How To Bypass Comcast’s BitTorrent Throttling
Written by Ernesto on October 21, 2007Back in August we reported that Comcast was limiting BitTorrent traffic. Comcast denied our allegations, even though we had some pretty solid evidence. However, a recent test by Associated Press confirmed what we have been reporting all along. The million dollar question remains, can Comcast subscribers get around this, and more importantly, how?
Comcast is using an application from the broadband management company Sandvine to throttle BitTorrent traffic. It breaks every (seed) connection with new peers after a few seconds if it’s not a Comcast user inside your community boundary. According to some Comcast technicians, who were brave enough to tell the truth, these Sandvine boxes are installed at the cable modem termination system. As a result, it is virtually impossible to seed a file, especially in small swarms without any neighboring Comcast users.
The good news is that there are several ways to fight back and get BitTorrent up and running again. Robb Topolski, a networking and protocol expert summed up some of the workarounds that reportedly solve the throttling issues.
What is working
1. Quite a few Comcast users report that forcing protocol header encryption completely eliminates the problems. This is the easiest solution since most BitTorrent clients support encryption. Please note that simply enabling encryption is not enough, it has to be forced. More details on how to do this can be found over here.
2. Another successfully workaround is to run BitTorrent over encrypted tunnels such as SSH or VPN. BitTorrent over SSH works, but it will cripple the servers of the SSH providers if you plan to use it permanently. A VPN service such as Relakks or VPNTunnel is a better option, and it is worth a few bucks.
3. Comcast prevents seeding, if you’re on a private tracker, and want to share as much as possible, an easy solution is to lower your download rate. When downloading, make sure that you have met your uploading goal by the time that the download completes. The easiest way to accomplish this is to set a download rate slower than the uploading rate. This of course is not an optimal solution because your download will never be faster than you upload speed.
4. One of the best options, if possible, is to switch to another ISP.
What is not working
1. Some people suggested that setting your firewall to drop RST packets could be effective, however, this is not the case. The RST-messages Comcast sends go in both directions, ignoring the RST on only one side creates a useless half-open connection.
2. According to most reports, enabling the Lazy Bitfield option in your BitTorrent client doesn’t solve the problem either
3. Reporting the issue to Technical Support. No explanation needed here.
4. Grab a hammer, visit the Comcast office, smash a keyboard and knock over a monitor. This might sound like a great alternative but apparently it only results in jail time.
I would advise affected Comcast subscribers to play around with these alternatives, some solutions that work for one person, might not work for another. Do you have another solution that is not reported here? Let us know in the comments!
Previously: Inside the Mind of a 9 Year Old File-Sharer
Next: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk42)
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use Tor, and you won’t have any problems, works great, and the more tore users, the better, open source and great, have not had a problem, p.s. i am writing this from a Comcast computer at work.
keep changing port numbers. and keep it random, i.e. don’t cycle between 10-20 ports. there are 64K ports available. use them.
If you are behind a router or firewall, you might need to reconfigure every time the port number changes.
Oh, and don’t forget to encrypt traffic.
HOMEROWED!
no problems here running on port 80 with heavy firewalls ids and ips shut off all of it and i had not problem, is this area specific or something Note i got 800 kb/s to 1000kb/s
Hmm, I am wondering if this might be a workaround:
Have the person who uploads a torrent file include a small 5 or 6k random text file titled “Comcast_Buster.txt.
When you download the torrent, using Azareus or u.torrent, just deselect that single comcast buster file and do not download it. This way you will never achieve a “completed” torrent and will not be recognized as a seeder, thus avoiding the reset packets. Meanwhile, you can upload the rest of the good files in the torrent and maintain your ratio.
Workable???
I have ONE more solution for the What Works section.
Call comcast and tell them to go fuck themselves and switch your service.
Most cable companies are required to open their lines to a second provider. Find out your alternative.
On Oct 22, 2007 at 02:48 by zeros wrote: “Most cable companies are required to open their lines to a second provider. Find out your alternative.”
Not where I live.
The two inexpensive good options are the cable monopoly or DSL with the telco monopoly.
Other options include dialup, satellite, cell-phone, T1, and other expensive or slow options.
Some states have laws preventing a cable monopoly.
http://www.wewantchoiceohio.com/
Thats my state, I dunno about others though… Maybe somebody can find a list :|
When I was using a Comcast account a couple months ago, Comcast did seem to be stopping every torrent that was purely seeding. However, when I switched those torrents to “forced start” or “forced seeding” (I forget which) in Azureus, that seemed to stop whatever they were doing, and the seeds chugged along at my upload speed limit.
I like the old lady story… I know it was not the right thing for her to break stuff at Comcasts office but is there really a better way to deal with a monopoly giant? Not saying everyone needs to break keyboards at their offices but maybe a less severe type of protest/attack would be an effective way of bring about change…
In other countries, attempts by several ISPs to throttle was essentially brought to a halt by a large number of their customers going elsewhere (and others threatening too) - though if Comcast is your only choice that’s not an option.
If enough people actually complain, or simply go elsewhere if it’s possible, maybe they’ll wake up to themselves.
you just need to get a hosting account for like 6 bucks a month at a place like dreamhost.com … they allow you 5TB a month of traffic. just use your comcast for legit stuff or like others have said get diff isp. yay for choices!
We would use DSL - but we can’t get it where we live. Thus, our only choice is Comcast, those fucking corporate assholes.
Regardless, encrypting my traffic using the guide on the Azureus wiki seems to give me decent upload speeds, though I’ve noticed my share ratio on Demonoid slowly falling…
I don’t doubt that comcast is doing this but I have to question who exactly they are doing this to. I use comcast and have no problems with my uploads. So where exactly is happening?
Note that if you use a lot more bandwidth than the average user, Comcast may be happy if you switch ISP’s. It lowers their cost base per customer.
I canceled my CONcast service 1 day before the AP story broke and had therefore an interesting conversation with the retention rep. The guy I talked to seemed pretty knowledgeable but clearly had no specific info about the traffic manipulation. And he talked his own experience as a Comcast customer of downloading movies etc. over BitTorrent, which if I’m not mistaken is definite pirate activity. I’m not sure whether it’s company policy to discuss that or just the individual I happened to run into. Here’s a rundown of what the retention rep told me (paraphrased):
Rep: Is your reason for canceling related to pricing or service?
Me: Service related.
Rep: Can you go into more detail?
Me: Ever since you guys [Comcast] took over from Time Warner in this area I’ve found it’s impossible to seed torrents. I have DSL now and while it’s slower, anything is faster than zero.
Rep: We don’t block BitTorrent traffic. I don’t have any trouble when I run BitTorrent. I downloaded a movie just last night. Are you sure it’s not working?
Me: The problem isn’t when you download, it’s when you try to seed.
Rep: That only affects certain markets in the East.
Me: I can only report what I myself have experienced. It’s impossible to seed anything. Now that I’m on DSL everything works fine.
Rep: Are you a heavy downloader? Over 100 gb per month? Do you download video TS files [DVD raw... typically 4 gb in size]? Did you receive a letter for high broadband usage?
Me: No, no, and no. Maybe it’s because I’m in an apartment complex where there are probably be a lot of customers on the same node. Whatever, it doesn’t work and that’s why I’m canceling.
Rep: [babbles something about downloading 6 files at a time... clearly irrelevant... we both know the conversation is pointless]
It seemed like he was trying to gather information from me about how it worked, how they decide who to target, etc. I agree with post #18, I don’t think Concast is informing their CS reps about whatever it is they’re doing.
#40 - That’s why more people need to cancel their service. They’ll only be happy about losing customers if the numbers are small. I’d wager everyone who’s upset about this traffic manipulation is also the first person everyone in their family goes to for computer advice… including what ISP to get. It’s too bad for people stuck with no alternative to Concast, but that’s what monopolies are all about. Once these companies get big enough all they care about is rewriting the rules to favor themselves and eliminate competition.
my cox service was shut down because my neighbor had used my wireless signal, which was unsecured, to download a movie through bitorrent. Assholes!
[quote comment="192198"]my cox service was shut down because my neighbor had used my wireless signal, which was unsecured, to download a movie through bitorrent. Assholes![/quote]
meh that’s sad, sadly i m that kind of asshole…if i can find a stable wireless connection…
and also, pls cancel yr comcast… the world of torrents needs more seeders
[quote comment="191805"]ive never seeded a file. why? because there is already 4000 others[/quote]
Shut your hole leech.
Verizon DSL, FTW! Thankfully, I don’t have this problem with my ISP.
I can imagine that the ratios of people using private trackers are suffering. That’s gotta suck. Not just for the ratios but for the health of the torrents. However, sometimes it can’t be avoided. Some private trackers ban you if your ratio drops too low.
Don’t stress about your ratio if you cannot seed.
Just use NRPG RatioMaster: http://ratiomaster.nrpg.info/
Personally, I don’t use this program. I seed with µTorrent and use PeerGuardian 2, to keep the *IAA’s away. And since my ISP isn’t so damned anal about BT traffic, I can seed ’til I bleed!
Just get a new ISP.
All you comcast complainers must be dumb as shit, honestly. You pay keep paying them for this! WTF is wrong with you!?!
[quote comment="192198"]my cox service was shut down because my neighbor had used my wireless signal, which was unsecured, to download a movie through bitorrent. Assholes![/quote]
Protecting your wireless network is as easy as “click-click,” why the heck would you leave it unsecure? On second thought, don’t answer that question; if everyone who had unsecured wireless suddenly got smart i might actually have to pay for internet access…
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