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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everything they say in this article is wrong. Just set your bit torrent port to 80.
http://rip747.wordpress.com/2007/10/22/how-to-bypass-comcast%e2%80%99s-bittorrent-throttling-the-true-way/
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Seriously, don’t use Tor for your downloads. I run a fairly high bandwidth Tor node, and we’ve got enough traffic without trying to mask your movie downloading.
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9769645-46.html
“Many states make it illegal for an individual to impersonate another individual. New York, a state notorious for its aggressive pro-consumer office of the Attorney General, makes it a crime for someone to “(impersonate) another and (do) an act in such assumed character with intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another.” (See: NY Sec. 190.25: Criminal impersonation in the second degree). I do not believe that it would be too difficult to prove that Comcast obtains a benefit by impersonating others to eliminate or reduce BitTorrent traffic.”
http://www.cnet.com/8301-13739_1-9769645-46.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=2640
I would suggest using a seedbox. I have an account with wewillhosit.com that allows me 175GB transfer per month and I can download my files compressed via valid http traffic. Check them out!
i am on the comcast network and have never had a problem seeding at all, i have used both Azueras and Utorrent with defualt settings and they both worked just fine.
also i have worked tech support for comcast, most of their support is done in 3rd party call centers, the only thing they tell their support is that they do not do this, so if its true they dont even tell their support staff the truth either, so calling into tech support will get you no where. they dont even tell them the kind of hardware used, they just give the front line agents(the ones you call), the basic infomation and partial access to tools to get you back online.
I just wanna say that I started having problems with COMCAST throttling my downloads. I suffered for like 3 days before I found this page. Thank gooodness there are still good people in this world. This page >>>>> http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-encrypt-BitTorrent-traffic/ fixed the problem for me. I am using “BitTorrent”. I am now downloading and seeding again after 3 bad days. Thnaks you again.
[quote comment="191805"]ive never seeded a file. why? because there is already 4000 others[/quote]
i hope you get cancer.
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[quote comment="191798"]If i read it correct, you can not seed a file? Who cares?[/quote]
Boy am I glad that you are not the only one sharing (or so-called).
Fifth
For those in The Netherlands: Orange throttles down Bittorrent traffic. My current provider (Tiscali) doesn’t
http://codeberna.nl/henk/NietAfknijpen.png
A friend of mine has no problems with Speedlinq, which is also avaible.
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http://redhatcat.blogspot.com/2007/09/beating-sandvine-with-linux-iptables.html
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=649839
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I’m using Transmission on OS X — the preferences state that “encryption will be used whenever possible” and allows the user to “ignore unencrypted users.”
I have comcast and have no problems seeding or leeching.
Best way to bypass it? Switch service providers.
[quote comment="191805"]ive never seeded a file. why? because there is already 4000 others[/quote]
No, not really. I bet you’re also the same person that gets mad when people aren’t seeding something you want.
Sandvine was killing me, I noticed a huge drop in speed. My friend told me he had the same problem and went with a VPN provider. There are quite a few out there, just google it. I currently use http://www.strongvpn.com . Their speeds are excellent and it’s a regular hosting company ( reliablehosting.com ) so their staff is always there and know what they are doing.
It’s useful for other reasons too so I don’t mind the extra $15 a month on my budget.
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how do i get around the cap i cant download even a game demo i get the server connetion was reset erro i can even watch steaming videos or large ones.i might download the occational torrent but i want to watch a streaming movie and i got Screwed!
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