![/quote]
So if they interfer with your work then get business class connection you tool. Get T1 and you will be set. What? you don’t want to pay for T1? Well then STFU you punk.
Weather or not Bittorrent uses more bandwidth or not really isn’t the issue. Comcast may have started out not over selling their networks but that is what it’s come down to, and they are making it worse on themselves. I don’t know about the rest of you but my home only has one line for cable TV, Cable internet, and Cable Phone(If I had it). All of this information travels through the same pipe. When they only had TV services they had more room than they could use, so they added Internet services to use up the rest of the space. With that add in they where able to advertise unlimited usage because no one would be able to use it to the full extent. Then the new tech.(P2P) came out, increasing usage across the network. But instead of changing their adds or; better yet, upgrading to meet or exceed demand, they continued on without change. They have recently added phone service(right about the time most of these issues started to crop up) which further restricted the pipe. And yet they are still advertising unlimited high speed internet; regardless of what the User Agreement says, it’s still false advertising. None of the things that they have been suggesting will fix this issue. Their capacity for normal traffic/P2P(internet use) is just going to keep going down. I highly doubt that they will upgrade the network and they are constantly adding more HD content to the TV services, further restricting the lines. The only logical fix is to upgrade or be driven out of business when the government sanctioned monopolies end.
One very relevant point here is that by blocking P2P, they are protecting their own content delivery services. Make no mistake Comcast is COMPETING with the internet at large for your business.
Here is what I mean…Comcast currently offers many services that are in direct competition with other content providers, legal and not.
Comcast wants you to pay $5 to watch a movie “On Demand” on their proprietary service, NOT download the same movie over P2P! It really does not matter to them that you may be using a VUDU box or some other legal P2P method, they want to sell you THEIR content!
Same goes with VOIP. Why use Skype? You should be using Comcast Voice (TM)!
Make no mistake, this is not only about network capacity, but also where you get (buy) your content from. This is evil, pure and simple, and I really hope the Judges and Lawmakers out there can reverse this very nasty trend!
i will destroy comcast if they prevent me from downloading the entire internet.
If I want to download the entire internet, thats my own business…
dont play with my feelings, comcast!!
NO matter what you comcast/monopolies argue, bittorrent might eat up bandwidth sure I will agree with that, but NO ONE CAN USE MORE BANDWIDTH THAN THEY PAY FOR MONTHLY, IF YOU OFFER 10MBPS internet which in reality is about 1.5megabytes per second internet, do you really think they shouldnt be allowed to get what they paid for? Comcast you pay for unlimited fiber optic bandwidth to feed your huge network, why do you worry about small time home users using the connection that gives you your paycheck each month? Grow up, stop being greedy or close your doors forever.
Comcast get them, they support child porn.
Child Porn!!!! Get Them for supporting that junk
http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=jayftngy9.jpg
Actually “assuming” makes an ass out of you and ming.”
Ernesto writes, “BitTorrent users do not slow down the Internet experience of others. They simply use the capacity they bought and show that the network capacity planning department screwed up.” What Richard Bennett demonstrates in his piece, very simply, is exactly how BT traffic can and does slow down a network. I thought his reasoning was sound and logical.
Tor network developers ask that BT traffic stay off of the Onion network for just this reason.
Network neutrality is very important. However, it’s a network, not a trough. Comcast sells access, not umlimited access. That being said, shaping bandwidth is not the answer, in my opinion. It’s illegal, to begin with, and it’s a very very slippery slope.
Part of the answer is, obviously, for P2P sharers to do so with a bit of self-restraint. I throttle my downloads and uploads voluntarily. I share to a ratio of 2 or more, but never at unlimited speeds. Yeah, that means you are going to get my packets more slowly, but you’ll get them.
Yeah. that happens alot. The company wants people to ‘think’ it’s only a few thousand people who are terminated . As if that makes it ok for some reason.
Purchase ANY product in the world and if you can’t use it fully then why are they selling it?
It’s a con job IMO.
http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
And check out my youtube video responding to Concast’s mailers to my house NOW that the 12 month termination has ended.
The damn company WANTS my business after treating my family like $h!t?
You can find the video under the name U235Sentinel. Enjoy :D
I have Wildblue satellite internet as an ISP. I spend 79.95/month for a 1.5mb/256 connection. About a year ago the service was great, pings were in the 5-700ms range(good for sat). They eventually introduced a “traffic shaping” bullshit thing to their network effectively making the service shitty. Anything that has to do with secure sites or browsing takes FOR-EV-ER!!! Pings have gone up from the normal 5-700 to a whopping 1300ms just sitting there. THe price of service didn’t go down though. Wildblue only did this because they sold waaaay to many dishes to people and they had to make up for it by pulling this shit.
To their credit I can say that speeds are usually spot on (200+kb/s down, 25-30kb/s up). THey have a fair access policy and a bandwidth limit, which at their highest package, which I have, nets you 17gb of download traffic and (I may be a little off)6gb upload per rolling 30 days. It’s really not that bad but you can’t leave your torrents on all night like you lucky cable/dsl fuckers.
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