Comcast Hinders BitTorrent Traffic 537
FsG writes "Over the past few weeks, more and more Comcast users have reported that their BitTorrent traffic is severely throttled and they are totally unable to seed. Comcast doesn't seem to discriminate between legitimate and infringing torrent traffic, and most of the BitTorrent encryption techniques in use today aren't helping. If more ISPs adopt their strategy, could this mean the end of BitTorrent?"
Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:5, Insightful)
Give all your customers your fastest residential speed. Set your rate so 90% of your customers don't exceed the "monthly allowance" for your low-end rate plan.
For the other 10%, bill them on a pro-rated basis based on how much they use. If they use 2x the allowance, they pay 2x. If they use 100x, they pay 100x.
To prevent runaway bills, allow customers to set their own "caps" and "throttle-down speeds" that would kick in after the cap was reached. If a customer never wanted to pay more than $20, he could set his "monthly cap" at 80% of what $20 would buy, and set the throttle-down rate low enough that he could never use up the remaining 20% even if he was maxing out his connection.
This seems a lot simpler and fairer than traffic shaping by protocol.
Because encryption = admission of wrongdoing (Score:0, Insightful)
Really? So we'd be much better off if we didn't encrypt traffic, because then Comcast could easily monitor all our online usage. That sounds like a much better solution, eh?
Bitch, bitch, moan, moan (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no sympathy for ISP that oversell their services and fail to invest profits in infrastructure.
Most unpopular comment ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:5, Insightful)
But at least if they were to do something like that, they'd move closer to returning to "common carrier" status. Any interruption or prioritizing risks their losing that status.
The real problem ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Is it because they are using deceptive marketing practices? Because they are over-selling their product hoping that the customer will not expect to make full use of it.
Or is it because we customers are asking for too much and lured ourselves into a situation where we knowingly bought more bandwidth than the ISPs had to offer.
As a consumer, my knee-jerk reaction is to say the former. On the otherhand, I have known for nearly a decade that cable companies were over-selling their bandwidth.
Phone companies and electrical companies do it (Score:5, Insightful)
The other features, like giving the customer control of monthly caps and throttling, will take a bit of work.
One unintended side-effect is the effect on home users who run wireless networks. "Stealing" bandwidth from an inadvertently unsecured or under-secured wireless connection without permission will now be literally stealing, as the poor subscriber will be stuck with the bill. Expect a few prosecutions under theft or fraud statutes if this becomes commonplace.
Re:Most unpopular comment ever (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Bittorrent encryption is flawed and too much. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is flawed because the ISP just needs to look at your HTTP usage and see you connect to a tracker. They can even get the port you are listening on from there! Even if you connect to the tracker via HTTPS, they can still see you connecting to a known tracker IP. Once they know you are on a tracker they can start limiting all traffic that looks like it's encrypted with RC4, because apparently this is identifiable.
It is too much because you don't actually need strong encryption to stop traffic limiting. Simply adding some random padding and XORing the protocol with the torrent's infohash would be enough - it is a private key random enough that they couldn't check them all. The RC4 encryption was seriously over-thought, and what did it give us? Nothing, because apparently it is still identifiable as bittorrent (or at least as RC4 encrypted traffic).
The only solution is to replace the current encryption and always connect to trackers via Tor or some other encrypted proxy. And even then it wouldn't be perfect, because it's plausible they could start limiting traffic on listening ports that get a lot of traffic.
So don't use them. (Score:2, Insightful)
But please, don't get the government involved. They'll bury the Internet providers under a mountain of red tape, until customer service will be the last thing on their minds.
Re:Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they do, throttling all bittorent is a clear violation.
Re:Bitch, bitch, moan, moan (Score:5, Insightful)
ISPs have got themselves into a bad spot by overselling and under cutting and the only way they can deal with it is by making their customers suffer...
Re:Most unpopular comment ever (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't like your suggestion. If telecoms begin to charge for the amount of bandwidth used, the way we all use the internet will be fundamentally changed. Many of the popular websites and attractions that have sprung up in the past few years (itunes, webcasts, youtube, etc) rely on heavy bandwidth usage. Personally, I don't want to be thinking about my monthly budget when checking out videos on youtube.
Secondly, I have little doubt that the pricing plan that the telecoms introduce would be outrageous and overpriced, as there is no competition to speak of ($19.95 a month for 3 gigabytes of bandwidth! That's over 600 songs! $10.99 for each additional gig used).
Re:Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So don't use them. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most unpopular comment ever (Score:1, Insightful)
It's "end spam by charging per e-mail" all over again. As capacity grows metered rates won't decrease for residential customers. They'll probably increase gradually as local monopolies petition municipalities for rate hikes. There isn't enough competition in residential service to trust such a system, and bandwidth isn't nearly as scarce as potable water and electricity. It's not a completely ridiculous idea, as creating incentives can be powerful, but it fails to take into account the real power of telcos.
Re:Most unpopular comment ever (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Eh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:5, Insightful)
Timesharing CPU schedulers have been solving this problem better for, what, 45 years now? You don't look at the filename of the executable somebody is running to see if you will schedule it. You don't suddenly kill their process if they exceed 60 seconds of CPU time. Instead, you simply de-prioritize "cpu hogs" - or in this case, bandwidth hogs. If you are a bandwidth hog, your "prime time" bandwidth should fall very low - lower than others who *only* use bandwidth at that time - but at 3am it should ramp up again, since you're only "competing" with other bandwidth hogs.
Re:red herring pricing (Score:3, Insightful)
I buy a connection, assuming it's going to be maxxed out at 2000GB/month. I pay $600. I then provide my 4 neighbors a 500GB connection, for a rate of $400 each. (Note, this is a 20% discount off them buying direct from the ISP at $500!). I make $2000, I pay $600. Profit!
my comcast connection (Score:2, Insightful)
I use bit torrent to get game demos and betas, Linux distros, and to share music that I have composed and hold copyrights for.
I can seed just fine. You have to find that sweet spot. (the point at which your upstream starts to impact your downstream). for me, it's about 80KBps.
That being said, I am forced to use peer guardian 2 and alternative ports to see to it that my traffic gets to its intended location.
Comcast has noticed that bit torrent defeats its "Power Boost" technology which bursts full bandwidth for the first 20 or so MB.
With Bit Torrent, it's all the first 20 or so MB. so everyone that can seed that fast is allowed to.
Bit Torrent is a legitimate technology. I has legal uses. I use it legally. Comcast wants to throttle it because they're losing money on it.
Re:Phone companies and electrical companies do it (Score:5, Insightful)
Little of which is the problem of the ISP. Internet access is now low in cost compared to most of our bills, but it's come to be regarded as a necessity by most of us. Therefore the market is ripe for a profit-hiking on the part of the telcos. But there are two things that prevent them all just simply bumping the prices up by a whopping margin. The first is that there may be issues in terms of price-fixing and anti-competitiveness if everyone just gets together and agrees to up prices. Secondly, there is the backlash from the customer at the sort of outrageous price increases that these ISPs would like.
Confusing the issue by breaking things up and charging extra for service X, is a confusing and obfuscating way of adding artificial value to the service. Especially when with increasingly efficient and expanded infrastructure, bandwidth is getting easier to provide. We pay now for bandwidth and this system works. Establishing the idea that we have to pay extra according to certain types of traffic has no good basis in effort on the part of the ISPs. In fact, it takes additional effort to introduce this monitoring.
It's about squeezing more money out of people and its based on collusion between ISPs. Customers should tell Comcast where to stick it.
Re:TOS: no servers at all (Score:3, Insightful)
suddenly killing processes (Score:3, Insightful)
ABEND [sc.edu] 322
Re:Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure it would be simpler. And even better, it'd give the local netbourhood thugs a really great business opportunity. Either you pay up to them, or they flood your pipe and you get to pay up to your ISP.
Metered access is not something you want when anyone in the world can make your meter run.
Re:Phone companies and electrical companies do it (Score:4, Insightful)
I pay my hosting bill based on three factors: Bandwidth consumed, disk space used, and CPU used. I can set up in my account panel limits on any of these three. Since I don't want my sites to go dead just because I exceeded my bandwidth I simply throttle my connection speed once the bandwidth hits 80%. Sure my site gets slower, but it's not down. Upstream and downstream bandwidth is set in the modem on most cable and dsl modems, so all you need is a user side app that lets you see where you are in the billable elements and choose how to deal with it: Kill the connection for the last couple days of the month, or slow it down. Set the defaults such that the average customer won't pass the 80% point (so a peak month results in no additional or a minimal bill), but a power user can up the limits as needed. The infrastructure is all there already, all you need is one additional application and you're done.
Tiered plans that have a higher base price but allow more bandwidth are already available, and they change the plans almost monthly for their new customers or for "specials" so it's not like that's an issue either.
All in all it's an ideal technical solution, and like a gp post mentioned, in the long run it's both cheaper and more honest than the current cat and mouse game.
-nB
Re:Inflated fears. (Score:1, Insightful)
My hope is that this won't mean the end of bittorrent but of Comcast. If enough people switch quickly enough before other ISPs do the same thing the market might get the message you want.
Re:Renting? (Score:3, Insightful)
i have ran 100+ ft of cat5 through holes in my rented house before (ghetto method) and, most recently, left wall plates in my basement for future tenants/owners. as long as your walls look normal when you move out, you won't get charged. YMMV
Re:So THAT's what happened... (Score:5, Insightful)
They sold internet connections at lower than cost of the bandwidth, betting on the customers not using anywhere near their bandwidth entitlement. Then the BBC produced iPlayer, which is encouraging people to use up more of their bandwidth and thus causing the ISPs to make a loss. So the ISPs are demanding that the BBC pay them to cover the shortfall.
To cut a long story short: the ISPs underpriced their connections and advertised them as "unlimited", were caught out when people actually tried to use what they had paid for and are now demanding that a third party bail them out of their mess. I certainly hope the BBC tell them to go screw themselves - I'm not going to be happy if part of my licence fee goes to propping up idiot ISPs who can't deliver on their commitments.
Re:Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, ultimately, the end user has little control over how much bandwidth they use. A Pandora's box was opened when the Internet was targeted as a way to deliver rich multimedia instead of text. Even the links featured on /. are usually a few bytes of content surrounded by many kilobytes of ads, spread over multiple pages. Compared to analog television and telephony, the quality of online video and voice communications is horrendous, but demand is only a tiny fraction of what it's going to be. The ISPs promote multimedia heavily when they sell connectivity, so they're just as culpable as the content providers. Throttling bandwidth at today's poor quality is not going to be a satisfactory solution for consumers. Increasing capacity is the only solution. I have a family of four, and when each of us want to experience the rich content we were promised (like VOIP, online productivity applications, video-on-demand, and streaming music), you're going to call us bandwidth hogs? I don't think so.
Re:Fraud is a weak manager's way of doing business (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So don't use them. (Score:3, Insightful)
The government allowed what to happen? That only one ISP chose to put the infrastructure in your area for broadband?
Re:Bittorrent encryption is flawed and too much. (Score:3, Insightful)
If only such a thing existed. [freenetproject.org]
Re:Why not charge by the GB delivered? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also you'd have people saying 'I'm only using 40% of my bandwidth/month. I want a cheaper plan!', and the cable companies wouldn't want to give it to them since they are the most profitable customers.
Theoretically your approach increases people's awareness of what they pay and allows for a more accurate use of marginal consumer/producer surplus. As I mentioned though I'm fairly certain they'd lose more by billing the average American less and the few massive p2p users more.
Of course they could just upgrade the 'tubes' and then care less about p2p traffic, but that's a discussion for another slashdot story...and another...
Yes, you're bandwidth hogs (Score:2, Insightful)
? Is this a trick question or something?
Yes, you're bandwidth hogs. The cable doesn't care what kind of content you're downloading, just how big it is. Deal with reality, and pay for how much you use, and this won't be a problem.
Do you expect your car to take you places without paying for petrol? Why expect that Internet bits should be magically free? Unregulated, yes definitely, but there's a cost to move those bits and that's what you should be charged for.
Asking for infinite data transfer on finite capacity media is like getting a car 'with free lifetime supply of petrol' built in for a fixed monthly rental and wondering why it comes with a restrictive contract that specifies that you can't drive it interstate.
Re:So THAT's what happened... (Score:3, Insightful)
The obvious result is psuedo-unlimited services where there are no hard caps but they do everything in thier power to shaft heavy users who live in areas of high demand.
Not only do high traffic users lose out, but in order to maintain a flat-rate across all users they have to either:
1. charge stupidly high prices
or
2. massively oversubscribe the network
If they do (1) then the low traffic users end up paying buckets of cash to subsidise the higher traffic users. If they do (2) then the network pretty much sucks for everyone.
The answer is pretty simple - go switch to an ISP that has a sensible business model who is honest with it's customers, rather than one that's clearly run by a moronic marketting department who believe that misleading the customer is a Good Thing.