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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126 Responses
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Nice article, but I think you have the wrong word in the headline: “BitTorrent Throttling”? They’re breaking seed connections entirely, not slowing them down.
If i read it correct, you can not seed a file? Who cares?
[quote]If i read it correct, you can not seed a file? Who cares?[/quote]
Um, the people who wouldn’t be able to download it because you leeched might care.
ive never seeded a file. why? because there is already 4000 others
Joe, anyone who wants to keep BT alive by giving back what they take cares. There’s little need to seed a torrent with 4000 seeds already, but a lot of torrents are not nearly that big, sometimes fewer than 10 seeders. Sometimes all seeders disappear and the torrent dies.
In addition, someone who can’t seed can’t upload something new. As a musician releasing my work via BitTorrent, you bet I care about this (fortunately I have Cox).
[quote comment="191783"]Nice article, but I think you have the wrong word in the headline: “BitTorrent Throttling”? They’re breaking seed connections entirely, not slowing them down.[/quote]
They actually do both, but you’re right, the title could have been better…
After some more in-depth tests how to determine how exactly those disconnects are triggered we have come up with something for Azureus users that can help in some cases (their heuristic to identify bittorrent traffic doesn’t seem to be uniform): http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Avoid_traffic_shaping#Level_5
It’s supplementary to normal bittorrent encryption.
the angry old lady is a touching story. :)
http://digg.com/tech_news/How_To_Bypass_Comcast_s_BitTorrent_Throttling
(sorry for doing this on lots of stories).
I would love to see a digg this button built into this site. thanks.
[quote comment="191847"]I would love to see a digg this button built into this site. thanks.[/quote]
uhmm… there is a digg button after the “related entries” section…
[quote]BitTorrent over SSH works, but it will cripple the servers of the SSH providers if you plan to use it permanently.[/quote]
SSH to my own server with a 100mb/s link would not be crippled by me using 500kb/s up and 8mb/s down, even if using it 24/7. The crippling effects occur when you tell people in other articles (like the one linked) to abuse poorly funded, none profit services designed for low bandwidth use.
A massively over subscribed and low bandwidth VPN service would also collapse.
The SSH article still links to silenceisdefeat, thus you are still contributing massively to the problems of shell providers.
If you gave a crap about the crippling effects, you’d remove that link.
One solution not mentioned above is to rent a VPS and use as a seed box.
Unless comcast start throttling HTTP traffic, it will work fine. Not only do you not have RST packets, they can usually seed faster than the average home connection. SSH and VPN solutions are limited to less than your home upload rate.
Alaska Communications Service (in Alaska) is doing them same thing with bittorrent & other p2p traffic
Not only has Comcast previously been killing my seed connections, it now appears they are doing the same for downloads. I can’t seem to keep any download connection for any length of time.
thanks for the excellent guide dude
get a decent ISP!
[quote comment="191851"]
uhmm… there is a digg button after the “related entries” section…[/quote]
woops….
Thanks for pointing this out to me.
For some reason I have comcast highspeed internet and I still can bypass seeding without any encryption of such.
“3. Reporting the issue to Technical Support. No explanation needed here.”
There should be some explanation. Granted, a lot of tech support for Comcast is not great by any means, it is not usually the fault of the agent, but that of Comcast. Comcast does not train their “third party” phone “consultants” in any sort of effective manner. They also don’t tell their agents that these issues are going on. That they, as a company are actively doing such things to hinder customer’s surfing experience. We have to find out for ourselves by reading posts such as your these.
Please don’t read this wrong, and think that I am taking up for Comcast. Far from it, I am sticking up for the agents who are wrought under the wire by customers who have no thought of how tiring a job can be when all you deal with is people complaining and calling you stupid. All day.
Comcast tech rep’s are generally not payed nearly enough and if you want a good idea of what they’re paid; each customer is worth about $1.50 Canadian to each representative. As per the hourly wage, on average eight hours a day.
One frustrating things with many of these articles (yours and other outlets, although I enjoy them nonetheless) is that the rep is often pinned as incompetent. If you want some detailed information, feel free to contact me.
[quote comment="191971"]For some reason I have comcast highspeed internet and I still can bypass seeding without any encryption of such.[/quote]
Edit: For some reason I have comcast highspeed internet and I still can bypass seeding throttling without any encryption of such.
I laugh at every article I read these days that acts like this is some big new thing. Traffic shaping has been discussed for YEARS over on DSLReports, including the more recent addition of packet forgery via Sandvine. Congrats on being the 12,000th news source to report on traffic shaping!
Although you talked about forcing encryption via the clients themselves, you didn’t mention using Tor. Although you may lose some download speed with Tor due to it’s encryption and multiple hops around the world, you will on the whole have a better experience than without if you are on comcast.
For more information: tor.eff.org
On linux, it’s easy to use… simply type “torify azureus” or “torify deluge” (for whatever client you’re using) with ALT+F2. On windows, you simply have to setup proxy settings in your bittorrent client to point to your local Tor daemon. Googling for “Tor” and your bittorrent client of choice should yield some decent tutorials.
4. One of the best options, if possible, is to switch to another ISP.
Yeah, I’ll look into that with my completely monopoilzed city, chief.
Tor is slow and limited bandwidth, and also more massively damaging to everyone than using a SSH shell provider such as silenceisdefeat (as you’re crapping all over hundreds of people’s machines, not just one server provider!). also, you can’t have incoming connections, which is critical to being a seed: What use is it if nobody else can contact you asking for pieces of files??
A real solution would be to use one of the VPN providers listed: they’re designed for this, and you’ll get a far faster speed than using any other method (such as encryption: many clients don’t have encryption built in, only the big names like Azureus).
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 comment="192000"]Tor is slow and limited bandwidth, and also more massively damaging to everyone than using a SSH shell provider such as silenceisdefeat (as you’re crapping all over hundreds of people’s machines, not just one server provider!). also, you can’t have incoming connections, which is critical to being a seed: What use is it if nobody else can contact you asking for pieces of files??
A real solution would be to use one of the VPN providers listed: they’re designed for this, and you’ll get a far faster speed than using any other method (such as encryption: many clients don’t have encryption built in, only the big names like Azureus).[/quote]
people still have not learned to use utorrent?
traffic shaping/seed blocking is done so you dont crap all over the isp’s lines. they can support the downward traffic 24/7 across all customers they cant support the uploads. Buy a rapidshare account if you really have no clue how to get around this.
Well thats my theory anyway…
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