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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Ink:
Lots and lots of people *can’t* change ISPs. My ISP is not Comcast, but there is no real alternative to the one I’ve got. The traffic generated by updating a new Linux install (usually half to a whole gig, and I do this several times a month) plus my brother’s Halo addiction is enough to make them whiny.
My college has a marvelous connection, but firewalling prevents bit torrents from ever getting out of the 20-30k download speed range. My record at home is 150k, average more like 40-50. My record on a shell server in Germany was 780k… for the same torrent that was giving me 23k a second at home :) So, bittorrent CAN be very fast, when no-one is standing in your way…
First of all 780k? I’ve got a 1.5 MB/s line here and I can max it out on a public tracker… I’m not even talking private tracker here.
If you’re talking about upload… my root server does 5-8.5MB/s for hours easy while seeding (not that I usually let it run for hours with that speed).
If your shell server is that slow it’s probably a vps in which case you should start looking for a new provider because even a vps is usually faster than that.
And btw. what distro are you using!?
I usually run debian testing/unstable on more than one system and the amount of data the updates use are pretty much nothing compared to the rest… same goes for some online gaming + ts2 or vt. (xbox bleh)
And on topic: Most ppl can change ISPs they just don’t want to because the other ones cost a bit more and bitch because their cheap ass ISP is crap.
Where’s SandVine execs information?
Well to me, 780k is special :( I guess I’m not a big enough torrenter to have seen better… I followed a link here from a non-torrent-related site, so I guess I should have known to keep my mouth shut ;)
And, when I say update, I mean updates for an ISO that is a few months old, for example I just installed Fedora Core 7’s stable iso and there was ~700mb of updates to do… and Ubuntu’s new update 7.10 is like 650mb…
I have Comcast and I haven’t had problems seeding yet. My upload speed has always been capped badly though. I have to leave my computer on for a day or two seeding in order to give back what I got. Well I’m moving in a week or two so I won’t have Comcast anymore. Hope my New ISP doesn’t do this.
downloading 10.3 suse I was at a steady 700KB/s after 15min using encryption and a custom port about 30 minutes later I guess I spiked and they started with the RST packets per my wireshark cap. 5min later I was at a steady 30KB/s with no seeding…they have pegged me good and i ftp’d 10.3 at 600KB/s.
Were comcast customers complaining?!?!?! because ive never had a problem. back to IRC. VPN tunnels will soon be shutdown because of abuse.
#30 That sounds like a good idea.
I would try adding a (or multiple) file(s) of decent size (ie 3-10 x PieceSize) and not to use a static or easily recognizable name for it.
One can add the names of the files not to download to the description on the tracker (not in the torrent :)
And use piece-sizes
Argh “HTML”-”Blocker”…
And use piece-sizes BELOW-OR-EQUAL-TO 256 KiB
That helps a swarm a lot.
- Breeze
So, what if the BT devs from the different clients get together and create some kind of RST packet authentication system, so the client knows it’s not forged? Wouldn’t that fix this whole thing?
For a more lighthearted (and slightly retarded) look at the issue: http://www.grinn.net/blog/dev/2007/10/comcast-vs-bittorrent-issue-resolved.html
When Comcast wants to throttle their load, suggest they to do first something about the massive Spam originating from their network.
Alternative, all networks outside of Comcast, do block Comcast. Got anyway no business with them, stops at the same time all Spam originating from Comcast networks.
I’ve been uploading at my max speed since I got Comcast three years ago, and that hasn’t changed recently. Still upping at max speed. Perhaps this is other issues — peer quality, tracker quality, congestion, etc. — and not just Comcast.
I have Comcast in Portland.
[quote]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]
You are an idiot. Cable companies have monopolies in this country. If you want a different provider, you have to move to a different city. Unless you want dial-up.
I hate those ISPs who prevent BitTorrent seeding because seeding is the method we currently use at Podmailing to send large files by e-mail:
The user starts by seeding them until our servers have a complete copy and then he can shut down or continue seeding, because our servers are there to take over with lots of bandwidth.
Oh well, that gives us one more reason to put the http upload back in place. It should be available in a few days, and once we have that, Comcast users will be able to upload their files this way and have them re-seeded by our servers for free ;-)
http://www.podmailing.com
The place I’m staying at has Comcast, downloads usually aren’t that bad, pretty fast usually (get better speeds if I’m IRC-ing anything) but I’ve noticed that my upload are usually capped out after 15-30 kb/s/torrent so my ratio usually stays in the .800 range cause I try to seed for a while before removing the .torrent file and keeping what I got, because of them I now have to let ALL my files seed to 1.5+ before I remove it
The problem is that comcast is only blooding seeding. Why don’t the major torrent sites get together and ban comcast users for a day. Redirect them to a page with comcast’s contact info to flood comcast’s support infrastructure.
That’ll teach them. If the torrent sites don’t band together now, this will just get worse over time as upload bandwidth is choked gradually.
Comcast is selling (and its clients are buying) something they’ll never give: bandwidth.
What if a game in a 5,000 sits stadium sells more than 5,000 tickets? Wouldn’t that be wrong? A hoax?
http://rip747.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/how-to-bypass-comcast’s-bittorrent-throttling-the-true-way/
change the port to 80. worked like a charm for me.
@ The 8472 i dont see a “digg” button twat
Anyone else on Comcast that can capture packets want to run help me run a test? If so email me at comcastsucks_at_lardie.net. Replace _at_ with @.
Rogers, here in Canada is doing the same thing comcast is doing in the U.S. I tried BitTorrent over SSH with no luck. I guess I’ll have to try sites that don’t keep a ratio.
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