Dave Satz wrote in to inform us that one of his friends was served with a DMCA takedown notice a few weeks ago. His friend, John Aprigliano, had allegedly downloaded a CAM release of “Cadillac Records”, without ever having heard of the movie. Although these takedown notices are just a formality and intended to scare the recipient, John decided to contact his ISP and ask for clarification.

After four calls to Comcast support the truth came out. The infringement notice was forwarded to the wrong person because the MAC-address of John’s old modem was still linked to his account. The Comcast techs eventually corrected the mistake, but this case yet again shows how inaccurate takedown notices can be.

Of course, this is just an exception, without any serious consequences. But what if John had lived in Ireland or New Zealand? He could have lost his Internet connection because of a mistake like this. Not to mention that if Comcast doesn’t screw up, the companies that collect the so called evidence might – it wouldn’t be the first time.

The RIAA is currently trying to get ISPs all across the world, including Comcast, on board for their “three-strikes” or “graduated response” scheme. Earlier this week ZDNet reported that AT&T and Comcast are seriously considering teaming up with the RIAA later this year to hunt down illegal filesharers. Let’s hope Comcast has fixed its administration by then.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Comcast was slapped by the FCC last year for a similarly unfair treatment of BitTorrent users, but Cox managed to get away relatively unscathed, even though it was using the same TCP RST packet forging techniques. Cox has no intention of stopping the traffic slowdowns in 2009, it will just use different methods.

In February, Cox will trial a brand new throttling scheme that aims to slow down so-called “non-time sensitive” traffic when the network is congested. This includes all P2P, FTP and Usenet traffic. Although Cox announced the trials – which will start in Kansas and Arkansas – on its website, details are scarce.

For one, Cox does not explain what the definition of a congested network is, how often its users can expect to be throttled and more specifically, at what times of the day this is likely to happen. Secondly, it is currently unknown what measures Cox will actually take, and what applications will be used to slow down its customers.

Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, is also concerned with Cox’s new plans. He said in a response to the news, “The lesson we learned from the Comcast case is that we must be skeptical of any practice that comes between users and the Internet.” Indeed, network neutrality is at stake – again.

“The information provided by Cox gives little indication about how its new practices will impact Internet users, or if they comply with the FCC’s Internet Policy Statement. Cox customers will certainly want to know more about how the company is interfering with their Internet traffic and what criteria it uses to discriminate,” Scott added.

It is really disappointing to see (some) ISPs using “network congestion” as an excuse to slow down users of P2P applications using expensive traffic shaping devices, particularly as this “congestion” doesn’t seem to deter them from taking on more and more customers.

Instead, they should invest in their network infrastructure. Five years from now the demand on the network’s resources might be a ten fold increase from today’s levels. They can close their eyes and wish, but that wont make BitTorrent and other high bandwidth applications go away.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

We’ve wrote before that ISPs are looking for new ways to manage their network by introducing bandwidth caps and metered plans. Although we’re not in favor of it, we have to applaud Comcast for being open about it. Most other ISPs have similar policies, limiting their unlimited services, but they seem to get away with it. One of these ISPs is Qwest, one of the larger Internet providers in the western United States, who forces customers to accept an invisible 250 GB cap.

Qwest’s approach is quite aggressive to say the least. When customers reach the magic limit, their web traffic is is redirected to an “excessive use” page. The page informs the customer that they “noticed extremely high usage” on their Qwest Broadband account. The notification blocks all HTTP access from your computer, making it impossible to access any website. In order to proceed and release the block on your system, customers must acknowledge notification on this web page, and agree to a new service agreement.

There are no other options, no personal phone calls, no further explanation what acceptable use is, or how customers can track their usage. The new service agreement, dated August 12, 2008 (pdf), allows Qwest to limit your use in any way they see fit, and even terminate your service when the customer exceeds the (invisible) limit again. Note that Qwest does not specify how much bandwith customers are allowed to use. They only state (pdf) that “normal” subscribers use 1-3 GB a month (oh really?), and that 40.000 – 80.000 typically sized MP3 downloads is considered to be excessive use.

Comcast’s MP3 limit 250 GB limit comes down to 62,500 4 MB MP3s, so it is safe to say that Qwest has a bandwidth cap that is similar to Comcast – 250 GB. Unlike Comcast, excessive use is not specified anywhere in the service agreement, so customers can only guess, and hope that their service will not be limited or terminated out of the blue.

One of the affected Qwest users, who tipped us off, told TorrentFreak: “Since Qwest holds a monopoly in many areas, they can continue to reduce allowed bandwidth usage as they add new users while not adding new infrastructure. Such radical bandwidth limitation will have a chilling effect on further evolution of the Internet. If people can’t get bandwidth, then they can’t use bandwidth intensive services such as YouTube and Netflix. We may never know what the future could have been.”

Indeed, as we have said before, ISPs should think ahead. To most “normal” customers 250 GB may sound as a lot of bandwidth, but this might be totally different in the future. Making an online backup of your harddrive is pretty much impossible with a bandwidth cap like this, so will HD-streaming. It hinders innovation while it’s ignoring the real problem. ISPs should invest in their network instead, but I guess it’s not only the entertainment industry that finds it hard to adapt to technological change.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The FCC’s final decision came exactly a year after we first reported on the issue. Initially, Comcast flatout denied that they were slowing down BitTorrent users, but after AP confirmed our reports, mainstream media picked it up and the FCC got involved. FCC argues that Comcast’s actions are unfair because they specifically target BitTorrent, not any other protocols.

Good news right? So BitTorrent users will soon be able to download at blazing speeds again? Well, not really. A neutral net wont stop ISPs from slowing down their customers. Now they simply have to slow down everyone – and that’s exactly what their plan is. Comcast already said that they will move on, and throttle bandwidth hogs at peak times when needed. On top of that, they are enforcing a monthly bandwidth limit, not hesitating to disconnect people who use more than they should.

Comcast is taking these measures under the “reasonable network management” flag. However, what is reasonable now (if it is), might not be one or two years from now. The problem is that the ISPs are the ones who decide what the limits should be, meaning they can pretty much do whatever they want.

Several ISPs have already started to experiment with new tools to prevent customers from using too much bandwidth. Comcast will slow down all heavy bandwidth users, and Time Warner Cable is testing metered plans, where users will pay for the bandwidth they transfer. Worrying developments, to say the least.

Some might not see a problem with metered plans. We pay for water and gasoline in pretty much the same way. This is indeed true, but there’s also a danger in metering the Internet. It will restrict innovation (heavy bandwidth apps), and the use of high bandwidth video streaming may become something for the elite.

One thing is clear, BitTorrent users will be the main targets of these new “business models”. It was therefore surprising to see comments from Eric Klinker, Chief Technology Officer of BitTorrent, on these initiatives. “I think what Comcast and Time Warner Cable are doing is a great first step,” Klinker told Cnet. “It gets ISPs out of the business of deciding which applications are important and which aren’t. But there are enhancements to the peer-to-peer protocol, in particular, that can make it easier on all ISPs.”

Net neutrality is not the Holy Grail though – a neutral net is useless if it’s slower than a biased one. Klinker agreed on this, and told us that he doesn’t think that these new business models, or network management practices, are a good long term strategy. “This is a step in the right direction because ISPs are indeed making their networks more “neutral” without new legislation requiring them to do so,” he told TorrentFreak. “But make no mistake, bandwidth caps and metered plans are bad for the Internet and could stunt the adoption and growth of all broadband services.”

Network expert Robb Topolski, who was the first to document Comcast’s unfair network management practices, thinks that ISPs might experiment with new network management tools, but that these wont stick. When we asked him whether he thinks the FCC ruling will lead to more bandwidth caps and metered plans, he said: “If it does, then something has gone wrong with competition. Customers clearly don’t want metered plans and bandwidth caps. There might be some ISPs that experiment with these, but I don’t see it happening.”

Let’s hope Robb is right. Of course, we applaud the FCC ruling, but we have a strange feeling that ISPs will continue to fight their customers for a while. They should, of course, move on and invest in the future. BitTorrent is here to stay, files will get larger, and more bandwidth intensive services will surface, really.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Regardless, Comcast is not the only ISP that is throttling. As was revealed in the stats from Project Glasnost, Cox is also throttling heavily. So, while some are popping the champagne corks over this victory, others are still working hard to keep our ISP’s honest, and ensure that their customers are getting what they paid for.

The latest of these, is a project called Switzerland by the EFF. Still in very early alpha, it’s an attempt to not just detect sandvineing by an ISP, but other forms of throttling as well. Unlike Glasnost, which uses a central server and known torrent streams to detect activities from the ISP interfering, this will use a more decentralised method, where peers running Switzerland swap information about the packets they send to other Switzerland users, in encrypted data packets sent via a central server. In effect, it’s a checksum of torrent activity sent via a 3rd party. As Peter Eckersley, staff technologist for the EFF, and developer of Switzerland puts it “Alice and Bob are exchanging packets, they connect to a neutral server (Switzerland) to arbitrate between their different views of the packets”.

When asked why the EFF started this project, and why they believe a neutral network is important, he told TorrentFreak: “There were several reasons why we started the Test Your ISP project, and designed and built Switzerland. One reason was pragmatic: we were trying to run systematic tests of the interference that Comcast was deploying against P2P networks, and we decided that the only sensible way to do that was to build an automated sensor network. So we set about doing that.”

“The bigger picture, of course, is that without transparency the Internet won’t remain the amazing open and innovative thing that it has been,” Eckersley says. “And EFF’s mission is to make sure that the Internet stays open and innovative. We need to shine lights into the dark corners of the network, and make sure that ISPs aren’t setting themselves up in some control room and saying “protocol A okay, but protocol B doesn’t fit with our business plans, so let’s give it second-class treatment or stop it from working entirely.”

Some might worry that the client might open up people to being monitored by anti-p2p companies or other undesirables, using the system as another method of verification, but there is really no way around it. The simplest method to avoid that is, in Peters words, “avoid exchanging copyrighted files between Switzerland clients. The copyright risks are probably lower if you run your own Switzerland server, but it’s still going to keep logs.”

The question of what the FCC will do about these other ISPs and their traffic management is one to ponder. Our inquiries on this matter have been acknowledged, but not replied to at the time of publication.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“Comcast surreptitiously installed receiver packets to keep people from using file-sharing programs when it promised it wouldn’t,” Alyson Foster, an associate at the law firm Gilbert Randolph alleges. “Of course the competition is fierce in telecommunications, but they were trying to get an unfair leg up.”

Robb Topolski, who is now the plaintiff in the nationwide class action lawsuit against Comcast, told TorrentFreak at the time: “We have had two Comcast techs confirm Sandvine in use, but neither confirmed or denied its connection with the RST interference. For me, seeding is possible. I can reach my upload speed limit, but there sure is a lot of interference. Since your article came out, I too have received many reports of seeding being impossible. I’m not sure if it’s regional, or what!”

These reports however, were soon picked up by the mainstream press, and eventually led to an investigation by the FCC. Two weeks ago, the FCC announced that it will order Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic. FCC chairman said that Comcast slows down BitTorrent users independent of the amount of traffic they use, and that the company failed to communicate their network management practices to their consumers.

It is now up to the federal court to decide if Comcast’s BitTorrent users deserve to be compensated, and whether the company need to stop their misleading advertisements. Foster said the amount of the damages has yet to be estimated, but the alleged damages are expected to exceed $5 million.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Kevin Martin, FCC chairman told AP that Comcast’s BitTorrent throttling is “arbitrary”, and that the company had violated the principles of the Federal Communications Commission. Martin said that Comcast slows down BitTorrent users independent of the amount of traffic they use, and that the company failed to communicate their network management practices to their consumers.

Indeed, a recent study by the Max Planck Institute showed that the company had misinformed the FCC and their users. Comcast has always argued that BitTorrent upstream traffic was only blocked during periods of heavy network traffic, this turns out to be a lie, as the study showed that they blocked BitTorrent upstream traffic 24/7.

The FCC has announced that it will take appropriate action against Comcast, and the ISP will be ordered to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic. Comcast has said before that it will invest in its network capacity and stop slowing down the traffic of their users, but these were all false promises.

Marvin Ammori, general counsel of Free Press who filed the complaint with the FCC is delighted with this outcome, and said in a response: “Nine months ago, Comcast was exposed for blocking free choice on the Internet. At every turn, Comcast has denied blocking, lied to the public and tried to avoid being held accountable. We have presented an open and shut case that Comcast broke the law.”

“The FCC now appears ready to take action on behalf of consumers. This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet. If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money,” Ammori added.

It is to be expected that – if the pipes are really congested – Comcast and other ISPs will have to step away from the all-you-can-eat plans they have been offering for years, now that people are actually using bandwidth they signed up for.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

This morning many people will be celebrating as reports circulate that in the last few hours Comcast has been the subject of a hacking which defaced its homepage (mirror here).

The hackers appear to have changed the Comcast DNS/WHOIS records which were pointing at a non-Comcast address. Although back to normal now, for a while the records displayed this data:

Administrative Contact:
Domain Registrations, Comcast kryogenicsdefiant@gmail.com
Defiant still raping 2k8 ebk
69 dick tard lane
dildo room
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103
US
4206661870 fax: 6664200187

Technical Contact:
Comcast Corporation kryogenicsdefiant@gmail.com
1500 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
US
215-320-8774 fax: 215-564-0132

Record expires on 24-Sep-2008.
Record created on 25-Sep-1997.
Database last updated on 28-May-2008 23:48:08 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS21.WORLDNIC.COM 205.178.190.11
NS22.WORLDNIC.COM 205.178.144.11

A Comcast employee said: “The servers are fine and are reachable if the DNS server you are using is pointing to the correct place. As far as we can tell, the hack was a one shot deal, not an ongoing event.”

There are reports that concerned users telephoning to inform Comcast were summarily disconnected, with a level of panic centered round the security of the Comcast email system with reports that the hackers were picking off Comcast user’s usernames and passwords. As yet, this is unconfirmed.

Others claim they were treated politely by Comcast and told to use a temporary site in the meantime, located at http://beta.comcast.net/a/. The Comcast forums also went down and then started diverting to http://www6.comcast.net/a/.

There are rumors circulating that the group responsible for the hack previously targeted Justin Timberlake and Hilary Duff.

More on this story as we get it.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Last week we reported on a new and reliable tool that tests whether or not your BitTorrent traffic is being limited. The tool is developed by the Max Planck Institute, who have released new data today. The findings reveal that the BitTorrent connections of half of Comcast and Cox’s customers are being cut. In addition, the data shows that these practices take place 24/7, disproving Comcast’s earlier statement to the FCC

“Comcast’s network management practices (1) only affect the protocols that have a demonstrated history of generating excessive burdens on the network; (2) only manage those protocols during periods of heavy network traffic,” Comcast wrote in a filing to the FCC last February.

This is far from the truth. As can be seen for the graph below, there is little difference in the percentage of blocked customers throughout day. Furthermore, the data shows that there is also no difference between weekends and weekdays. BitTorrent is simply blocked all day long, no matter how busy their network is.

The Max Planck Institute tested the connections of 788 Comcast customers, 494 (62%) experienced a slowdown of BitTorrent traffic. Comcast is not alone though, well over 50% of the Cox subscribers that participated in the study were also throttled. The good news is, other ISPs don’t seem to restrict BitTorrent traffic on a wide scale.

Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, said in a response: “Consumers have no reason left to trust their cable company. This independent study confirms that Comcast is still blocking its customers from using popular applications — despite the FCC’s investigation and widespread public outrage. And worse, the harmful practice appears to be spreading through the marketplace.”

After being pressured by the press and thousands of upset customers, Comcast has announced that it will stop targeting BitTorrent transfers, (somewhere in the future) and promised to invest in its network capacity. For the time being the company will continue to throttle BitTorrent users.

We have asked the FCC for a response, but they had not yet responded at time of going to press

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The new tool developed by the “max planck institute for software systems” can be used without having to run your BitTorrent client, and compares BitTorrent traffic to regular traffic. On top of that, it will give you more information than the Azureus plugin does.

“The goal of our Glasnost project is to make access networks, such as residential cable, DSL, and cellular broadband networks, more transparent to their customers,” the Glasnost team writes. We couldn’t agree more of course, as we have said many times before.

The way it works is pretty straightforward. The Java applet developed by the Glasnost project uploads and downloads data via BitTorrent for a few seconds, and compares that to your regular download speed. It detects if your ISP is limiting all BitTorrent traffic, or just traffic on well known BitTorrent ports. All in all this tool should be able to tell you whether your ISP is messing with BitTorrent traffic or not.

Please keep in mind that the degree of traffic shaping varies a lot between different ISPs. Some ISPs only limit BitTorrent traffic during certain times of the day or do not throttle until the customer has exceeded a certain data threshold, others only slow down traffic in specific regions. More advanced tools have to be developed to detect these methods.

Thus far, over 5,300 users have performed the test, and the preliminary results show that at least 10 ISPs in the United States are slowing down BitTorrent. We asked the researcher for some more details (names) but we haven’t heard back from them. However, on their website, they promise to provide more detailed results later, once the code is peer-reviewed.

We encourage you to do the test, if the test results show that your ISP is limiting BitTorrent traffic, please let us know. We will add a lits of offenders at the bottom of this article.

1. Comcast, USA

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Apparently, everything in the Comcast garden is rosy these days, with previous arch-rival BitTorrent now working things out together over afternoon tea. However, not everyone is celebrating.

In 2007, Robb Topolski discovered and documented the Comcast interference, informed TorrentFreak and we published an article which ignited the whole debate. It’s safe to say, he’s been following this one closely.

Here are his thoughts on the Comcast / BitTorrent reconciliation:

—–

I’m probably a key figure as to why we’re all talking about Network Neutrality again. I was having a problem uploading on Gnutella in early 2007. I tracked it down to Comcast using Sandvine-injected RST packets. Blog stories led to press stories which led to independent confirmation. And here we are today. Peace and harmony? Probably not.

Today Comcast and BitTorrent seems to have solved world hunger — and I’d love nothing more than to be optimistic about it. But I cannot be. As they say on Slashdot — show video, or it didn’t happen. This deal is treachery, relies on how much we can trust the word of Comcast, and leaves the public interests out in the cold.

I think it’s strange that anyone believes a word that Comcast says. This is the Comcast that:

1. Told the FCC in 2005 that they would not degrade traffic in order to convince the FCC that network neutrality regulations were not needed.

2. Started degrading P2P traffic the very next year, and failed to tell anyone what they were doing.

3. Used a system that utilized forgery, and successfully placed blame on the other peer instead of Comcast.

4. Denied it when caught.

5. Then changed their story when the denials were not believed, but still never came out and said what they were doing.

6. Then they justified their actions by throwing their other Cable-Internet brothers and sisters under the bus with their “they do it too!” defense

7. Then stealthily changed the AUP days before an FCC filing where they referred to the new provisions.

8. When the changed AUP started getting press attention, they stated that a prominent story on Comcast.net alerted millions of visitors of the change and accused Marvin Ammori of crying wolf. (Google cache proved that nothing alerted users to the changed AUP until the day after the press started asking questions.)

9. Then they packed the Harvard FCC hearing.

This company has not demonstrated that you can trust its promises, nor can you believe its assertions. Comcast just used BitTorrent Inc. as a tool to try and defang the FCC.

BitTorrent Inc. is a content provider. Vuze, who actually DID make a complaint and petition to the FCC, is a competitor. Neither BitTorrent, Vuze, nor Comcast represents the interests of 12 million Comcast users nor the The Internet Society nor the public. And this middle-of-the-night deal was made without their input.

Nothing has changed. The RST interference continues. It was a wrongful act. BitTorrent Inc. has no right making a deal with Comcast allowing it to continue to commit wrongful acts until it finally decides it is ready to stop. The correct relief is to stop the interference immediately and to FULLY DISCLOSE what it did and to accept responsibility for those actions. (Even today, Comcast’s Policy VP refused to answer questions about the interference.)

Their word is worthless. Until the interference stops, I have no reason to believe it will. Until either meaningful competition returns to broadband, or until sufficient government regulation enforces Network Neutrality, we have no reason to think that this agreement will last through the night.

Robb Topolski

—–

TorrentFreak confronted Ashwin Navin of BitTorrent Inc. with Robb’s comments, and he told us: “We decided to collaborate with Comcast because they agreed to stop using RSTs, increase upload capacity, and evaluate network hardware that accelerates media delivery and file transfers. We’re at the beginning of the formal collaboration, but Robb’s work was instrumental to identify the offending practice. We need him and the community to keep an eye on ISPs across the world.”

“Our work with Comcast will benefit all P2P development because Comcast has agreed to manage traffic at Layer 3 (the network layer) rather than Layers 4-7 (the protocol/application layers). This is a core component of the neutrality debate,” he added.

As always, time will tell…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Comcast’s chief technology officer Tony Warner said: “Rather than slow traffic by certain types of applications — such as file-sharing software or companies like BitTorrent — Comcast will slow traffic for those users who consume the most bandwidth.”

Comcast hoped it could quietly interfere with its customer’s BitTorrent activities without getting too much attention. Unfortunately for them, their actions didn’t go unnoticed, and during August last year we broke the news that this ISP does indeed mess with its customers internet connections.

Comcasts actions sparked the debate about what “reasonable” network management practices are, and this eventually resulted in a FCC hearing last month.

It now seems that Comcast saw the light, and wants to invest in more Internet gateway capacity after all. BitTorrent Inc. announced today that it will work together with the ISP to optimize their software, so that it puts less stress on the network.

Ashwin Navin, president of BitTorrent Inc. told TorrentFreak: “We are happy that Comcast is increasing the upload capacity on its network and that they will stop sending TCP resets to BitTorrent clients. We plan to jointly test how ISPs can better address the large volume of P2P traffic and share our research with all ISPs and application developers. This is a huge win for the Internet community as a whole.”

Still, Comcast will continue to throttle heavy users, who actually use the bandwidth that was promised to them in their contracts. It is to be expected that Comcast and other ISPs will have to step away from the all-you-can-eat plans they have been offering for years, now that people actually start to use bandwidth they signed up for.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

“We at Vuze (Azureus) decided there was something important you can do to help elevate the debate,” says Jay Monahan, General Counsel at Azureus. “We created a simple software “plug-in” that works with your Vuze (Azureus) application to gather information about potential interference with your Internet traffic.”

The main purpose of the plugin is to gather factual data on which ISPs are throttling with BitTorrent, and to what extent. Already there is an ever growing list of bad ISPs available at the Azureus wiki, but the data from the plugin will make their case even stronger.

When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic, Azureus was one of the first BitTorrent clients to introduce a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. However, this was only the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers.

Unfortunately, BitTorrent encryption doesn’t work against the more aggressive, and ever evolving throttling applications. Even though there is a Comcast proof BitTorrent encryption in the making, it is always easier to use political means to stop ISPs from messing with our traffic in the first place. The plugin is listed at Azureus’ Sourceforge page if you want to help out.

For the paranoid BitTorrent users among us, Monahan guarantees that the data will be sent anonymously. “Be assured that sharing this data with us does not involve disclosure of any of your personally identifiable information. We will aggregate the data and may talk about it or disclose it publicly, but no data about any specific user will be disclosed as part of this effort.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Since then, things have gone from bad to worse for Comcast, as their customers started to realize that this ISP wasn’t giving them what they paid for. As a result, Comcast are now being sued and annoyed users formed a coalition to challenge the company to try to claim compensation. All of this is on top of a FCC hearing which deemed that Comcast uses ‘hacker-techniques’ to interrupt BitTorrent traffic, techniques which are employed via the traffic management ’solution’ from Sandvine. Essentially, the Sandvine system allows Comcast to inject forged reset packets into BitTorrent transfers which makes seeding impossible – good news for ISPs who don’t want to give their customers the bandwidth they paid for, but bad news for BitTorrent, and even worse news for supporters of Internet neutrality.

However, it is the very fact that Sandvine allows ISPs like Comcast to disrupt their customer’s activities which prompted the recent Federal Communications Commission hearings. The FCC warned Comcast that it will not allow it to disrupt internet traffic, which is of course a major concern for other ISPs considering investing in the Sandvine system. According to a G&M report, it is this hesitancy over net neutrality issues, coupled with problems major telecoms companies are experiencing when trying to refinance their debts, that have hit Sandvine hard. A survey by financial services outfit Canaccord Adams suggest that the top 40 global communications companies are all currently extremely wary over capital expenditure.

After achieving astronomical growth of 42,000% in just 5 years, Sandvine is really feeling the pressure as on the Toronto Stock Exchange its stock fell a massive 42%, to a low of $1.55. The company already predicted lower performance and revised its revenue estimates back in December 2007. Unfortunately these predictions were still too optimistic as the company has announced that the actual revenue this year is likely to be a further 20% lower than the revised figures. Sales for the first quarter will be $8.2m, an 88% drop on the previous year while full year revenue is expected to be around $80m, down from the December 2007 prediction of $110m.

All this adds up to an annual growth of 15%, versus last year’s growth of 132%.

At best, that means annual growth of just 15 per cent, compared with 132 per cent a year earlier.

Dave Caputo, Sandvine’s President and Chief Executive Officer said in a statement: “We believe that the delays have come about for a variety of reasons, ranging from unique customer-specific circumstances to economic conditions, making operators pause before executing on their approved budgets. We can’t dictate when customers make their decisions, just influence whether they choose Sandvine – and we remain as confident as ever in our ability to do that.”

With BitTorrent developers hard at work creating Sandvine-busting code, time will tell if Mr Caputo’s confidence continues into 2009.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The second half of today’s hearing (pdf link) started with a number of network and technological experts telling us about the Internet, its history, and its makeup. Of main contention was the line between acceptable, and unacceptable traffic management.

Wise things were said, and the panelists made some good points about the unfairness of the traffic management tools that Comcast uses. There was emphasis on the TCP reset, which means that a few seconds after you connect to someone in a BitTorrent swarm, a peer reset message (RST flag) is sent by Comcast and the upload immediately stops.

Richard Bennett (co-inventor of the twisted-pair system for ethernet, and its protocol, 1BASE5) targeted those opposed to any sort of traffic management in his opening statement saying, “if we can’t control network management, we’ll have to shut down the internet”. David Clark, of the MIT computer science lab, opened by saying that ISPs can either see enemies, or they can see partners, and suggesting that right now, they see the former. He, like almost all the panelists, called the current usage of Sandvine technology ‘troubling’, and said that the user should pick the Quality of Service (QoS) level, not an ISP.

Daniel Weitzner, Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Decentralized Information Group summed up bad traffic management with: “Maybe it’s a bit like the old adage about pornography ‘I know it when I see it’. In this case I know what Comcast is doing is in the camp of unreasonable. These are techniques that hackers would use to deny service to any application on the web, very similar in that regard. It might be interesting to hold a panel of security experts to talk about those kind of mechanisms, I’m certainly not one. But, forging data on the internet is probably outside of the realm of reasonable, and any standards body would deem it to be.”

However, one of the most succinct criticisms of Comcast’s actions came from Prof. David Reed, of MIT’s Media Lab, who suggested that any ISP that didn’t follow the standard solutions evolved over the last 30 years should not advertise themselves as an Internet provider, but instead as a company “offering selective access to portions of the net only”, a description many of Comcast’s customers will probably agree with.

The FCC questioner continued the panel discussion, and pointed out that one of the problems might be that there is no actual data on how busy the network was, something that, from his point of view, would be helpful in determining whether the TCP resets are a unreasonable form of network management or not.

One of the panelists (sorry, they all sound the same) immediately replied to this by pointing out that congestion was not important. He compared the TCP reset to a conversation between two people where a third party – who pretends to be one of the persons engaged in the conversation – says “Stop, this conversation is over”. He added: “I find it uncomfortable that someone in the middle is creating a message to you that appears to come from me, I have a lot of trouble with that.”

At the beginning of the hearing FCC chairman Kevin Martin said that they were willing to step in if needed. Let’s hope they will. Feel free to file a comment if you want to let the FCC know what you think of Comcast’s haxxor skills. A video of the hearing will be available within two days.

Stay tuned.

Update: Apparently Comcast has paid people to attend the hearing to keep concerned citizens out.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Unfortunately, protocol header encryption doesn’t help against more aggressive forms of BitTorrent interference, like the Sandvine application used by Comcast. A new extension to the BitTorrent protocol is needed to stay ahead of the ISPs, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

Back in August we were the first to report that Comcast was actively disconnecting BitTorrent seeds. Comcast of course denied our allegations, and ever since there has been a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of Comcast’s actions. On Wednesday, Comcast explained their BitTorrent interference to the FCC in a 57-page filing. Unfortunately they haven’t stopped lying yet, since they now argue that they only delay BitTorrent traffic, while in fact they disconnect people, making it impossible for them to share files with non-Comcast users.

In short, the Comcast interference works like this: A few seconds after you connect to someone in a BitTorrent swarm, a peer reset message (RST flag) is sent by Comcast and the upload immediately stops. Most vulnerable are users in a relatively small swarm where you only have a couple of peers you can upload the file to.

For the networking savvy people among us, here’s an example of real RST interference (video) on a regular BitTorrent connection. In this case, the reset happens immediately after the bitfields are exchanged. Evil? Yes – but there is hope.

The goal of this new type of encryption (or obfuscation) is to prevent ISPs from blocking or disrupting BitTorrent traffic connections that span between the receiver of a tracker response and any peer IP-port appearing in that tracker response, according to the proposal.

“This extension directly addresses a known attack on the BitTorrent protocol performed by some deployed network hardware. By obscuring the ip-port pairs network hardware can no longer easily identify ip-port pairs that are running BitTorrent by observing peer-to-tracker communications. This deployed hardware under some conditions disrupts BitTorrent connections by injecting forged TCP reset packets. Once a BitTorrent connection has been identified, other attacks could be performed such as severely rate limiting or blocking these connections.”

So, the new tracker peer obfuscation technique is especially designed to be a workaround for throttling devices, such as the Sandvine application that Comcast uses. More details on the proposal can be found at BitTorrent.org, which aims to become a coordination platform for BitTorrent developers.

TorrentFreak talked to Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc. who has some of his employees working on the new extension. He told us: “There are some ISPs who would like people to believe that “slowing down” BitTorrent or “metering” bandwidth consumption serves the greater good. Consumers should be very weary of this claim.”

“In recent months, consumers enjoyed unprecedented participation in the political process thanks to the ability to upload opinions and feedback in the YouTube presidential debates. Musicians, filmmakers and artists are finding ways to connect with their audiences across the world thanks to MySpace and BitTorrent. Students are engaging with interactive learning tools in their schools. Which bandwidth intensive application will banned or shaped or metered next by these ISPs? The creative spirit of millions has been ignited, and our need to participate, to communicate will not be silenced.”

“The US government should encourage ISPs to innovate and invest in their networks,” Ashwin said. “Permitting them to interfere or interrupt in the communications of consumers, to protect ISP profit margins, would be a tremendous set back for our country and economy, when we are already slipping behind the first world (UK, EU, Japan, Korea, Singapore, etc) in its broadband capacity.”

We wholeheartedly agree with Ashwin on this one, as we’ve said before. The Internet is only a few years old, if the plan is to keep using it in the future, ISPs need to upgrade their networks. So, invest in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users are not the problem, they only signal that the ISPs need to upgrade their capacity, because customers will only get more demanding in the future. The Internet is not only about sending email, and browsing on text based websites anymore.

The new protocol extension is still under development, but the goal is of course, to get it out as soon as possible.

Hang on…

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

BitTorrent throttling has been going on for a few years now, but it is getting more attention lately, because the number of people who use BitTorrent keeps growing. The traffic shaping methods used vary from ISP to ISP. Some only limit BitTorrent traffic during certain times of the day, or throttle in specific regions. Others take a more aggressive approach and prevent their customers from seeding, or even downloading .torrent files.

Some people might wonder why ISPs throttle their connection. The argument most often used is that all the BitTorrent traffic on their network slows down other customers’ connections. An argument that makes sense (if it is true), but the real problem is that ISPs tend to be secretive about their throttling efforts. If it really is that big of a problem, be open about it, and let your customers know what they can and cannot do.

Art Reisman, who is chief technical officer at APConnections – a company that happens to manufacture traffic shaping devices, lists some of the possible solutions ISPs can implement in order to cope with the “BitTorrent problem”, which he wanted to share here.

1.) Ask for voluntary cooperation.

One recourse would be to ask customers to scale back on torrents, or to use them at night or another time when network usage is low. There is plenty of precedent in the Green movement to recycle and to reduce carbon footprints. So why not a campaign to scale back BitTorrent usage ?

The downside: Can you imagine a service provider sending a letter to its customer base outlining the technical limitations of allowing unlimited BitTorrent applications, and then asking for some voluntary cooperation? Me neither. Perhaps someday, but for now providers are viewed as a profit-driven adversary by most customers.

The upside: Seems to have a warm, fuzzy, feel-good ring to it.

2.) Keep connections within the providers network.

This is the method currently practiced with help from a popular product provided by Sandvine. The basic idea is that on a large provider network there are enough BitTorrent hosts that a client need not leave the provider’s network to retrieve content.

The downside: Consumers are suspicious of providers looking at their data to make determinations on what type of traffic it is. The consumer may also not get good results if the bulk of the content were located outside their providers network; for example, if a user were to download a file that was popular in Europe, the number of servers hosting it on the Comcast network might be limited.

The upside: Consumers are still freely able to find most BitTorrent content. Providers greatly reduce connections and exchange costs with other providers.

3.) Usage based quotas.

With this method a service provider will charge much higher rates when a preset amount of data usage is exceeded over a calendar month.

The upside: This method is unobtrusive in that the provider need not look at a customer’s data, only their total usage. Experience with university residential networks has shown that once quotas are announced users voluntarily reduce their peer-to-peer or BitTorrent usage.

The downside: More complex billing detail and customer service to resolve disputes. Large providers will still compete by marketing their service as unlimited. Despite the rants about BitTorrent being a resource issue, it is still only a small percentage of total customers that use it.

4.) Limit the total connections allowed at one time per user.

The upside: It’s simple and fair to implement. Providers already set rate caps on Internet speeds, so this is just a rate cap on connections, very similar and easy to swallow for the consumer.

The downside: When users reach their allotted connection limit, all traffic on their link slows down.

5.) Build out networks to handle the increased load and pass the cost onto the consumer.

The upside: It works.

The downside: It’s most likely not economically sustainable. Without some other form of mitigation, the public’s appetite for content appears insatiable.

6.) Cancel the service of users who abuse their privileges. There have been reports of providers doing this already.

The upside: It moves an unprofitable customer off your network and onto a competitor.

The downside: Customers begin to despise you.

Here at TorrentFreak we have discussed some of these alternatives before, and in the long run there is really only one solution that is acceptable. The Internet is only a few years old, if the plan is to keep using it in the future, ISPs need to upgrade their networks. So, invest in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users are not the problem, they only signal that the ISPs need to upgrade their capacity, because customers will only get more demanding in the future. The Internet is not only about sending email, and browsing on text based websites anymore.

Art Reisman told TorrentFreak that that there are two solutions that make sense to him: “Raise rates per usage volume instead of flat rates, if it can be kept simple! Second is to limit customer connections as a resource.” Charging for bandwidth uses makes sense indeed, as long as the prices are reasonable. The second option of limiting the number of connections only looks like a temporary fix though.

What do you think?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Here’s one of Bennett’s conclusions taken from the article: “It’s acceptable for Comcast, as a matter of reasonable network management, to employ TCP Resets to prevent BitTorrent doing harm to the web browsing, standard file downloading, and VoIP sessions that are the typical behavior of the Comcast customer.”

This is of course a non-argument. The fundamental problem is that Internet providers offered flat-rate all-you-can-eat broadband access without considering that some users would actually use the offered product at full capacity. The providers’ tradition of selling a product at a ten-fold, known as overbooking, is starting to cause them trouble now companies, artists and their consumers start to utilize the benefits BitTorrent offers. But, is that the consumers’ fault?

Comcast, and other ISPs advertise with certain upload and download rates, conforming to simple DOCSIS capacity numbers. However, they miscalculated and found that there is more to the Internet than browsing, gopher, and email. Heavy-users broke their excel return-on-investment predictions and marketing campaign promises. Their flat-rate offers simply became too popular for the capacity that was bought and installed.

Maybe Comcast should start 2-new services “newb Internet”, designed only for emails, and “regular Internet” aimed at every single other person in the world who used the net for more than sending a text-only emails. That should make things more transparent.

Now they are whining and manipulating heavy users to undo the flat-rate contracts, instead of investing in more Internet gateway capacity, 10Gbps interconnect ports, and peering agreements. BitTorrent users do not slow down the Internet experience of others. They simply use the capacity they bought and show that the network capacity planning department screwed up.

There is one quote from the Register article that I agree with though: “Everyone who’s argued with religious fanatics has seen them dig in their heels and flail when confronted with challenges to their belief systems.” But the ISPs are the fanatics here, not the EFF who stands up for network neutrality.

Why?

I see a parallel with the entertainment industry here, clinging to business models that are outdated. Comcast should move on and invest in the future instead of throttling and interfering with the traffic their customers paid for. BitTorrent is here to stay, the files and the number of heavy users will only grow. Don’t fight your customers, think ahead and adapt!

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Jon Hart, a Comcast subscriber from California couldn’t take it anymore and decided to take legal action. He filed a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday and demands that Comcast stops the BitTorrent traffic interference. In addition he wants Comcast to pay him, and all other Comcast customers in California, damages for not giving him the “crazy fast speeds” they advertised.

Threat Level asked Comcast for a response to this news, but the spokesman put them off with his default response: “Comcast does not, has not, and will not block any websites or online applications, including peer-to-peer services”. Semantically speaking they are totally right, they don’t block any applications or websites, they do however, actively disconnect peer-to-peer connections, making it impossible for many users to seed files on BitTorrent.

Hart is not the only one taking action against Comcast, the people behind SaveTheInternet have also formed a coalition and plan to demand $195,000 for all the customers who are affected.

Comcast is using an application from the broadband management company Sandvine to throttle BitTorrent traffic. The application is installed at the cable modem termination system and breaks every (seed) connection with new peers after a few seconds. This means that Comcast is not simply slowing down connections, they actually disconnect peer-to-peer transfers.

We wish Jon all the best, let’s hope justice will be served. In the meantime, here’s an article that explains how to bypass Comcast’s BitTorrent interference.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

However, it didn’t stop there, a few weeks ago the Comcast story got renewed attention when the Associated Press published a test that again confirmed our initial reports. That really got the ball rolling – a memo leaked in which Comcast support was instructed to lie about the throttling issues ( the memo leaker is still being hunted down). Additionally Comcast told their employees that they can be fired if they don’t keep their mouth shut and to top it off Congressman Rick Boucher has even told Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent.

By now you would expect that Comcast would admit that they are messing with the BitTorrent connections of their customers, but they aren’t. Here’s a chatlog we received from Michael, a Comcast user who tried to get some more information on Comcast’s alleged BitTorrent interference. Seems like the Comcast support team is still in the denial phase.

user michael_ has entered room

Michael>
Does Comcast interfere with legal Bittorrent traffic?

analyst Stephanie has entered room

Stephanie>
Hello michael_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Stephanie. Please give me one moment to review your information.

michael_>
Hi Stephanie, how are you?

Stephanie>
Thank you for contacting Comcast. I can answer your question today.

michael_>
I would greatly appreciate that.

Stephanie>
Comcast respects our customers’ privacy and we don’t monitor specific customer activities on the Internet or track individual online behavior, such as which websites you visit. Therefore, we do not know whether any individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site.

Stephanie>
Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent.

michael_>
I’m not asking if applications are blocked. I’m asking if applications are interfered with in any way.

Stephanie>
We don’t monitor specific customer activities on the internet.

michael_>
But you must know the policies of your own company? Does Comcast actively engage in any interference of any protocols or applications?

Stephanie>
As far as I know, no.

michael_>
Who could give me a more definitive answer on the subject?

michael_>
I contacted technical support because I had assumed that you would know the technical details of Comcast’s network, such as equipment or software used to interfere with network traffic or applications used on your network.

Stephanie>
We rarely disclose our processes for operating our network for compeitive reasons and to protect against network abuse.

michael_>
You had told me you do not know definitively if any interference is occurring. Could you put me through to someone who would know that answer?

Stephanie>
As I have said, we rarely disclose processes for operating our network but we also do not monitor specific customer activity. As well, we are not blocking access to any applications such as BitTorrent.

michael_>
Maybe I’m not explaining myself clear enough. I use bittorrent to distribute custom linux distributions to my friends and colleagues. However, I find that I cannot seed these files. Is there any interference being caused by Comcast that could be causing this issue?

Stephanie>
We would not be blocking peer to peer access.

michael_>
It’s a “yes” or “no” question.

michael_>
Could my inability to seed be interference caused by Comcast?

Stephanie>
As I have said, we are not blocking peer to peer access.

michael_>
You are not answering my question though.

michael_>
Comcast is not blocking peer to peer connections, but is it interfering with the ability to seed torrents?

Stephanie>
The answer is no.

Stephanie>
I have confirmed this with a support agent, as well.

Stephanie>
Did you have any other questions for me today?

michael_>
No

michael_>
Have a good day

Stephanie>
Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Support, have a great day!

Stephanie>
Analyst has closed chat and left the room

The good news is that there are several ways to fight back and get BitTorrent up and running again. In this article summed up some of the workarounds that reportedly solve the throttling issues.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.