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
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I am having problems seeding on a private tracker because of comcast and sandvine. Anyone know f fixes for this on a private tracker?
[quote comment="254705"]I am having problems seeding on a private tracker because of comcast and sandvine. Anyone know f fixes for this on a private tracker?[/quote]You can use VPN service, as for example http://safevpn.net
comcast has most stuff blocked pretty well but if you use the original bittorrent tracker and a site like isohunt.com it should work fine…thats what i do
Sourceforge has a Windows port of the FreeBSD firewall called wipfw. You can use it to block TCP packets with the RST flag. You can even configure it to block RST flags only on your BT listen port if you wish. Of course, it can’t defeat Comcast entirely unless both ends of the connection are using it. I am trying it now and I think I see a slight improvement. It might eliminate Comcast’s Sandvine blocking if all Windows based BT users would implement something like this. Of course, they’d probably come up with some other way of blocking then.
We are looking for some comcast users to beta test our service. http://www.divertednetworks.com - no logs, no bandwidth caps, no questions.
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[quote comment="192012"]Netgear ProSafe VPN Firewall does the trick quite well…and there is no other choice….it’s Comcast or nothing…at least where I live[/quote]
Nice, USA is indeed slipping behind. The Netherlands….many providers in any city. Just like the rest of the EU.
Um, maybe it’s buried in this post somewhere… If your using a router upgraded to DD-WRT firmware telnet into the router and add the following command:
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp –dport *x* –tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP
This will kill the RST requests before they hit your app..
wholly provocation canvass.worshiping:shotguns!Lithuanian.travels .
I am running BITorrent on a “concrap” connection right now. It’s not my house, nor my money, but if it were the only alternative in the same price range would be DSL through Qwest. Choose your demon, I geuss…
As for seeding on comcast, I noticed that (on this connection) when using BT normally almost none of your files seed by themselves. I have found, like someone[s] said, changing ports, resetting the modem and forcing seeds will get me up to 60-70 kbps (up). problem is they seem to adapt, dropping me down to 40, then eventually 10 or less. Then it’s a matter of playing with it all again, a task I will gladly partake in to share the wealth.
As for Monday’s hearing in boston, I must say it was a great deal more watchable (yes I watched the whole thing) than C-sPam usually is . (bush speech = insult to my intelligence)
ConCr@p really shot themselves in the foot this time. The FCC commissioner asked like 3 times “does bit torrent technology allow users to gain more bandwidth than the limit (i.e max speeds) that is being sold to them?”
the answer was, all three times: NO
The FCC was not at all amused (especially with the whole ’seat-warmers’ fiasco) by C0NCraps snake oil wheeling and dealings. It’s not just this incident, this company has a rap sheet a mile long of shady bullcrap they pull every day and steal ppl’s hard earned money. I say it’s about they got their karma for being such a cocky brat.
I have comcast and I have never experienced a speed like this. Look at the third download and the speed for it
http://vinnyty.com/pics/ummm.jpg
1.3*8 = 10.5Mb/sec for that one torrent. In some areas Comcast does offer 12Mb service so it is technically possible. In playing around on my LAN I’ve seen speeds in excess of 5MB/sec, the only limitation is the network connection.
Comcast does not care how happy customers are. All they care about is packing new customers on the same network WITHOUT upgrading it. They kill BT traffic instead of upgrading their network. THEY DO NOT GIVE ONE SHIT ABOUT THEIR PRESENT CUSTOMERS. THEY CARE ABOUT OBTAINING NEW ONES. GREED!!!!!! I CANNOT STAND THIS FUCKING COMPANY.
Comcast is the Neo Nazis of the internet service providers.
To avoid most and all Comcast invading your privacy is simply a firewall. Usually what i mean by this is not a software one that comes with microsoft but instead a hardware one, like linksus. a good hub will keep the baddies out.
i have comcast for over 4 years now without any complaint besides being slow at times and cost.
if i do notice comcast trying to force me to use any of their software and refusing me into specific sites i would go dsl.
Interestingly enough I got a “Could not locate remote server” error for this page when I used my plain vanilla comcast connection. Going through Anonymizer.com and it loaded no problem. Could it be that comasst is censoring the web?
BTW I’m just trying to ftp up to comcast’s personal webpage servers, videos of a wedding… Throttled waaay down. (*&(^%!!
Your an idiot if you think seeding isn’t important and you obviously don’t know what the hell a private tracker is… GTFO
has anyone looked into monowall firewall it has a build in vpn could i set this up to work don’t know much about this stuff was just trying to get my speeds up on seeding
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