Comcast Caught Filtering Bittorrent and Lying About It
Posted 10/21/07 at 01:20:11 PM by Erin Simon
Comments
Print
Email
In August, Comcast subscribers began noticing extremely slow Bittorrent transfers, downloads cutting off and uploads refusing to seed. Comcast flatly denied rumors of interfering with Bittorrent traffic. The ISP said it didn't discriminate between types of traffic, instead dealing directly with customers who used “excessive” bandwidth.
Tests performed by the Associated Press this week show that Comcast was lying through its teeth. The ISP does filter Bittorrent and other filesharing traffic, which AP confirmed by trying to seed and download a 4.24MB file of the King James Bible (which is in the public domain). Comcast's filtering software works by posing as the host and sending a reset packet to a downloader – incidentally, the same technique as used by the Great Firewall of China. Comcast now maintains that this kind of “traffic shaping” is essential to ensuring a good experience to the majority of their customers who don't use p2p software.
Comcast could get in legal trouble a couple of ways from this. Impersonating one of the parties in the Bittorrent connection might run afoul of state anti-fraud laws. Lying to customers about reducing their quality of service almost certainly constitutes deceptive trade practices and/or unfair competition. And my ECPA-expert friend is scratching his forehead over whether Comcast's monkeying around with their subscribers' connections would be a violation of that statute (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act), which protects electronic communications from interception but allows ISPs wide latitude to manage their networks.
As with anything this dubiously-unlawful, the real judgment is going to come in the court of public opinion. Comcast's actions have people talking Net Neutrality again, and other service providers will have to think twice before exposing themselves to this kind of bad publicity.
Thumbnail photo courtesy of roland.
A little late, but thanks for the warning
Submitted by da_samman on Sat, 08/30/2008 - 10:38am
I just switched TO Comcast because of their cheaper all in one package. I hope when I need to pull WoW patches or do something LEGAL via BitTorrent that it doesn't take forever and a day. I've started saving my WoW update patches to a separate folder so when I build my next rig and install WoW, I don't have to pull the patches, just run the installers I saved.
Sincerely yours, from FOB Striker, Iraq,
SGT Samuel E. McClard II
Life's a journey, enjoy the ride!!
Submitted by tehR0XX0Rz on Fri, 08/29/2008 - 1:47pm
A couple years back, I started logging dropped packets with the firewall in Windows XP. I could tell there was a problem, as new entries were added to the log every 1-3 seconds. My neighbor, on the other hand, had no dropped packets to log--ever.
Comcast techs came out and measured 98% of all packets were being dropped. They switched a couple of connectors around and got it down to the mid 50's. It was late in the day, and they didn't want to do any more, so they left.
I'd been trying to have something done about my connection for a couple years prior to this, but I had no way to prove something was wrong. Their position was that if my browser could connect to the Internet, then they had done their job.
I WOULD DROP COMCAST IN A NANOSECOND IF ANYONE HAD A BETTER ALTERNATIVE.
Submitted by briansnj on Wed, 01/09/2008 - 5:25pm
And as soon as it is available in my area, GOODBYE to Comcast. Not that I like or trust Verizon but competition is needed. I plan on writing letters to Comcast letting them know why they got dropped...because of the filtering nonsense.
I do online gaming, my son does WOW, and sometimes we LAN with private servers and our friends connect with Hamachi. For 3 years, we never had problems, then suddenly...weeks and weeks we had trouble. Comcast said it was us, not them. Then the news broke and it all added up.
FIOS is happening in 2 towns to the east and west of us. Our population is about the same and it is an upscale town too. I know FIOS is maybe 12 months away. I CANNOT WAIT TO GET SOME REVENGE!
Submitted by houn2000 on Tue, 01/08/2008 - 10:25pm
This is definately sick. I myself worked tech support for comcast, and know how many people have been effected by their filtering. Worst part is that the reset packets were not only interupting P2P clients, but also remote desktop and online gaming for certain customers. The thing that people need to understand is that Comcast doesn't care if what you're doing is illegal. They only care about their bottom end. I was luckily working for a sub-contractor of comcast, but even then the corporate policies were felt. Will Smith's fake letter between CEO's really isn't that far off of business practices....
Open source, for the win!
Ubuntu V 7.10: Gutsy Gibbon
Submitted by CJ97 on Thu, 11/15/2007 - 2:01pm
Another Compcrap shenanigan.
It's not like they don't already rake in somewhere north of 100 dollars per month for hundreds of channels that can only be watched one at a time.They talk like they have the fastest internet around, but I've never seen it. The difference in speeds between Comcrap and DSL is barely noticeable as long as I'm not downloading 8gig ISOs. Well, I guess now it's not even noticeable if I am dowloading 8gig isos.
They're not so much stopping people from doing illegal things. They don't really need to. If they were ever subpoenad in a file sharing case, they could easily divulge as much information as is necessary.
Submitted by erin on Tue, 10/23/2007 - 4:44pm
I totally agree -- if bandwidth is the problem, address the bandwidth issue, whether by throttling all users or offering tiered pricing for higher use. What someone chooses to use that bandwidth for is really none of their business. There are too many legitimate uses of p2p to justify blocking the transfers altogether.
Good ole' Craptastic. I
Submitted by Phosphorous on Mon, 10/22/2007 - 8:33am
Good ole' Craptastic. I wish FIOS would hurry up and come to my area.
Submitted by ajuhawk on Mon, 10/22/2007 - 5:03am
What Comcast and all ISPs should be concentrating on is making sure each subscriber gets the bandwidth that they are paying for. This should be done by load leveling the bandwidth going to each subscriber, not by limiting certain types of traffic.
Submitted by codepath on Mon, 10/22/2007 - 4:46am
Totally unfair!
I pay for my account. My account covers my connection and its bandwidth. Now I am being penalized for actually using that bandwidth?
If they offer 6mb/s downstream as part of their service, how can they complain about what a customer is (legally) using that bandwith for?
I should write a quick little app that continually downloads some massive file, deletes it, and then redownloads it again via HTTP over and over again. It's my bandwidth and should be able to use it (legally) as I see fit.
If customers are actually using what they are paying for and their network can't handle what they promised, then they should increase their infrastructure to be able to handle it.
Hmmm, I wonder if this could be used by that person who got nailed for MP3 sharing. "It wasn't me, your honor. Comcast impersonated me and shared all of my music files."
codepath
Submitted by Bin3ry on Mon, 10/22/2007 - 3:49am
After telling my boss to use Bittorrent to download a copy of Linux, and him telling me it took 2 days, I was beginning to wonder what the problem was. Indeed Bittorrent is used for illegal things, but so are cars, does that mean everyones drivers licence should be revoked?
I have to say tho, if I owned an ISP company. I would want to have full rights to say what can be used on it. I have used Comcast for along time and I have to say it has been the best ISP I have ever had. Of course I dont sit and download alot of illegal stuff, but I do use alot of traffic playing WOW all day. As for the WoW patches, I have had no problems. Mine download at my maximum bandwidth. So your problem may be elsewhere.
Just some random thoughts on the matter.
- Joe -
I don't mean to play devil's
Submitted by LaurenB on Sun, 10/21/2007 - 11:11am
I don't mean to play devil's advocate, but it kind of seems like a huge double-standard though.. sure I don't like that comcast would do such an abusive thing, but they're getting in legal trouble for stopping people from doing illegal things?(well mostly) the irony..
Counter to the Advocate...
Submitted by One4yu2c on Sun, 10/21/2007 - 2:43pm
Why should Comcast get to decide that those using Bittorrent are automatically criminals? There's no denying pirated software gets distributed via Bittorrent, but so does legal content, such as Linux distributions, large game demos and patches, legal movies and TV shows, etc. If Comcast is going to limit Bittorrent traffic based on the assumption that it's being used illegally, then by that same logic, they might as well throttle internet connections altogether.
Exactly. The minute Comcast
Submitted by TheMurph on Sun, 10/21/2007 - 9:55pm
Exactly. The minute Comcast started screwing with my WoW patches, their time was limited in my house. God. I hate Comcast.
Must Read Articles
Feature
Review
Feature
Feature
Feature
Most Popular Articles
This Month's Issue
FEATURE Windows XP/Vista/7 Tips!FEATURE Monitor Roundup: 7 LCDs ReviewedHOW TOMaster PhotoshopFEATUREAMD's Awesome New GPUWHITE PAPEROrganic LEDs
Technology News
Computer Cooling Fans
Computer Cases
PC Game Controllers
PC Games
Computer Hardware
Headphones
MP3 Players
Stream Video
Computer Mouse
Monitors
Motherboards
NAS Storage
Networking
Laptop Computers
DVD Burner
Digital Cameras
Portable Storage
Computer Accessories
Smartphone
Antivirus Software
Sound Cards
Speakers
Computer Systems
Thumb Drives
Video Cameras
Video Card Reviews
Water Cooling
Gadgets
- Keyboards
© 2009 Future US, Inc. All Rights Reserved.