They could just

Start off a conversation between two people on bittorrent with http and put the data in a jpg format for instance. Unless the filters can discern what consitutes a picture for humans which is unlikely, or they stop people uploading their holiday photos.

The headers would take a couple of bytes, run it all over port 80 with a faked apache talking in the background for extra realism.

Forgery has always been a crime

Comcast's "management" procedure consists of forgery and forgery has always been a crime. A simple criminal or civil case based on this should be pursued by EFF. They can argue the merits of management all they like but management accomplished by illegal means such as forgery is still illegal.

So now you are against Comcast's network management???

In this article The Register sounded like they were on Comcast's side:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/23/benett_eff_neutrality_response/

Hey you are allowed to change your mind, but you have to admit to it and explain why. So is Comcast in the right or not?

epic fail?

Comcast should quit while they're ahead... They're gonna lose customers this way... and they've got the whole torrent community thirsting for their blood.

Well done comcast, you receive the 'Epic Fail' award.

Paris? Cause we can see comcast reaching her level of pure stupidity soon.

Managment:

The only fair way to manage p2p networking is with caps and throttling AND being up front about it. I can easily see how p2p could put huge strain on an isp but if they as a buissness can't make money by giving customers unlimited access to the internet, then don't sell unlimited access. Tell the customers what they are buying and let them decide where they want to spend their bandwidth and when. If there must be throttling at peek usage hours, tell the customer and let them decide whether they want to maintain their torrent activity or postpone it so they can get some decent web surfing speed. If there must be a cap let the customer decide what is more important; 24h of voip to that new russian wife they ordered, or the latest version of every linux distro out there.

My isp switched from unregulated bandwidth to one with a monthly cap. They sent me e-mail explaining what they were doing. I wasn't overjoyed but I knew I was using far more of the pie then most of their users and all in all it seemed fair. There website gave me statistics on my usage, and I managed my activities according.

Ultimitly, they probably just don't like torrents because people are watching downloaded movies instead of comcast's on on demand movies.

Paris, just because everyone uses her and explains why at the end of their post.

Loosing battle

The moment Version FiOS is available in my area Concast will be out of my computer and TV for good.

Balance

Nice balanced article, until the last sentence.

Let's take this game forwards 10 moves or so: BitTorrent becomes indistinguishable from, say, encrypted web traffic. ISPs aren't going to roll over and admit defeat - their business models won't support that - so all ISPs limit (or charge) any customer who generates more than a moderate amount of traffic in either direction. End of 'flat rate' tariffs for anybody other than a very light user.

This doesn't sound much like progress!

Surprise at "overselling"

What you have to remember is that Telco’s and hence most ISP's have graduated from the analogue telephone exchange where, in order to maximise the return on their investment in equipment, oversubscription is standard.

no-one is going to offer domestic users 1 to 1 contention and guaranteed speeds unless you pay a high price for it. Now it could be argued that for most domestic applications a 25-1 contention ratio is fine since most households don’t use their connection all of the time anyway and when they do it's for simple applications such as email, web browsing and uploading a few bits and bobs to mytube or facespace.

In short the major ISP's are all struggling with lack of capacity, also with a lack of funds to increase that capacity so they will take the easy route and attempt to throttle traffic which they deem to be infringing on it's fair use or network management policies.

It's Just business, I'm guessing here but for every 1 ComCast customer who worries about their torrents being affected by this policy there are hundreds who just don’t give a toss because they don’t use it and the policy of throttling this traffic actually improves performance for the MAJORITY of customers.

I don’t have a business degree or the benefits of a university education but, given the choice of upsetting thousands upon thousands of people who suffer increasing degradation of service or upsetting a couple of thousand people who cant download the latest Linux distros (because, as far as I can tell that’s all torrents are ever used for?) I know what I'd be doing!

Where is the reasoned argument icon please?

@Frazer

Nicely put.

It seriously pisses me off when I see my 8MBbs connection drop to a 250KBps ( or less!) crawl in peak hours knowing its mostly down to p2p-ers. Doubly pisses me off as my legitimate use of bandwidth is being hampered by file sharers.

And lets not be under any illusions, here. Despite the whinging about legitimate uses of BitTorrent, 95% + of BT file sharers *are* sharing copyright material.

SSL isn't the answer

Encrypting torrents won't help. The ISPs will simply assume that anything encrypted is a p2p exchange, and will block/throttle it. All the legitimate telecommuting users of, say, SSL-encrypted email, https or VPNs will suffer as well. This is exactly what happend with Free in France a year or so ago. Lots of my colleagues who normally work from home found that they couldn't do the job they were being paid for. On my 1Mbit/s line I got 800kbit/s with unencrypted port-80 traffic, but had to resort to 24kbit/s dialup to read my work email. There was zero throughput of encrypted traffic on the ADSL line, even with a VPN configured to use port 80.

The only solution is tariff-based. Unthrottled service up to a cap, and if you want to pass the cap you pay more. That way those who want 100% utilization pay more than those who want 1%. Seems fair to me. The only real complaint I can see about Comcast's behaviour is that they aren't being up-front about it.

Really?

"knowing its mostly down to p2p-ers"

And just how do you "know" that. Done much research into it? How about peak hours being when most gamers would be online?

"95% + of BT file sharers *are* sharing copyright material."

Really???? Wow, you should work for I dunno, some encyclopedia or something, you are so insightful!!!! Of course they are, but the "legitimate use" argument is being used as a legal loophole to prevent blanket bans etc.

A while back, there were statistics about the amount of pr0n being downloaded from the net. I'm sure that hasn't changed, maybe there's a lot of pervs in your neighbourhood?

Why are *all* ISPs so dumb?

If a seller has a product in limited supply, they could put a price on it and sell it by the kilo. Alternatively, they could put it out in a big room and charge a flat rate to come in and take as much as you like, and if some people look like they are taking too much then they could beat them up on the way out. (That assault probably qualifies as a criminal offence, but it's for the common good, isn't it?)

One of these models is legal, sensible, and used in almost every industry. The other is how nearly every ISP on the planet has decided to market broadband. Why?!?

@AC "SSL Isn't The Answer"

"That way those who want 100% utilization pay more than those who want 1%." So if I have the audacity to actually want to download at 8mbps and upload at 448kbps as advertised 24/7/365 I should pay more?!

How's that outside the advertised "8mbps download, 448kbps upload, Unlimited" service that I'm already paying for? And, come to think of it, how can using my bandwidth- which I'm paying for, remember- to the full extent that I can possibly be considered unfair (as in violation of a "Fair" use agreement)?!

Can you imagine a car that stopped after every 1,000 miles travelled in a month "to ease traffic congestion" selling?! Can you imagine that if they didn't tell you about it but just hid it away in the fine print of your contract that the company would not be successfully sued?

FUPs and traffic management does just mean "hey, we're overselling".

Sidenote: Doesn't that mean that- since all P2P traffic's clearly pirated material (the RIAA told me so...)- and ISPs are knowingly letting P2P traffic pass they're aiding and abetting criminal activity?

DevilGates cos the outlook's not so good for Comcast et al

Gullible

"But don't let Comcast fool you. The BitTorrent community should do everything it can to bust Comcast's BitTorrent busting. And so should the FCC."

Please. If you're going to make a bald assertion like this, at least pretend to back it up with a fact, and I don't consider poor Robb Topolski's addle-brained theories "facts." If he wants to maintain high standing with the private trackers that support piracy, he should do his seeding in the off hours when network management is not in effect on Comcast's network.

The new obfuscation scheme isn't going to work, it's simply another nuisance that all the ISPs will have to deal with on the way to metered pricing.

Re:ISPs are also to blame.

***"Also remember BitTorrent has legal uses as well before you spout the Piracy argument... WoW Patches, Linux Distros the list goes on."***

This is the argument trolled out every time someone associates filesharing with piracy. Yes it *does* have legitimate uses, but that still doesn't change the fact that *most* users are sharing copyright material, i.e. music, movies and tv programmes. The Wow Patches and Linux Distros, etc, are a *tiny* portion of BitTorrent traffic.

And, to the other AC, who thinks sarcasm is a substitute for reasoned argument, I *have* done my research.

@The Solution

my connection in oz is 16 GB then flat rate of $4/GB, charged pro-rata per Mb, but they still _reserve the right to_ shape p2p between 4pm-1am if the network is saturated. It is, however, clearly in the ToS. Also, 1am-9am is counted at half the speed i.e download 2gb only 1 is counted. Also i have a fixed IP and they explicitly permit running servers on the website frontpage. <rot13>nnarg</rot13> if anyone is interested.

@AC - Capped at peak hours

I think that VM are one of the most communitive of the UK ISPs. If you want to find out about their AUP, then sign in to their "Customer Zone" and get details of your package. On that page will be a link to their AUP. Follow that, and you will find a link about their traffic shaping. Alternatitivly, look through their FAQ on broadband.

If you believe it verbatim, then it is only the top 5% of users during peak hours who get traffic managed. Their peak hours are defined as 16:00 to 24:00.

Having praised them on their openness, I find myself sceptical about what they say actually being what they do. My 8Mb/S line rarely goes over 25% of it's potential bandwidth for any traffic. My DSL router actually gives me a connection speed of about 7.4 Mb/S. This could be as a result of the upload speed of the site I am receiving from, but I have recently got a HSDPA modem which often downloads faster that my landline, even when only in 3G mode (my home is not in a "Turbo" enabled region). I suspect heavy contention, but can I get them to respond to mails asking what the contention ratio is?

Still, I could change, and I havn't. Must say something.

Misselling ?

ISPs and telecos are are getting their just deserts for the classic airline trick where they deliberately oversell seats on flights as a usual percentage don't turn up. However this sometimes bites you (the customer) on the ass as they say tough and you get bumped off the flight.

So using that analogy on an 8mb ADSL line with a contention of 50:1 all you can be guaranteed is 8/50. OOps the telecos have just oversold the flight. Before telecos invest anymore increasing speed they really should look at increasing capacity to deliver what they sold you in the first place. Ps and a message those people who have 'Free/Cheap Broadband ' and whine when it is crap - I've got some magic beans here for sale ! Also for those hardcore gamers out there who complain about ping - try going out and meeting people it's a good incentive to wash.

Verizon ADSL JUST AS BAD!

My only Torrent use is for Linux distros. I could clearly see the throttling taking place on my uploads. I kept changing the parameters to conform to their expectations/limits. They caused my seeding to time out eventually. I could watch the participation die out, one at a time.

I could only requeue by restarting my DSL modem, which reassigned my IP address. Then I could watch it die again. I used to be able to participate (a couple of years ago), but lately they have been throttling.

I hate to think the movie-stealers are screwing up our open-source sharing system.

I wonder if they can tell what type of system is being used. The ones that went through were on Linux; the throttling is on the Mac. No, it can't possibly matter!

Verizon is the best of our local providers in NYC, and they provide all the last-mile connections for DSL (and sabotage other ISPs on connecting); but I am looking for another one!

AC because they are always watching!

A bit of common sense

I'm on Virgin and a fairly heavy torrenter. Aside from Ubuntu Gibbon and Open Office (for Windows) a few months ago, everything I download is copyrighted content - usually tv shows (Lost etc) that I can't get around to watch / want to own and 'unobtainable' stuff like anime fansubs.

I live in a shared house where there can be up to five of us trying to get on the net (for Facebook, IM, general surfing) at any one time in the evening and I do think it's unfair that their usage should be impacted by me either caning the bandwidth or putting us into the throttled zone. So I put my downloads on in the morning before I go to work or leave them on overnight. Everybody's happy.

Some people here might complain that they're not getting the full value out of their connections, but seriously, would you expect to be able to drive a car at full speed down the motorway, all day, every day, even at rush hour?

Personally, I'd be happy to pay by the GB - bit torrent is not an inviolable right and in most cases it's not even legal. I know that and you know that, so get real.

Simple Answer

Torrents are only really used to commit crime (and you all know that is true!) Simply require ISPs to block the traffic, whether it originates on their network or not.

Also have them report any user who uses torrents to the police, failure to do so will be considered aiding and abetting.

It's not about freedom of speech or anything. It is about theft. Pure and simple.

Everyone using torrents is a thief and deserves the jail. They have no legitimate use.

@Skirting around the real issue...

"Why are they allowed to sell a portion of my 8Mb of bandwidth to someone else, simply because they don't expect me to make full use of the whole 8Mb?"

Er, because you bought a /contended/ service, so its not all yours. If you want full access to the entire 8Mb, buy uncontended service.

Be prepared to pay ~25x more for it tho....

legal uses?

"remember BitTorrent has legal uses as well before you spout the Piracy argument... WoW Patches, Linux Distros the list goes on."

Sure, but you really think that these will be a major contributor to BT traffic? Be sensible. The guys I know using p2p are downloading TV shows from the US, DVDs from Russia and pron from everywhere.

I'd be happy with PYG model

I get a few stateside TV episodes a week, the odd distro and Oracle binary releases ( average about 1.5GB each), but I would be more than happy to pay say £1/GB if I got the full use of the bandwidth I am supposedly entitled to.

As usual my gripe, like everyone else's is, I pay X why am I not getting Y? Virgin even convinced me to up my connection speed, then I discover their evening "control" mechanism. Well I must say, I don't kill my connection, so some other scumbag on the pipe must be raking it down, 'cos some evenings I'm lucky if I break above 25kbps on a 20MB line! This goes down a storm when I am trying to keep a VNC/SSL connection to a Citrix farm to remotely support work callouts, as soon as the callout comes I have to turn to my family and it's "everybody out the pool", while I try to earn a crust.

At least if I go ADSL, I might get a choice which money-grabbing scumbag, gets my hard earned loot!

@ Mark

***"Are you trying to help porn make money?"***

WTF does that mean / imply??

***"Your refutation is trotted out at least as often as the ideas you troll against and never has someone said how they know it's a load of dingoes kidneys. Will you be the first?"***

You can turn that on its head, of course. Never has anyone offered any proof that BitTorrent *isn't* mostly used for distributing copyright material.

So we will have to agree to disagree.

@Mark re: "contention ratio of up to 25"

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/telecoms/ioi/bbpricing/model.pdf (top link on google for "bt ipstream price list")

According to Ofcom a 155MB central from BT costs £316200 annually or £26,350 monthly. 19 customers downloading at 8Mbps 24/7 constantly would fill that, making the cost per customer £1387 per month in BT charges alone.

I'm not 100% sure of these figures, but I bet I'm not a far off.

Re: A bit of common sense

***"I'm on Virgin and a fairly heavy torrenter. Aside from Ubuntu Gibbon and Open Office (for Windows) a few months ago, everything I download is copyrighted content"***

Well, at least you are honest about it.......

Though why anyone would bother downloading contrived cack like Lost is beyond me ;-)

@system

The best defense against this sort of attack is to make the target i.e. the BT protocol a moving target. Every little change the BT community makes, essentially for free, costs ComCast money to update their attack tools.

It's an arms race, and ComCast can't win (for long).

People don't want to pay for unlimited bandwidth

I'm a very heavy user of bandwidth - 150Gb a month some months, I have absolutely no problems with my ISP, a mixture of VPN, ssh file transfer and BT traffic.

The reason is I pay for the service - £75 a month, plus VAT for an 8Mb (up to) unlimited connection, with 20:1 contention on my exchange and garunteed zero contention on the ISP's end, no limits and no traffic shaping.

The majority of the time I get the full use of my connection with little or no contention on my local circuit.

Most people complaining are paying £9.99 a month or less, and then wondering why they get end up getting throttled.

Sorry but you get what you pay for.

Extreamly annoyed

I admit that the majority of torrents are probably copyright material (even Linux distro's are copyrighted, but the license allows free distribution), and much of that will be illegal use. But those "anonymous cowards" who claim it should be completely banned need lining up and shooting. Banning torrents outright would only mean that other tools would be used. And those people who *DO* use bittorrent it for legitimate purposes (and for what it was originally used before being hijacked) would be the victims.

And with iPlayer downloads (which are P2P) legitimise use for *SOME* commercial material.

It will become a constant technological war between RIAA and MPAA through the ISPs to stop illegal distribution of copyright material. Let's seperate this from the bandwidth/contention debate, and encourage the ISPs to sell more realistic services that charges for use. Cap according to purchased allowance, encourage heavy users to take out higher tier packages, and invest the money in ensuring that we get what we pay for!

Can anybody post links to credible information about traffic use statistics at any representative point on the 'net?