Time Warner Filtering iTunes Traffic?

An anonymous reader writes "Starting on Thursday, January 31st, Time Warner subscribers in Texas starting experiencing connectivity issues to the iTunes store to the point where the service wasn't usable. General internet traffic issues haven't coincided with these problems, and many folks have reported that the store works as normal when they head to the nearest mega-bookstore and use their ISP instead. Time Warner has announced that they're going to begin trials of tiered pricing in one local Texas market, but I'll be darn sure to switch my provider if I hear the slightest hint of destination/content based tiers instead of bandwidth tiers."

Bad Summary

[KillerCow]

I read TFA (blasphemy, I know) and there are users in Arlington, Arizona, and somewhere else on AT&T DSL reporting the same problems.

There are also a lot of comments about how it all happened when they upgraded to iTunes 7.6, including this gem (which includes a work-around:

It appears that 7.6 messes with the way NAV manages the firewall.

Of the few that claim that they were not using 7.6, a couple of them later came back and said "[oops, I did have 7.6]"

But of course, Apple is the perfect and the evil cable monopoly must be violating net neutrality.

Re:Totally against tiered internet, but

[I kan Spl]

Errr... They DO pay for it.

"Bandwidth" (data transmission) is paid for by both the sender and the receiver of data. Apple has an ISP at the data center where they are housing the iTunes servers, they pay for the level of service they recieve. You and I also pay our ISPs for the level of service we receive.

Everyone is already paying. Tiered internet is just about making some people pay more for the same level of service then other people do.

Discrimination is bad mmmmmkay ?

Re:For $1500/month

[bagboy]

Yes I can read... there are several products on the market that can throttle traffic based on protocols or destinations... I'm aware of their capabilities and I can tell you the one I have worked with (Packeteer) can throttle Itunes traffic (as well as shoutcast, bitorrent, etc...). It can shape on the protocol itself as a whole, a protocol with a limit and then dynamic allocation within it or on per-connection tracking within a protocol.

Will people understand monopoly issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is interesting, since whilst you could call it a "net neutrality" issue, it's really a monopoly issue. US cable suppliers really have a monopoly on each geographical area. They can use this to force you to use their music services instead of their competitors since you can't switch suppliers. If the US had stronger anti-monopoly laws then this would only be allowed where consumers have a choice of supplier. An "corporates should be free to be evil" campaigner would tell you that this means that others can enter the market and offer competition. That's not true unfortunately since such barriers are very temporary. If you start trying to sell cable service with music in a particular area, TW could just speed up itunes around there so their customers don't see the problem.

In the end, I think we are back to the times when it makes sense for everybody to start building their own internet connections again and buying a single corporate connection per group. Look up community network [google.com] on google and start building. You know best how do do it.

How about what I pay for?

[Jane Q. Public]

I would be happy to get the bandwidth I already pay for!

As a Comcast customer, I have tended to get about 1/10th of their advertised "you will get up to..." bandwidth, and sometimes not even that.

And yes, they are STILL throttling BitTorrent traffic, illegally. I have been trying to download perfectly legal but large files, with plenty of peers and seeders, yet my download speed has been between 1k and 30k! This on a multi-megabyte-download-speed cable service. Just about everything else downloads very quickly... but of course would download even more quickly if I got anywhere near the throughput they advertise.

You know it is getting bad when certain traffic (BitTorrent, for example) downloads faster on dialup than it does on cable.

Re:Never attribute to malice...

[AKAImBatman]

You don't say. Why, I never even noticed.

Sarcasm aside, it doesn't detract from my point. There was a misconfiguration somewhere in the chain of routers between TWC and Apple's nearest server. Maybe a bad routing table, an incorrect configuration of traffic shaping, or a router on the fritz. Either way, I seriously doubt this outage was intentional. Because if it was, it was possibly the most incompetent attempt at traffic shaping in the history of the Internet.

Re:For $1500/month

[bagboy]

>>Then iTunes users would see 1/2 the speed they were seeing previously. This a common error many people make about bandwidth, throughput and tcp. TCP works on windows (not MS) and acks. No acks equals retries. This lowers throughput because of windowing. It's not an exact science. Most providers in tier 1 likely leave their buffers on routers at fifo. This means if an isp's users are throttled back on itunes from 4 to 2, it doesn't mean you'll get half. While everyone is trying resends and windowing is dropping throughput, invariably there will be just too many connections for all to be maintained, and connections will time out and drop, I've watched it happen. When it does, the client will attempt a new tcp connection and the process begins all over again - this increases the overhead for the 2mbps. At the same time, additional users may decide to do some itunes, streaming or downloading, increasing the load even more. As I stated before, the isp oversubscription model is broken. But there has been no solution to this short of raising prices and charging users more so the isp can afford additional bandwidth.

Re:Net neutrality doesn't exist even now.

[RulerOf]

You can't send packets out on or receive them in on a variety of ports, notably 21, 25, and 80. I figured that there must be filters up on my connection because most consumers don't require service on them, and on Joe Sixpack's connection, it's more secure that way.
May I suggest you go visit an abuse's desk of an ISP not filtering port 25 outbound before stating that it's blocked for the unique reason that they don't require it? Viruses on customers' computers don't need port 25, period. It's allowed for businesses because they usually have some kind of IT dealing with viruses, but at the ISP I worked for we could block these as well if abuse was reported, no matter the price of the connection.

My point is that ISP's unrelentingly filter port 25 traffic. Abuse or not. And in the case of my ISP, they claim it's for security.

Tiscali do this in the UK

[groovelator]

In the UK Tiscali have been 'unintentionally' blocking iTunes traffic during peak periods for some time now. This, again, on 'Unlimited' MAX ADSL connections where p2p regularly slows to a crawl...

Despite having acknowledged the problem recently (they said they're working on it - try turning off your traffic shaping???) they initially ignored it, deleting support forum posts wholesale.

I've walked away.

On Road Runner Business in Greensboro, NC

[LWolenczak]

I have a "teleworker" account, which means I get business class service to my house. (I might add, its useful to be able to get them dispatched in the middle of the night with such an account.) I've noticed that using iTunes before 8pm, its useless, right after 8pm though all my iTunes downloads speed up from 1-2 hours for a half hour tv show, to like 10 minutes. Its pretty clear that something is amiss, but I just went to downloading everything after 8 PM.

FWIW, Before 8pm, I've seen no other speed impacts, and have been able to download ISOs at a normal speed. I've only seen it with iTunes.

Re:Never attribute to malice...

[Ecks]

On malice/stupidity: So say we all. Nowhere on the thread did I see anyone try any standard diagnostic tools (ping, traceroute, etc) on the problem. This could have been anything from a router misconfiguration to a broken peer connection. Nonetheless Time Warner should be careful if they plan on implementing traffic shaping that could actually limit connectivity to something like the iTunes store. From this reaction I would expect quite a few angry customers if they do.

-- Ecks

Re:For $1500/month

[Raven42rac]

Them overselling their capacity is "NMFP", not my fucking problem. Either don't promise what you can't deliver, or increase capacity. Speaking of "net neutrality", consumers pay for internet access, Apple is paying bandwidth for itunes. Who is getting a free ride? The ISPs just want to bleed you more for a service you're already paying for.

Re:For $1500/month

[pipatron]

Perhaps the solution is that iTunes should bear some of the additional cost of the high amount of traffic their service creates.

They already do that, because they already pay for their bandwidth, and they pay a great deal more than you would pay for the same bandwidth.

Seriously. The only people who should be paying more here are the ISPs and ultimately us, the customers. The ISPs have been overselling bandwidth for years and years, and now that we are starting to use what they claim they have sold us, they can't all of a sudden tell us not to, without either increasing the price a lot, lowering the max speed, or admit to the general public that what they have been selling was not what they claimed it was. Some marketing nightmare there.

Re:For $1500/month

[Goldberg's Pants]

Well this was after two months of fighting with them. Filing fraud charges and giving the company a case number (I had warned them I was considering the action) had the effect of an almost IMMEDIATE letter from the CEO deeply apologizing for everything and saying unequivocally that I owed them nothing. I seem to recall they sent me a cheque too, but don't remember exactly why...

Re:For $1500/month

[P!Alexander]

the truth is it costs ISPs a certain amount per gigabyte

At what point are they incurring a cost per gigabyte? I used to work commissioning DSL equipment for a CLEC and we just paid for a DS3 (or multiple, if required) that had a monthly charge with no metering. This was a couple of years ago, but has it changed? Seems doubtful.

If you get a T1 or other dedicated circuit, you certainly aren't metered. Why would an ISP be treated any differently?