RoadRunner Blocking Use of Kazaa 659
An anonymous reader submits: "You should know that RoadRunner is quietly blocking the use of Kazaa in
certain markets. Particularly in Texas, they have some sort of port scanner
in place which scans for Kazaa activity and then disables use of that port,
rendering the program completely useless. Grokster, iMesh, and all other
FastTrack programs are similarly affected. Yet RoadRunner is not disclosing
the practice in any way. Not only that, I'm troubled by the possibility of
them arbitrarily choosing to block other programs in the future. If this
becomes more widespread, they will have many angry (and former) customers." The poster provides these four links to forum postings with more information: one;
two;
three;
four.
Running a "server"? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh well, at least the RIAA didn't force it on them, they had the initiative to do it on their own...
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
No real choices (Score:2, Informative)
There is a clause in the TOS (Score:4, Informative)
Subscriber acknowledges and agrees that Time Warner Cable shall have the right to monitor bandwidth utilization (i.e., volume of data transmitted) arising out of the Service provided hereunder at any time and on an on-going basis and to limit excessive use of bandwidth in order to effectuate these provisions and other terms hereof
Scary stuff. They, and only they, decide what "excessive use" really is.
Re:And More Happy Ones, Too (Score:1, Informative)
Very doubtful, at least with RoadRunner. You may not be aware of this since you switched to DSL, but RoadRunner is now capping uploads at 384Kbps and downloads at 1.5Mbps for standard residential service. They'll sell you 786Kbps up and 2Mbps down for another $35/month on "Business Class".
There are other reasons to block Kazaa... (Score:2, Informative)
I used Kazaa solidly for a couple of weeks, trying to get a few eps of MST3k. When I was done, I shut down Kazaa and moved on. When I went to go play Quake, I noticed I had low ping times, but I was still getting intermitting lagging that was ruining my game.
I figured out what happened. Kazaa users were constantly bombarding my IP address with requests. This was happening so often that my connection was getting lagged from it. If AT&T had switched over my IP address, some other user would have gotten all that garbage. It is very possible that this isn't about bandwidth at all, but it's affect on other customers.
Only the ISPs really know for sure, but it is understandable, tho regrettable.
It doesn't have to be blocked - just QoSed down. (Score:3, Informative)
So, if one can identify the ports/protocols used by the lusers in question, one can then use QoS features to rate-limit the appropriate ports so as to make file-swapping useless, -without- blocking the ports.
Re:"angry ex-customers" (Score:5, Informative)
Does not make sense to me... (Score:3, Informative)
What does not make sense to me is:
-if they want a port blocked, it would be blocked (no short functionality, no slowdown of transfers but a termination of transfers)
- lots of people say kazaa and other p2p actually works for them, but browser http traffic on port 80 sucks big time
- blocking the port would send people to just use another one - continous scanning with a script is possible, but in that case it makes no sense to piss the customer off, they could just regulate that port down some kbytes
- from what the users say this more or less sounds like heavy load balancing problems, lack of bandwidth or routing problems. and some things the users describe sounds like an OS screaming to be reinstalled ("...rebooting seemed to solve the problems...")
sent from
Re:Legality (Score:4, Informative)
This would be made even worse if you had any uploads/downloads being worked on when you closed Kazaa. The machines you were uploading to would suddenly not see you there, and attempt to reconnect, similar to the queue machines mentioned above.
You also have to take into account the Kazaa indexing capabilities, and remember that anytime someone wants a file, they do a search of random nodes on the network. (FastTrack was, and still is, originally based off a customized variation of Gnutella protocol.) You would still have machines attempting to search your node for shared files, until it filtered through the machines closest to you in the Kazaa network infrastructure that you were offline and should be removed from the tree.
Also, were you functioning as a SuperNode? (If you chose any type of connection other than 56K modem when setting up Kazaa, it automatically enables SuperNode.) SuperNode acts as a index reflector for slower nodes (namely 56K modems). They look toward the SuperNode nearest them to perform searches on their behalf and to hold their index lists on their behalf. This is done to try to cut back the problems Gnutella had with 56K users cutting back network efficiency.
These 56K users (of which there could have been quite a few) were probably lost because their SuperNode wasn't responding on first try, so they were probably trying to reconnect... and other machines out there were trying to hit your SuperNode to get the index list for those 56K machines.
Yes, you'd continue to get Kazaa traffic for a little bit of time after you shut it down. That's the nature of the program. However, the problem you suggest, about rotating IP's, would not be an issue unless your ISP had their DHCP server set to expire leases at 15 minute intervals and not allow renewal on the same IP address. Even so, the traffic would die down as soon as the changes filtered through the Kazaa network tree that your node no longer existed. This would not take DAYS, as you suggested.
Bandwidth (Score:5, Informative)
As other posters have pointed out, this is very probably a few users with technical problems blaming it on their ISP.
However, this entire issue is a red herring. Roadrunner, as with most cable ISPs, caps upstream and downstream bandwidth. I'm not going to be able to transfer enough over my cable connection, even if I saturate it, to make much of a difference for others nearby. Now, if everyone on my block did this, then we'd notice a problem. But at that point, demand for bandwidth has exceeded the available infrastructure, which obviously did not anticipate people actually using the bandwidth they were told they had.
As for cost, this is also a bad argument. Yes, you can buy a large pipe for some incredible sum-plus-usage-costs for "business use". You seriously think major ISPs pay the same incredible sum for bandwidth? Many have peering arrangements, and for those, more traffic is better - you get more other providers wanting to peer with you. Even if you don't, your bandwidth is so cheap that a sizable percentage of your customer base saturating their connections 24/7 probably wouldn't cost you more than $500 a month.
(To say nothing of the rediculousness of charging for bandwidth usage anyway. Bandwith isn't a non-renewable resource. Any bandwidth not used in a given time interval is wasted and unrecoverable.)
No, to see why this is happening, follow the money. Who gains by preventing citizens from having an easy avenue for sharing music and video? The media cartels. Who's hurt by preventing it? Their indie competition. Wow, what an astonishing coincidence!
Earthlink, anyone? (Score:2, Informative)
You DO have a choice...for now.
Re:That's why government regulation is needed. (Score:3, Informative)
Thanks to the lame so-called lameness filter my post was rejected. I don't have the time or inclination to try and figure out why it's breaking. You can read my reply, and reply if you wish, here [slashdot.org].