Comcast Wrongfully Denies Interfering with BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on August 22, 2007Last week we reported that Comcast is making it impossible for its customers to seed files on BitTorrent. Not surprisingly, Comcast’s PR department does all it can to deny there allegations, but we - and with us some of the leading BitTorrent developers - know better.
So who’s right here? The hundreds of people that seem to have the same seeding problem, or the Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas, who denies that Comcast is monkeying with BitTorrent bandwidth. Apparently Comcast want people to believe the latter, even though all evidence points in the other direction. Decide for yourself.
Moxie, a Comcast customer who replied to a post on Silicon Alley, points out that when you log your network activity with an application like Wireshark, you’ll notice that Comcast servers start sending reset messages as soon as a download is finished, exactly as we described it.
With Wireshark in the background run your BitTorrent application. Wait until completed and watch Wireshark, notice when it finishes seeding Comcast servers send out a reset command every second to your computer noted by the highlighted red line in Wireshark. It is 8:30 pm Monday pst and Comcast is still resting my BitTorrent connections. Maybe the PR guy didn’t get the email from the VP of Networking.
It might be that not every Comcast customer is equally affected, but a significant percentage is. Not only the 10+ users we talked to before we first reported this issue, but also hundreds of additional commenters here on TorrentFreak, and elsewhere. Some users even captured the throttling in progress on video (download), and anyone has to agree that this does look very suspicious.
More evidence comes from Robb Topolski, a networking and protocol expert with more than 25 years of experience, who first wrote about this issue on DSLReports. He told TorrentFreak: “We have had two Comcast techs confirm Sandvine in use, but neither confirmed or denied its connection with the RST interference. For me, seeding is possible. I can reach my upload speed limit, but there sure is a lot of interference. Since your article came out, I too have received many reports of seeding being impossible. I’m not sure if it’s regional, or what!”
For the networking savvy people among us, here’s an example of real RST interference on an unencrypted BitTorrent connection. In this case, it happens right after the bitfields are exchanged
Nevertheless Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said in a response to Light Reading: “We’re not blocking access to any application, and we don’t throttle any traffic”. He might be right here semantically speaking, they are not throttling anything, they just kill all outgoing connections when a clients starts to seed a file. But the fact is that Comcast is making it impossible for (at least some) customers to share files with non-Comcast users over BitTorrent.
Luckily there is a fix for this problem, and we know that at least two BitTorrent client developers are including this fix in their next update.
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130 Responses
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Here is a link to a page you all should bookmark. It details all known isp’s in the world. Comcast DOES BLOCK SEEDING. When my torrents are complete, my seeding speed goes down to 0, for every torrent. Whatever you do, don’t believe them when they say they’re not blocking the seeding of the torrents, because they are.
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs
Definitely having the same issue in Boulder. Still occasionally can get an upload to some users, but it’s very infrequent. I can tell it has to be Sandvine because even before I read about it on this site I noticed that my upload connections would go for a little bit and then magically disconnect. That was confusing the hell out of me until I learned about the beatiful wonders of Sandvine.
[quote comment="156162"]…even before I read about it on this site I noticed that my upload connections would go for a little bit and then magically disconnect. That was confusing the hell out of me until I learned about the beatiful wonders of Sandvine.[/quote]Thank you for your post. This is exactly why I publicized this information with Ernesto and TorrentFreak.
[quote comment="153221"]Take action. Let’s get an answer from Comcast.
1) Email abuse@comcast.net with a detailed report of what you’re experiencing. Make them file an escalated incident report.
2) Call abuse at 1-856-317-7272 if you’re being affected. Press 1, Press 7, Tell them your problem, and ask for Jim.
Right now they say they haven’t been getting any calls. Make them answer us!
If you can reproduce the problem, take screenshots and email me at comcast.vs.bittorrent@gmail.com.
comcast.vs.bittorrent AT gmail.com
http://piqd.com/comcast.vs.bittorrent.txt/quote
David —
Why is this an issue for “abuse?” Wouldn’t this be an issue for “support?”
Been using Comcast for BT purposes for 2 years. Perhaps I’m not in a major market but never had a problem. Get UL speeds with UTorrent on an unencrypted connection exactly at my rated UL speed, and sometimes I get DL speeds in excess of 5 times what I’m paying for.
No complaints at all.
I live in Bellingham, WA and they have definitely affected the service here. This started to happen about 3 weeks ago or so, maybe more. Before that I had no problem seeding torrents at my rated U/L speed. What I have noticed now is that seeding torrents seems to work fine in the evening, but during the day…nada. I have not watched closely enough to determine the exact time window, but if I do I will post.
Hey! I also live in Bellingham! I’ve just recently given up on my torrents. I tried leaving them running all night but when I woke up in the morning nothing had happened. Very frustrating. And yeah, I noticed it about 4 weeks ago.
Hey! I also live in Bellingham too! I’ve just recently given up on my torrents. I tried leaving them running all night but when I woke up in the morning nothing had happened. Very frustrating. And yeah, I noticed it about 4 weeks ago.
Man, #53 really cracked me up. Using the excuse “cutting people off while upgrading”
- Comcast is currently “doing adjustments” and in the process have been “cutting off alot of people.”
[quote comment="151951"]After 2 hours on the phone I have gathered the following information which I want share.
The first 3 people denied any issue out right, 4 person was resourceful, and provided me some information.
A note: Generally tier 1 and tier 2 support are uninformed about this issue. This information may only apply to the DC/VA/MD area.
- Officially Comcast is not filtering bit-torrent traffic.
- Unofficially Comcast is “upgrading” and “has been doing filtering to help with bandwith.”
- Comcast is currently “doing adjustments” and in the process have been “cutting off alot of people.”
- Resets are being sent (we already knew that one)
- According to the person I spoke to
the filtering of uploaded bit-torrent traffic is a temporary thing, as they are testing it on the network likely to use it for specific *red flag* customers.
- “No Official Date or time when this will stop” But, they “are working on it.”
- A “few” people have called comcast in my area to complain about this issue.
Bottom line seems to be “Wait it out.” I’ve been assured my service will be returned to normal, but no time frame is provided.
PLEASE Call comcast and make some noise about this.[/quote]
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! that really cracks me up!
I just read this page (it’s September 7th) and tested my NoCal Comcast connection with a 350MB torrent of a show I missed this week. No problem: `torrent D/L’d just fine and then Seeded at my set maximum limit. I *do* have “lazy_bitfield” set to “True” and have enabled encryption - maybe you all should do, as well - ?
Best o’ Luck,
Fred C. Dobbs
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[quote comment="159406"]I live in Bellingham, WA and they have definitely affected the service here. This started to happen about 3 weeks ago or so, maybe more. Before that I had no problem seeding torrents at my rated U/L speed. What I have noticed now is that seeding torrents seems to work fine in the evening, but during the day…nada. I have not watched closely enough to determine the exact time window, but if I do I will post.[/quote]
I’m in Bellingham, WA also and have noticed an issue with torrents as well. I’m running on Azureus at the moment and ran into a few issues. My down max speed hasn’t been affected, but it takes much much longer to find suitable peers, I assume because seeding is being damaged. My seeds do move sort of. The get up to a fraction of their max and then tend to die out completely a few minutes later only to be resurrected again for a short while. My uploads are maxing at about 25 kb/s if they establish at all. I managed to get this minimal upload capacity by turning on Azureus’ RC4 encryption mode.
To do so yourself, follow this guide:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Avoid_traffic_shaping
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Confirmed dropped seeds in Miami, Florida
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Uh. excuse me. Comcast killed my connection after I started using a VPN. I called and confirmed that. I cancelled immediately and did my office work over VPN through a DSL line instead.
The could scarcely care less. Comcast is a cancer.
Well, we all know comcast is hella gay, was only a matter of time before they decided to amp their gayness up a bit. Dontcha just like getting rapped up the arse?
I was wondering, in order to really speak to any isp, especially comcast which offers phone, hd cable, and cable net..
suppose as many peeps as possible just, forget to pay their bill for a designated month?.. or two?
I’m using comcast and everytime I have a torrent app open I get a little notification about every minute telling me a network cable is unplugged. The torrents aren’t the only thing effected, but ALL traffic is reset. So if I’m downloading something ftp even, it gets reset. My connection has been utter crap for the passed day too over http. Web pages load slow as hell… like a 28.8 but ftp connections seem to be unaffected… I called comcast and they blamed it on my modem so I whent and picked one up from them and I’m still having the same problem
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