The War Against BitTorrent: Attack of the ISPs
Written by Ernesto on November 06, 2007There has been a lot of fuss lately about Comcast’s efforts to throttle and interfere with BitTorrent traffic, but they are by no means the only ISP involved in such efforts. Hundreds of larger and smaller ISPs all around the world try to limit BitTorrent traffic on their networks, time to give an overview, the war is on.
The degree of traffic shaping varies a lot between different ISPs. Some only limit BitTorrent traffic during some 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. The fact is, all the ISPs listed here have been caught - one way or another - messing with BitTorrent transfers.
BitTorrent throttling is not a new phenomenon, ISPs have been doing it for years. When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic most BitTorrent clients introduced a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. This was the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers.
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. My advice to them, if you decide to limit BitTorrent traffic, be open about it and don’t advertise unlimited bandwidth.
So who are these ISPs? Here’s a brief overview of some of the bad guys, take a look at the Azureus wiki for an regularly updated list of throttling ISPs (worldwide).
Canada
The Canadian ISPs Shaw and Rogers were the early adopters of BitTorrent traffic shapers. The first reports date back to 2005, and earlier this year Rogers even decided to block all encrypted traffic, just to make sure that BitTorrent protocol encryption didn’t work.
Other Canadian ISPs that are known to throttle or limit BitTorrent traffic are Bell Sympatico, Cogeco, Eastlink and Explornet. Rogers and Cogeco are the only ISPs that actively prevent people from seeding files on BitTorrent, similar to Comcast.
UK
There haven’t been a lot of reports on British ISPs that mess with BitTorrent traffic, but this doesn’t mean that they don’t. Pipex, one of the largest ISPs in the UK, is notorious for it’s war against BitTorrent. They throttle BitTorrent traffic, especially during peak times, and they also throttle all encrypted traffic. Other UK ISPs that throttle BitTorrent traffic are BT Broadband, Freedom2Surf and TalkTalk. Virgin Media does not specifically target BitTorrent traffic, they simply throttle all traffic during peak times.
US
Hundreds of sites have reported on the Comcast throttling/interference issues, but Qwest and Atlantic Broadband do just the same thing. RCN/Starpower, Adelphia Cable Communications and Cablevision’s Optimum Online have found to prevent seeding, but do not throttle BitTorrent traffic.
The Solution?
As mentioned before, The developers of uTorrent, Bitcomet and Azureus added support for protocol header encryption to their clients. Encryption seemed to work for well in most cases, more details can be found here. If encryption isn’t working you might want to try one of the alternatives described in this article.
Previously: Getting Stressed Out With Anonymous BitTorrent
Next: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk44)
80 Responses
Torrent on a VPS then leech from it using SCP.
Transmission, a mac bittorrent client, also supports protocol header encryption.
http://transmission.m0k.org
Used to be http://www.fast4.net was happy with me downloading 200GB’s +! a month and whilst they continue to advertise no FUP
“Pipex, one of the largest ISPs in the UK, is notorious for it’s war against BitTorrent.”
I did notice torrent downloads were getting really slow on Pipex lately. I am going to switch to Be There once my contract runs out next month.
Oh and, fuck you Pipex.
I am in the uk
BE internet rules i get full speed all the time get a ping of 10ms when gaming in uk servers unlike other isps out there
so if you looking for good isp in the uk
go for Be There
i do not work for them
its just a good service and thought i would share with you guys
“Rogers even decided to block all encrypted traffic”
This is not true, although I’ve seen this bit of misinformation spread far and wide.
As a Rogers customer in Toronto, I can say that they are definitely not blocking or shaping encrypted traffic per se; My partner uses VPN for work all the time, and has not ever had any problems. I use VPN to bypass their torrent throttling, and have never had any issues.
Nor do they appear to be blocking or restricting torrent downloads. Currently, what they’re doing is severely restricting torrent upload speeds.
With a VPN, my torrents upload at full speed. Without a VPN, I can still download quite fast, but uploading is a snail’s pace of less than 10k/s, and often less than 5k/s.
+1
I am in the uk
BE internet rules i get full speed all the time get a ping of 10ms when gaming in uk servers unlike other isps out there
so if you looking for good isp in the uk
go for Be There
i do not work for them
its just a good service and thought i would share with you guys
In UK, AOL also limits the use of p2p significantly. Everyday, between 9:00am and 10:00pm, you cannot use p2p at all. The speed is only 1-2kps. I used their service for one year, finally I changed to another ISP.
Terrible experience!!!!
I think we should have a list or a database that stores all of the ISPs that take actions against p2p, so that people can avoid using them.
These ISPs will lose out in the end, because they just make the good ISPs that much more attractive.
On that note, I use Cox (in the eastern US) and like them a lot. The Azureus wiki says they throttle heavy users, but after months of heavy torrenting, I haven’t observed even that; speeds are excellent.
I’m a comcast customer, quite a happy one as that. I’m also a server administrator, the throttling of bit torrent makes ALOT of sense from their perspective. I’m being given 8mbit/1mbit service for $50/month (a pretty damn good deal, IMO). Now, in order for them to ensure that they are able to continuously offer quality service to all of their customers, they need to make sure that no one person is using insane amounts of bandwidth hogging all of their resources. They have two options in this regard:
1.) offer a slower service without rate limiting on bit torrent
2.) offer a high-speed service that rate limits bit torrent for the same price
In that situation, I would probably be going for option #2 as well. In the end, I’m still getting very nice speeds on bit torrent (~600kBps where I cap it anyways) and still having enough bandwidth left over to run whatever else I am needing to do instead of saturating their network.
Most p2p users do not realize the amount of resources that they are using when they share insane amounts and download consistently at the full speed of their connection. Granted it is their right, but it also is not their network. It’s comcast, and they have a duty to all of their clients to ensure that they offer quality service to everyone - not just file sharers. At the router level there is only so much bandwidth that can distributed between each cable connection, it’s not as simple as “I pay for this much therefor I get this much” because there are ALOT of people wanting X amount of BW, and for $50 a month, 8mbit/1mbit connections are a steal (go price that out at a datacenter (without a monthly cap), see what it costs, alot more than $50/m I assure you).
Just my thoughts on this whole “conspiracy” against p2p users.
[quote comment="205166"]“Rogers even decided to block all encrypted traffic”
This is not true, although I’ve seen this bit of misinformation spread far and wide.
As a Rogers customer in Toronto, I can say that they are definitely not blocking or shaping encrypted traffic per se; My partner uses VPN for work all the time, and has not ever had any problems. I use VPN to bypass their torrent throttling, and have never had any issues.
Nor do they appear to be blocking or restricting torrent downloads. Currently, what they’re doing is severely restricting torrent upload speeds.
With a VPN, my torrents upload at full speed. Without a VPN, I can still download quite fast, but uploading is a snail’s pace of less than 10k/s, and often less than 5k/s.[/quote]
A VPN is not encryption. It is a virtual private network and nothing is encrypted just rerouted .
[quote comment="205222"][quote comment="205166"]“Rogers even decided to block all encrypted traffic”
This is not true, although I’ve seen this bit of misinformation spread far and wide.
As a Rogers customer in Toronto, I can say that they are definitely not blocking or shaping encrypted traffic per se; My partner uses VPN for work all the time, and has not ever had any problems. I use VPN to bypass their torrent throttling, and have never had any issues.
Nor do they appear to be blocking or restricting torrent downloads. Currently, what they’re doing is severely restricting torrent upload speeds.
With a VPN, my torrents upload at full speed. Without a VPN, I can still download quite fast, but uploading is a snail’s pace of less than 10k/s, and often less than 5k/s.[/quote]
A VPN is not encryption. It is a virtual private network and nothing is encrypted just rerouted .[/quote]
A properly set up VPN is over SSL.
But I highly doubt they are blocking SSL-encrypted traffic. If they are, I need to move to canada as a security consultant.
Yeah well then they should mention in their ToS and contracts that they limit BT use, instead of lying about it like they do now.
That’s what makes comcast a bunch of assholes, they lie to their cutomers and try to cover the whole thing up.
For around $40 I get 100/10 here in sweden, that is a good deal.
Jellies,
I’m envious of your swedish connection, for the USA 8/1 is amazing. But we’re also a much bigger country.
[quote comment="205218"]I’m a comcast customer, quite a happy one as that. I’m also a server administrator, the throttling of bit torrent makes ALOT of sense from their perspective. I’m being given 8mbit/1mbit service for $50/month (a pretty damn good deal, IMO). Now, in order for them to ensure that they are able to continuously offer quality service to all of their customers, they need to make sure that no one person is using insane amounts of bandwidth hogging all of their resources. They have two options in this regard:
1.) offer a slower service without rate limiting on bit torrent
2.) offer a high-speed service that rate limits bit torrent for the same price
In that situation, I would probably be going for option #2 as well. In the end, I’m still getting very nice speeds on bit torrent (~600kBps where I cap it anyways) and still having enough bandwidth left over to run whatever else I am needing to do instead of saturating their network.
Most p2p users do not realize the amount of resources that they are using when they share insane amounts and download consistently at the full speed of their connection. Granted it is their right, but it also is not their network. It’s comcast, and they have a duty to all of their clients to ensure that they offer quality service to everyone - not just file sharers. At the router level there is only so much bandwidth that can distributed between each cable connection, it’s not as simple as “I pay for this much therefor I get this much” because there are ALOT of people wanting X amount of BW, and for $50 a month, 8mbit/1mbit connections are a steal (go price that out at a datacenter (without a monthly cap), see what it costs, alot more than $50/m I assure you).
Just my thoughts on this whole “conspiracy” against p2p users.[/quote]
Perhaps if ISPs wanted to eliminate the “conspiracy”, they could take some very simple measures:
1)Explain why you can’t even buy (from a major ISP)a connection speed that is readily available in both Europe and Asia
2)Define bandwith limits. If the TOS says I have 8/1, then that means I should have atleast half of that availible at all times.
3)Define how many gigs per month are acceptable. If you can’t provide a number, how can you enforce it. (If the police were to pull you over and ticket you for speeding but don’t bother to tell you what the speed limit is, nor are there any signs, there would be an uproar. Of course the response would be driving is a priviledge not a right, so if you don’t like it, don’t drive.) Even at a fraction of that speed, you’re more than capable of downloading enough to be booted by Comcast, and likely others.
The problem is at the end of the day accountability. We as inviduals are responsible for our actions, yet every day coporations get a pass.
Even the FCC believes ISPs should police themselves.
If that policy works so well, we might as well disband the police, because if corporations can police themselves, so can the rest of us.
In UK, with BE also, good speed, CRAP service, bunch of idiots.
Used to be with plusnet, they are major arseholes for throttling
We are going to have to start pushing for laws against blocking protocols. I have no problem with the ISP’s limiting the speed of my connection if I am impacting the network, for a short period until I stop using Bittorrent.
However, I do not want them to just block it totally, like they are trying to do right now.
I’m in the UK on Virgin Media, and whilst they do throttle all traffic in the evening, they only seem to do it if your download speed is above a certain level for a prolonged period. I think it’s somewhere between 50-100 kbps. I’ve set my scheduler in my bittorrent client to not d/l above 50k between 6pm and 1am, and I can surf and upload normally. If I don’t have the schedule on then my d/l speed drops from 20mb to about 1mb for the period and my upload isn’t worth speaking of.
Basically, I throttle myself before Virgin throttle me a lot more harshly.
here in panama we have the same problem with DSL provider Cable & Wireless, just wondering if anyone is getting the same problem with CWP in other countries?
I think Time-Warner might end up getting added to this list… I got done DLing about 4-6 gigs of data via uTorrent last night, preceeded about a week ago by another 5 gig DL, and now I can’t get certain things to load, particularly flash objects. Even this site loads way slower than normal, which is ridicilous, since the site hasn’t appeared to have changed itself. Also, the flash problem was rather sudden; one minute I’m lolling at the fact that Oprah intends to capitalize on the popularity of YouTube, the next I’m looking at blank thumbnails and a black box, wondering why I can’t get a music video to load.
BT Broadband’s throttling has become fucking ridiculous. I’m down to 10kbps (24/7), even though I supposedly have a 8mbps connection on their ‘unlimited’ price plan. I’ve totally given up on bittorrent now, which I guess is what they want.
Please take Virign Media (UK) out of the list! You are otherwise starting to fight a war on more than one front. Virgin Media has a throttling policy but it is unrelated to Bit Torrent traffic. The policy can be found on their web site and you can prevent yourself from getting throttled by -50% through throttling yourself by only -25%. It sure stinks when they call it “unlimited broadband” but you really are starting a war on a front of “bad marketing”.
My advice is to switch to a small ISP, which does not throttle BitTorrent traffic and thereby support their business against the big ISPs.
[quote comment="205180"]In UK, AOL also limits the use of p2p significantly. Everyday, between 9:00am and 10:00pm, you cannot use p2p at all. [/quote]
Ah, but the AOL chatrooms and the way they handle email between AOL users negates the need to use p2p.
In the right room, you can get all the latest stuff sent directly to your email in seconds and download it from there over http.
[quote comment="205079"]Torrent on a VPS then leech from it using SCP.[/quote]
Only as long as your ISP doesn’t throttle all encrypted traffic due to header encryption.
My old ISP made SSH unusable in their fight against encrypted torrent.
The best bet is to simply walk away from any ISP crap enough to be doing this. Find yourself one that sells by the GB instead, and pay for what you use. Those selling in that way don’t care what you use your GBs for.
In the US, if you have an option for insightbb, go for it. 10Mbit down, 1Mbit up. They dont monitor or shape bandwidth in any way. As long as you have your TCPsend and TCPrecieve set right for your machine, you can max it out very, very easily.
@ rocksoccer
I’m on AOL in the UK too. I’ve had no problems with my internet connection. In fact I’ve recently had my speed upped to 2 megs for no extra charge. I’ve not noticed any throttling although to be honest I usually leave my bittorents running overnight anyway.
Just out of interest, do you use a usb modem and AOL software?
I connect via a Netgear modem/router and have Ubuntu linux and XP on my pcs.
[quote comment="205243"]
Perhaps if ISPs wanted to eliminate the “conspiracy”, they could take some very simple measures:
1)Explain why you can’t even buy (from a major ISP)a connection speed that is readily available in both Europe and Asia
2)Define bandwith limits. If the TOS says I have 8/1, then that means I should have atleast half of that availible at all times.
3)Define how many gigs per month are acceptable. If you can’t provide a number, how can you enforce it. (If the police were to pull you over and ticket you for speeding but don’t bother to tell you what the speed limit is, nor are there any signs, there would be an uproar. Of course the response would be driving is a priviledge not a right, so if you don’t like it, don’t drive.) Even at a fraction of that speed, you’re more than capable of downloading enough to be booted by Comcast, and likely others.
The problem is at the end of the day accountability. We as inviduals are responsible for our actions, yet every day coporations get a pass.
Even the FCC believes ISPs should police themselves.
If that policy works so well, we might as well disband the police, because if corporations can police themselves, so can the rest of us.[/quote]
1.) The US’s telcos mess most of that up, I agree completely on this point but sadly our government set a broadband standard that defined broadband as ridiculously low (I believe 192kbps). This has sadly been the biggest hamper. Corporate america coming into play, and basically the idea of “if they don’t know any better..” hurting us. This is why I’m excited to see real fiber services started to be rolled out around the US.
There is also the fact that the united states is not very dense making it much more expensive to implement the number of high speed backbones needed for a 100/10 connection to be at every house.
2.) You can use this at all times, but also remember that no network connection that runs at 8mbit is always going to download at 1mBps per second, ever. It just doesn’t work that way,there’s other data going in and out. Then also, considering the fact that other services are starting to be run on the same backbone as cable internet (phone, tv) they need to ensure that those do have priority, and considering that those two applications have a relatively consistent amount of usage while a computer does not, they have to rate limit somewhere.
3.) I don’t see many people getting in trouble with comcast for downloading too much unless they are downloading terabytes a month for months on end (I have known a couple people who have done this). I believe they don’t want to set this limit so they don’t have to enforce it.
So, in my opinion, this basically comes down to a mix of political incompetence (in america? NO!) and a lack of infrastructure in america.
hi, can someone explain to me why there arent any isps dedicated to bittorrent users? they’d have a huge and dedicated user base and be able o cater for specific needs… probably stupid but i dont know about these things so im askin!
I’m on Sky Broadband Connect in the UK.
It’s great!
Full speed 880kB/s(8mbit) is possible on torrents and while they say its 40GB monthly cap I’ve used WAY more than that with no complaints.
Seriously wish that someone would LLU our little village exchange though so we could get BeThere or 16mbit Sky, it’s a rip that we have to pay more for a slower service.
I wish BT would get their act together and start upgrading lines to fibre.
[quote comment="205418"]hi, can someone explain to me why there arent any isps dedicated to bittorrent users?[/quote]
As ISPs are part of an industry that distributes content and the film industry is one that produces content they have to cooperate and cannot compete. The best for us they then can do is to stay neutral, neither support torrrenting nor block it.
In the Uk the only major player left (providing you live in a city) is Be Broadband. Amazingly fast service, keep you upto date with what is going on and even managed to get a manager on there line to say they would not be introducing throttling or packet shaping technology on there LLU kit, and he knows it was recorded.
I work for cox, cox doesn’t currently throttle/block any bit torrent traffic at all, and as far as I know there are no plans to in the future.
GET UR COX!
Qwest? Really?
Okay, sure, I’m stuck on a slow, 1.5mbit/896k DSL line, but that’s due to range from the hub.
Anyway, on my slow DSL line, I do around 100GB down and 75GB up a month. BT constantly reaches max speeds when I want it to, etc.
There doesn’t seem to be any throttling or anything close, at least on my slow line in my city (Portland, OR).
Why do you only list the two bend over countries and canada?
Ernestno you’ve been a great help and every one involved in it. Thanks.
i have Qwest 1.5 Mbps DSL, I get full 160 KB/s download from torrents as i do with http downloads…. on the other hand, the comcast wireless that i eh.. “leech” off of for my laptop, struggles to reach 5 KB/s upload but downloads at amazing 250+ kb/s torrent AND http…. maybe im just lucky?
by the way, im in MPLS, MN
In the states, Cox Rocks!
Cable modem with 12Mbps download/1mbps upload for $56.95 a month. I often get total torrent download speeds 2MB/sec+ and the connection is solid 24/7.
I have had 5 other ISP’s in the past, and they are by far the best yet.
Tiscali throttle Bittorrent traffic in the UK. Though if you go with them, your an idiot anyway.
Tiscali - UK - SUCKS
Pipex do not throttle encrypted traffic.. i get full speed all the time.
and NG still work a treat.
Well i’m currently using Acanac which piggy backs off a Bell here in Canada..much cheaper to use..than over priced Bell…DSL .speeds not to bad..works for me….
http://galacticcentral.org
A bit off-topic, but in Argentina ISP “Fibertel” does the same.
In eastern Canada, we get to choose Aliant or Eastlink.
Eastlink throttles the hell out of their traffic, and peak usage times for the cable provider can drop your speed to a fifth of what’s advertised. They use Ellacoya’s switches, so it’s next to impossible to get around them - even with encryption, as I suspect they throttle encrypted traffic.
Aliant claim they don’t throttle, but since they are part of the Sympatico family, I find that claim dubious.
Bulldog Broadband in the UK doesn’t throttle BitTor, I use Usenet anyways….
Most Israeli ISP also throttle bittorrent.
Two ISPs use a bittorrent cache - the common torrents download blindingly fast, but the less common torrents are very slow.
It sucks, but the fact is that the reason that we (in the US) don’t have better speeds etc, is because it’s alot harder to improve infrastructures over thousands of miles, compared to doing it over a very limited space (like in, say, sweden or south korea).
I was a weak away from ditching my shitty 3mb/256kb DSL for sweet, sweet 10/1 Comcast Cable when the BT throttling started. Why switch when even the freaking Music and Movie industries are starting to distribute content over BT? It still might be worth switching for…over triple the speed…but I won’t, just to show them what I think of their stupidity
I use Rogers in Canada and never had a problem. Maybe its faster for people that aren’t throttled, but when The Office episodes come in in 40 minutes, I’m pretty happy.
Rogers downloads well, but can’t seed.
I know lots of people who get banned at trackers simply cause of their inability to seed properly.
I use Sympatico, and while the speeds aren’t fantastic like in Japan, upload speeds for bittorrent are acceptable and download is pretty good as well.
Only time when bittorrent was slow, overall Internet was very slow also, so I thought they throttled me down because I downloaded/uploaded so much (like they used to do before).
Turns out they had a technical problem and it’s wasn’t only me (I called some people to confirm that).
What I’m saying, Sympatico is more friendly to p2p that most providers in Canada at the moment.
I hope they will continue to do so… and in return, I’ll continue using their services.
Shaw is fine here in Manitoba, Canada.
I called sympatico, and they woulnd’t tell me their stance on net-neutrality. :|
I’m switching to “cobal” some new ISP in montreal 24mbit for 24.99 WOOT!
but its a month by month contract so once they have a bunch of clients i bet it will drop down to 6mbit like BEll (sympatico) the’yre using the same lines afterall…
Here in New Zealand most ISP’s are upfront about “managing” or “prioritising” P2P traffic so that the “web and email are as fast as they can be”.
In practice, this results in P2P traffic being choked badly between 4pm and midnight local - a generally used “peak” period.
While I don’t like it, at least our ISP are up honest about it. Eg,
http://tinyurl.com/2v2dy8
That ISP actually listed
i have BT unlimited package and the speed i get is less then dial-up connection (28kbps)i wish i didn’t leave virgin media because the speed was great (around 600kbps) no BitTorrent traffic throttling what so ever.
Don’t sign up for BT Broadband if you want to use P2P or BitTorrent.
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs
This throttling does have an effect on everyone. Its getting slower all the time for me.
Sympatico has definately started throttling in my area (montreal-downtown) in the last 2 weeks. Before that all was fine, but now, torrents max out at ~50K/s in the evenings, whereas i used to hit 400K/s (and still do in the mornings)
I’m on AOL in the UK, and I’ve got to say I’ve no complaints.
I downgraded my package from 8mb to 2 mb on the account of our phone line not being able to handle anything above 5mb, but my speeds reach 320 kbps on busy torrents.
XBL plays like a dream too, just can’t torrent whilst on Live.
I’ve thought about changing, but can’t see a reason why.
Where is TPB? They have done so many great things, maybe next they will form the TPB ISP company. If they do it, the world will be happy!!!
Our admin, ask them to do it!!!!!
[quote comment="205835"]Tiscali throttle Bittorrent traffic in the UK. Though if you go with them, your an idiot anyway.[/quote]
Yes, tiscali is another bad company!!!!
I’ve never really noticed shaw throttling torrents. i only suspected it because I was using public torrents with slow uploaders. when i used torrentleech the download was 1MB/s the whole way through so they don’t traffic shape me. vancouver shaw.
Deluge-Torrent has the best encryption! The only client I can use my Connection 100% with! :)
Try it!
[quote comment="205418"]hi, can someone explain to me why there arent any isps dedicated to bittorrent users? they’d have a huge and dedicated user base and be able o cater for specific needs…[/quote]
Any ISP prefers the 60 year old guy who only reads his e-mail to a heavy BT user. Bandwidth costs money, the less the end user uses, the more the ISP can pocket. In the end, we should be glad for all the “low bandwidth” guys, they are in effect subsidizing the high-bw users so the service is cheaper for us. A BT-specific ISP would have to be pretty expensive to cover all the costs (ISPs oversell their bandwidth by a certain amount, with 100% heavy users they wouldn’t be able to).
Canadian ISP Sympatico Admits to P2P Throttling
Posted: 07 Nov 2007 11:24 AM CST
Add Sympatico to the growing list of ISP’s blocking P2P traffic. In response to consumer complaints posted in the company’s official forum, Canadian ISP Bell Sympatico has admitted that it uses bandwidth throttling technologies to impose limitations on P2P and file-sharing services during peak hours. This revelation is further evidence that net neutrality is eroding.
[quote comment="206499"]Deluge-Torrent has the best encryption! The only client I can use my Connection 100% with! :)[/quote]
If not all clients support the same encryption method then they cannot connect to one another. And the ISPs in question do not decrypt traffic to see if it is a torrent but throttle any encrypted traffic. Using a stronger encryption therefore makes no sense. Keep using your client for a while and you will find out yourself.
The only real solution to this problem is using a REAL vpn service like vpntunnel (www.vpntunnel.co.uk) and encrypting ALL your bittorrent traffic, so your ISP can’t throttle it. I tried encryption on my 24/2 ADSL2+ connection here in the UK which was HEAVILY throttled and saw no improvement whatsoever. Then I tried a VPN and went from 2-3KB/sec to 2000-2200KB/sec! a massive improvement for a tenner a month
I know it costs a lot for ISPs to provide filesharers with enough bandwidth to use bittorrent, but seriously: we pay for the service, the least they can do is tell us how much we get before we sign up!!
Alexa
I use uTorrent and I am a consultant to manage QoS for an ISP.
I’ll tell you right now, BT traffic is a thorn in my side. When I set it up on my machine, I made sure that I still had a low ping and decent bandwidth left for general browsing and games. It seems that just about everyone else puts 1000 connections and unlimited bandwidth. Somehow encrypted torrent traffic has overcome our provisioning and a 256/512 customer is downloading at 6Mb with a few thousand open connections. AT&T cuts off 2 of the 4 T1 lines due to abuse, so now 1 person has shut down the cable system as well as gotten AT&T’s attention with the sights set squarely on us from both directions.
So now we have 250+ angry customers that can’t get on, one customer that left uTorrent running while he went off to work/play/sleep/etc, and the wrath of AT&T, meanwhile everyone complains that ISP’s are throttling BT.
I fixed the issue with the customer overriding their bandwidth limits at the cable modem, however even with a 256/512 connection, they still had over 1500 open connections, which got AT&T’s attention again and locked up our router.
I fixed that problem as well and limited each customer to 200 open connections.
As of today, since I started cleaning up their network, BT has only brought it down twice. On that same note, we’ve called and asked the customers to turn down or turn off P2P, with mixed results. Some work with us, others have the same attitude found here, that they’ve paid for this service and demand it, full speed, 24/7, with low latency, even while they alone saturate our $2700/month, 6Mb T1 bundle. Those guys get cut off.
For the record, 90% of our customers have the 256/512 package, with 512/3Mb being the highest offered. 90% never go over a gig for the entire month, with about 4 people pushing a few hundred gigs.
It would work better if the makers of the torrent clients would work with ISP’s to prevent problems rather than try to constantly circumvent QoS management. You can’t run BT wide open 24/7 and justly complain about crappy service, bad VoIP and high latency.
The other side of this is legitimate uses of BT (linux, WOW, etc) are being throttled as well due to file sharing and abuse. While throttling 4 people that cause system wide problems, we also inadvertantly throttle the other 50 people that play WOW. Fixed that to, then uTorrent updates… and again we go.
[quote comment="206936"]… Some work with us, others have the same attitude found here, that they’ve paid for this service and demand it, full speed, 24/7, with low latency, even while they alone saturate our $2700/month, 6Mb T1 bundle. Those guys get cut off. …[/quote]
Unbelievable! A business gets to the top, then they do not know where to go next and therefore chooses to go down …
Torrents are designed to push the limits of networking. If an ISP does not understand this, but only thinks of cables and devices being their cash cow you will find yourself with a cow that just crapped on your meadow. Shit happens!
Cash cow nothing. Lets say $35 per customer and 250 customers. Thats 8750. Each modem costs about $75 per customer, 24/7 tech support for $7 per, $300 a month for an outsourced network engineer to babysit, 6Mb internet at $2700, line maintenence, full time line crew and an engineer.
Cisco router for $$$$$$, CMTS $$$$$$, NetEnforcer, proxy server, managed switches, etc…
Cash cow indeed, the equipment hasn’t even paid for itself yet.
Got anything else to add on how we’re screwing everyone when 4 people can hog the entire backbone?
If I could shape BT, I would lower the priority so it would not impact everyone and would use whatever bandwidth was leftover after HTTP, games and VoIP. With encryption, I can’t shape it, so my only recourse is to cut the modem back to 128/128, get the customer to cut back or just cut them off.
JustMe: perhaps you should try investing in cFosSpeed? it may help with your traffic-shaping problems.
Awww poor ISPs, advertising “unlimited” bandwith, fast downloading of audio and video, right up to the point where people take them up on that, then they’re screaming bloody murder.
In the end it’s the consumer’s own fault, stop giving these assclowns your money and the whole problem will resolve itself.
How about changing operator if your operator sucks that badly. In major cities there are easily over 10 operators to choose from.
In country side you might have 1-3 operators. It’s bad luck if you got only one option.
Now The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to Demonoid so Demonoid are now off line.It´s war !!!
utorrent, a pc bittorrent client, also supports protocol header encryption.
Out here in the sticks, its AT&T or cable, and cable has a bigger footprint. For comercial backbone, AT&T is the only game in town and they’re giving us hell over BT users, even though I’ve only heard of a few AT&T DSL customers that have been cut off for BT.
I looked at cFosSpeed, thats a consumer level app, I need something at the office. NetEnforcer may have gotten some rep in the past, but it isn’t worth a toss, whether you’re dealing with torrents or not.
I’m lucky my ISP doesn’t cap unless you go over a certain amount, or spy on what you do. The turtles I torrent don’t go over that amount anyway… Besides, you want the latest flick, rip a Blockbuster DVD!
gvpt nkdeysrl vibgwfm trpvulx axsgderyc mjqtozyi ompduxgvi
I’m starting to notice a lot of slow downs now on Sympatico. This is fucking bullshit. We pay for a service that includes highspeed and this is what we get, throttling back and fourth.
Want to add Hughes Net Satellite to the list of providers bad for torrents. You’re only allowed a couple hundred megabytes a day (for everything at just under $100 a month) and you get cut off for 24 hours if you go over (they say you’re on dial up speed, but it’s slower than dial up). I noticed if I download torrents during the day, it’s unbelievably slow, but during 3AM and 6AM the downloading doesn’t count towards your “quota” (mind you, this is all in very small fine print when you contract)…anyhow, during 3AM and 6AM the speeds go way up. The satellite has a firewall so people on Hughes Net can’t have others connect to them. Anyhow, their service sucks. Stay Away!
“Me too I couple of weeks ago I was getting a Bit Torrent download speed of around 60kbps to 150 kbps and then suddenly the download speed dropped to 35kbps to 40kbps . When I contacted my ISP, they said I might have a virus, spyware in my machine. So I formatted my drive and reinstalled my OS. I still do get the same poor download speed, and now I rightfully do suspect that my ISP has falsely jammed my download speed. In fact I tried my ISP with 4 different computers even a latest high speed computer with Microsoft Vista, a high speed computer with XP, and my old back up computer with windows 98 and I next got the same download results.”
Most Interent Service providers are notoriously known for not only their false misleading advertsing, but also for their bad support servcies, and for lying, and falsey blaming their customers, the users for the supposedly main problem that the promised ISP high speed downloads are rarely realized, obtained now. ISP have over advertised gennerally their ability to deliver the capacities. and their rotoo often old, obslete servciers, equipment often cannot handle the loads.
“there are many safe programs out there that take a cap off of your file download bandwitdth limit, one i used to use is called “internet download manager” i believe. i was getting 250 avg kbps dl speed on some random website, wouldnt ever go above 280, but i used the program and went up to a consistent 370. can’t hurt to try it.” That is not the main issue.. the fact that the ISP providers such as the Canadian Bell Sympatico clearly are not providing their promised high speed is.. Most customer with bell do not have their promised speeds so they next switch over to a cable DSl.
“I would recommend that you look at your router first (if you have one). It may be faulty. This is often the case for screwed up internet connections. If you can, try to connect your modem (temporarily) to your computer without the router and see if that fixes the problem. (You will have to reconfigure the computer to use the modem in order to try this). The problem unlikley could also be with your modem, if it is faulty. Yet another place where things more likley could cause a slowdown is your signal strength that you are getting from your ISP. You might also have line noise causing your internet to go slow.” I would run a speed test Speakeasy - Speed Test Test the speed of your internet connection with Speakeasy’s speed test. http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ - For a high speed servcie the spped should be between 6000 to 1600 and for a low speed system about 3000 and if you are not getting these speeds complaing lould to the news media. your isp as well ASAP
“The following applies to broadband connections: Back again to uncapping; you can use a program called CableNut to uncap the limits that are built into your XP and your network card. http://cablenut.com/ Make sure you download the CableNut Add On Package and use the highest possible setting” is still only a marginal solution approach when the main problem is your ISP not keeping their promised high speed to you.
Optional suggestions such as -
Using a Flash Drive or a software to supposedly “Dramatically speed up any Broadband connection and to get improvements in performance from download speed, with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, ito ncrease your online speed with everything you do, even up to 500% faster Web browsing if using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, while keeping the original perfect web site quality is sill mariginal… Optimizing the Windows and Browsers to give you faster and smoother downloading, browsing, streaming, e-mail, P2P, gaming and yes you check it with Web browsing speed and data download performance tests.
ReadyBoost is a disk caching technology first included with Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system. It aims to make computers running Windows Vista more responsive by using flash memory on a USB 2.0 drive, SD card, CompactFlash, or other form of flash memory, in order to boost system performance.
ReadyBoost is also used to facilitate SuperFetch, an updated version of Windows XP’s prefetcher which performs analysis of boot-time disk usage patterns and creates a cache which is used in subsequent system boots.[1] The Prefetcher is a component of versions of Microsoft Windows starting with Windows XP. It is a component of the Memory manager that speeds up the Windows boot process, and shortens the amount of time it takes to start up programs. In Windows Vista, SuperFetch and ReadyBoost [1] extend upon the prefetcher and attempt to accelerate application and boot launch times respectively by monitoring and adapting to usage patterns over periods of time and loading the majority of the files and data needed by them into memory so that they can be accessed very quickly when needed.A system with 512 MB of RAM (the minimum for Windows Vista) can see significant gains from ReadyBoost. In one test case speeding up an operation from 11.7 seconds to 2 seconds (increasing physical memory from 512 MB to 1GB reduced it to 0.8 seconds). [2]. Systems with 1 GB or more do not show a significant effect on tests to date. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefetcher
Using a Download manager that speeds up download connections by opening multiple connections to the source file is still a marginal approach now as well.
Use VPN account http://www.strongvpn.com, it costs a few dollars per month, think it’s not so expensive for such an incredible service. NO any bandwidth throttles anymore! I use it daily, and have never been disappointed with it.
American Map introduces its 2007 U. S. Road Atlas in several editions, setting a” gold standard” in the industry. The 2007 edition features unparalleled benefits and new lower pricing, according to Marc Jennings, President, The Langenscheidt Publishing Group. While most online driving directions and navigational systems cannot suggest alternate routes due to traffic, weather and construction, the 2007 U. S. Road Atlas can. ” Between gas prices, traffic snarls and obstacle- course construction, drivers need…
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