Ambushing yer bits on teh Interpipes (maybe)
August 22, 2007 6:23 PM Subscribe
Ambushing yer bits on teh Interpipes (maybe) Accusation against Comcast shows need for net neutrality laws.
Comcast does more than that. They are pretty much absolutely horrible to have as a provider.
posted by blacklite at 6:35 PM on August 22, 2007
posted by blacklite at 6:35 PM on August 22, 2007
I doubt TOR would work, unless it encrypts the packets as well. BT packets have identifiable headers that traffic shapers can detect.
Of course, people tried to get around Rogers Canada's throttling by using VPNs - and so Rogers just started throttling all encrypted traffic.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 6:54 PM on August 22, 2007
Of course, people tried to get around Rogers Canada's throttling by using VPNs - and so Rogers just started throttling all encrypted traffic.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 6:54 PM on August 22, 2007
yeah i think this is true. i recently was testing a load-balancing router that i built and was having a lot of trouble with bittorrent. turns out its comcast's fault; they are sending a TCP reset to all upstream bittorrent connections. supposedly if you are running iptables you can just have iptables drop such packets and you're still good to go, but i havent tried this yet.
at first i thought they were just blocking the standard BT ports but even after changing to different ports i had the same problem. a bit of googling revealed that they are using some box which does deep packet inspection to inject these bogus reset flags and kill the connections.
posted by joeblough at 7:07 PM on August 22, 2007
at first i thought they were just blocking the standard BT ports but even after changing to different ports i had the same problem. a bit of googling revealed that they are using some box which does deep packet inspection to inject these bogus reset flags and kill the connections.
posted by joeblough at 7:07 PM on August 22, 2007
Rogers in Canada does this. I was with them and an hour long program would take between 2 days and a week and a half to DL. I now use Teksavvy as my host and the same files take about 45 minutes max. I used to wonder why anyone used BT at all as I thought it was just plain slow.
posted by dobbs at 7:10 PM on August 22, 2007
posted by dobbs at 7:10 PM on August 22, 2007
My experience at an ISP is that 5% of the customers use 90% of the bandwidth. If an ISP clamps down it is going after that 5% because it's a lot cheaper than adding more backbone equipment and if they loose those 5% who cares good riddance - the ISP business model is built on overselling capacity - like the phone company, not everyone can pick up the phone and make a call at the same time - this is not a scam or evil, it's reality, if ISPs had to provide 100% capacity for everyone it would be so expensive no one could afford it.
posted by stbalbach at 7:15 PM on August 22, 2007
posted by stbalbach at 7:15 PM on August 22, 2007
stbalbach - It wasn't a big deal when clark.net oversold, but we aren't all using dial up connections these days. If I pay for an 8 mbit downstream connection, I do not expect it to be 8 mbit only when nobody else is using the capacity. My Internet connection is on all the time now.
If the ISPs want to limit bandwidth, why don't they tell us what the limit is? Put it in the contract, or on the web page, or somewhere. They should not be surprised when someone actually uses what is offered. We are not responsible for the failures of their business model.
PS - Thanks for helping me set up that dial-up connection with my Amiga.
posted by bh at 7:57 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
If the ISPs want to limit bandwidth, why don't they tell us what the limit is? Put it in the contract, or on the web page, or somewhere. They should not be surprised when someone actually uses what is offered. We are not responsible for the failures of their business model.
PS - Thanks for helping me set up that dial-up connection with my Amiga.
posted by bh at 7:57 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
I just tried to do that iptables thing (only with ipfw since I'm on a mac), with no success particularly. It adds the rules to the list, but I still can't seed. Does anyone have any suggestions?
posted by revfitz at 8:07 PM on August 22, 2007
posted by revfitz at 8:07 PM on August 22, 2007
This Comcast user has had no trouble hitting the same sexy bittorrent private tracker dl/ul speeds I always get. So they aren't doing this in Western Mass at least.
posted by haveanicesummer at 8:15 PM on August 22, 2007
posted by haveanicesummer at 8:15 PM on August 22, 2007
Do not use Tor for torrenting, please. It degrades the networks heavily, and besides, it's pretty slow.
posted by p3on at 8:20 PM on August 22, 2007
posted by p3on at 8:20 PM on August 22, 2007
Throttling bittorrent traffic has what to do with net neutrality, exactly? Where is the ideological filtering? Bittorrent traffic consists largely of copyrighted work in illegal circulation. Entirely reasonable for a service provider (though I detest Comcast for other reasons) to try to restrict it.
posted by fourcheesemac at 9:47 PM on August 22, 2007
posted by fourcheesemac at 9:47 PM on August 22, 2007
Seconding p3on -- please don't use Tor for bittorrent. The network is not set up for that, and you will only lead to the demise of Tor for people who need it for more serious purposes than dodging copyright.
Other than that, the most interesting thing I've heard about this issue is that Comcast is being very selective in how they're implementing this. From what I understand, they're not killing BT connections to other Comcast members, just to people outside Comcast's network. The reasons for this are obvious: it costs Comcast money any time you send or receive traffic outside of their network, but traffic to other Comcast members is basically 'free.' (Or at least, probably a lot cheaper.)
I could see this leading to P2P networks that are restricted to users of a particular ISP; there'd be one network for Comcast users, another for Verizon users, etc.
Basically, when inter-network bandwidth starts to become a significant cost and traffic begins getting throttled, suddenly networks start turning back into 'islands' as people stay in their own networks and subnets. The Internet as we know it is only possible because INTER-network and INTRA-network traffic are both relatively cheap.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:09 PM on August 22, 2007
Other than that, the most interesting thing I've heard about this issue is that Comcast is being very selective in how they're implementing this. From what I understand, they're not killing BT connections to other Comcast members, just to people outside Comcast's network. The reasons for this are obvious: it costs Comcast money any time you send or receive traffic outside of their network, but traffic to other Comcast members is basically 'free.' (Or at least, probably a lot cheaper.)
I could see this leading to P2P networks that are restricted to users of a particular ISP; there'd be one network for Comcast users, another for Verizon users, etc.
Basically, when inter-network bandwidth starts to become a significant cost and traffic begins getting throttled, suddenly networks start turning back into 'islands' as people stay in their own networks and subnets. The Internet as we know it is only possible because INTER-network and INTRA-network traffic are both relatively cheap.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:09 PM on August 22, 2007
That's the biggest problem I have with this. Fine, if you want to limit my bandwidth, go ahead, but quit fucking advertising how ridiculously fast and unlimited your internet services are. It's complete bullshit, and they don't get called on it because most users don't use enough to cause problems.
posted by graventy at 10:54 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by graventy at 10:54 PM on August 22, 2007 [1 favorite]
It's not bullshit, not really. They don't advertise 5 Mbit/s all-the-time bandwidth. They've had disclaimers in the fine print since day one, because there's no way on earth a telco can sell that kind of bandwidth without another couple of thousand dollars a month. So you'll see bold-faced, italicized messages like, "Service rates are subject to network usage, and are not guaranteed." On TV ads, in the newspaper, on their website (try buying high-speed internet and you'll see the words UP TO all over the place, and in the Terms and Conditions... rates not guaranteed.) This shouldn't be news to anyone.
Their company, their rules. That's how it works. Bittorrent, wonderful tool that it is, completely saturates the pipe. Cut out the file-sharers (or just throttle-down their transfers so much they never want to use it again) and you get back a huge chunk of bandwidth. It's simple efficiency, and it actually has little to do with any moral stance on copyright as a whole. It's an engineering problem: given x Mbit/s and y users, maximize distributed user throughput. It's not about the movies, it's about their bottom line--bandwidth. What proof? Spend $15 a month on a good USENET feed and you'll see what I mean.
If you don't like it, stop bitching about it and just fucking socialize telco already. Leave the "guaranteed" bandwidth like T1s and OC3s to the private sector--there's still plenty of money to be made there since no private company would ever trust the government with their bandwidth.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:32 AM on August 23, 2007
Their company, their rules. That's how it works. Bittorrent, wonderful tool that it is, completely saturates the pipe. Cut out the file-sharers (or just throttle-down their transfers so much they never want to use it again) and you get back a huge chunk of bandwidth. It's simple efficiency, and it actually has little to do with any moral stance on copyright as a whole. It's an engineering problem: given x Mbit/s and y users, maximize distributed user throughput. It's not about the movies, it's about their bottom line--bandwidth. What proof? Spend $15 a month on a good USENET feed and you'll see what I mean.
If you don't like it, stop bitching about it and just fucking socialize telco already. Leave the "guaranteed" bandwidth like T1s and OC3s to the private sector--there's still plenty of money to be made there since no private company would ever trust the government with their bandwidth.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:32 AM on August 23, 2007
What proof? Spend $15 a month on a good USENET feed and you'll see what I mean.
Until they detect your usenet bandwidth use and decide to shape that too.
posted by srboisvert at 1:50 AM on August 23, 2007
Until they detect your usenet bandwidth use and decide to shape that too.
posted by srboisvert at 1:50 AM on August 23, 2007
"If you don't like it, stop bitching about it and just fucking socialize telco already."
Ok. I'll be sure to do that on the way to work this morning.
posted by Eideteker at 4:15 AM on August 23, 2007
Ok. I'll be sure to do that on the way to work this morning.
posted by Eideteker at 4:15 AM on August 23, 2007
Meh. All ISPs are massively oversold and their entire business model assumes that everyone will pretty much never use any of the bandwidth that they are theoretically paying for. Customers contracts with ISPs are digustingly vague and hand wavy and basically result in "you get whatever the hell we give you, and you'll bloody well shutup and like it."
Anyway, want to get around traffic shaping? Encrypt your BT traffic.
posted by public at 7:21 AM on August 23, 2007
Anyway, want to get around traffic shaping? Encrypt your BT traffic.
posted by public at 7:21 AM on August 23, 2007
Dipsomaniac writes "people tried to get around Rogers Canada's throttling by using VPNs - and so Rogers just started throttling all encrypted traffic"
Well that information makes the choice of provider at the new digs a lot easier.
fourcheesemac writes "Bittorrent traffic consists largely of copyrighted work in illegal circulation. Entirely reasonable for a service provider (though I detest Comcast for other reasons) to try to restrict it."
Well more and more bulky downloads are using bit torrent. Stuff like game demos and OS updates/distributions. Just yesterday I got the BioShock demo thru BT.
posted by Mitheral at 8:52 AM on August 23, 2007
Well that information makes the choice of provider at the new digs a lot easier.
fourcheesemac writes "Bittorrent traffic consists largely of copyrighted work in illegal circulation. Entirely reasonable for a service provider (though I detest Comcast for other reasons) to try to restrict it."
Well more and more bulky downloads are using bit torrent. Stuff like game demos and OS updates/distributions. Just yesterday I got the BioShock demo thru BT.
posted by Mitheral at 8:52 AM on August 23, 2007
Until they detect your usenet bandwidth use and decide to shape that too.
Until you realize most (good) USENET providers have web access for their feeds. That's port 80 to you and me, kids.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:17 AM on August 23, 2007
Until you realize most (good) USENET providers have web access for their feeds. That's port 80 to you and me, kids.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:17 AM on August 23, 2007
This could also be a third party spoofing packets and interfering with BT traffic.. it doesn't necessarily have to be comcast directly.
posted by TravellingDen at 10:38 AM on August 23, 2007
posted by TravellingDen at 10:38 AM on August 23, 2007
CableVision (OptOnline) did this to us what, 4 years ago? I worked with the Azureus guys and within 3 days we had the "Lazy Bitfield" option which might give some relief to the ComCast users (tho CC has *always* been the wicked step-mother of ISP's so they might have found another way of ruining your Friday Night). Do please stay away from Tor with the BT protocol...t'aint what 'tis for.
When you have finished downloading a .torrent your bitfield becomes all 1's..."File's done!" (opposed to an empty .torrent bitfield of all 0's). OO was intercepting these full packets and spoofing the return, making it impossible to seed *any* .torrent legal or otherwise. The Lazy Bitfield lets the user not broadcast their seed status, while looking at other users bitfield, sending data as needed to fill the folk with unfull bitfields til they are done...a clever little twist to the BT protocol.
Course, this was before Azureus became the hideous resource hog it is today, and Verizon FiOS doesn't mind if I move 50GB+ around everyday.
posted by gren at 10:10 AM on August 24, 2007 [1 favorite]
When you have finished downloading a .torrent your bitfield becomes all 1's..."File's done!" (opposed to an empty .torrent bitfield of all 0's). OO was intercepting these full packets and spoofing the return, making it impossible to seed *any* .torrent legal or otherwise. The Lazy Bitfield lets the user not broadcast their seed status, while looking at other users bitfield, sending data as needed to fill the folk with unfull bitfields til they are done...a clever little twist to the BT protocol.
Course, this was before Azureus became the hideous resource hog it is today, and Verizon FiOS doesn't mind if I move 50GB+ around everyday.
posted by gren at 10:10 AM on August 24, 2007 [1 favorite]
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posted by RavinDave at 6:32 PM on August 22, 2007