back to article BitTorrent busts Comcast BitTorrent busting

Unhappy that Comcast is busting BitTorrents, BitTorrent has decided to bust this BitTorrent busting. On Friday, as reported by TorrentFreak, a quartet of BitTorrent developers - including three staffers at BitTorrent Inc. - proposed a new extension to the popular P2P protocol that would circumvent Comcast's self-described " …

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  1. Mark

    Re: Simple Answer

    Well another simple answer would be that the ONLY reason to want broadband speeds is to download videos and, since the expense of legal download is so high, you can't afford enough to fill a few gigs a month (see how much it costs to fill an iPod with iTunes content...).

    Therefore anyone asking for broadband is trying to "steal" content. Anyone supplying broadband is trying to profit from someone *stealing* content. Arrest them all and lock 'em up.

    And we all have a guaranteed 56k connection with no contention.

    More than enough to mail Aunt Millie or browse El Reg.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

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

    Dur. There is more than one author writing articles for the reg. Sometimes, they have different opinions from each other. Oh noes!

  3. Dick Emery
    Pirate

    Ban or throttle it if you must

    It won't stop it. It might provide more bandwidth to those that can get around it in fact :) IRC, Usenet and darknets anyone? ;)

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  5. Peter Gathercole Silver badge
    Unhappy

    £1387 per month...

    ... but how many people want/need to download 2.5TB in a month, which is approx. how much you can do with 100% of 8Mb/S line.

    I pay a premium for my line at this speed, and I would like to be able to get the speed I pay for, but only in bursts, and not necessarily during the peak hours. I clearly don't get it.

    Looking at my firewall traffic graphs, it looks like during busy times, I average about 40KB/S, which equates to about 320Kb/S, which is something like 24 times slower than my theoretical maximum. And the peak (averaged out over 15 minute periods) is only 125KB/S, which equates to about 1Mb/S. Still 8 times less than I pay for.

    And now, it is very suspicious that my incoming SSH sessions hang within seconds of me starting them, which looks like VM is doing something antisocial with my traffic.

  6. Eponymous Cowherd
    Thumb Down

    Errr Mark.....

    ***"(as to prove it isn't, *I* don't use it for that, one poster says it's mostly legal ISO's and Lost [which isn't much compared to linux isos] so most of the BT stuff would seem from these concrete examples to be NOT illegal in the main."****

    Actually he said:-

    "Aside from Ubuntu Gibbon and Open Office (for Windows) a few months ago, everything I download is copyrighted content - usually tv shows"

    In other words apart from a *couple* of legitimate downloads everything he downloads is in violation of copyright.

    Your argument about porn is spurious, to say the least. Porn is no different to any other type of distributable entertainment. Just because someone cannot get it for free doesn't mean they will go out and pay for it. It doesn't matter whether its porn, a TV show or a mainstream movie.

    And I don't give a flying fart who downloads what. If they get caught that's their tough luck. They could just be a little more considerate and restrict their illegal activities to the wee small hour like the Lost downloader.

    Am I massive seeder? WTF, First you think I'm trying to drum up the porn trade, now I'm supposed to be a 'massive seeder. Your logic is, umm, interesting, to say the least.

  7. Ilgaz Öcal

    Vuze, Bittorrent.com sell copyrighted movies

    Vuze (built on Azureus) and Bittorrent sells copyrighted Hollywood and network TV content to their users. The reason it is possible and cheaper than DVD: There is no need to run/rent a huge datacenter for distributing files over HTTP, a protocol which was NEVER designed to serve that.

    So pirates: Go buy movies, they are offered now.

    P2P haters: There are people who have ethics and download ONLY paid content, public domain content, GNU Linux etc. ISO.

  8. Shakje

    @Oliver Jones

    What about gaming? Plenty of other applications also require inbound ports to be open.

  9. Mark

    @Oliver Jones

    Getting around the comcast fraudulent misrepresentation is easy too. Just ignore all RST packets. A genuine downed connection will timeout after a while, whereas Comcast *pretending* to be the other end of the connection and saying "bye" won't timeout.

    A single line in your firewall config and it's sorted.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    It affects more than P2P

    the changes comcast had placed into effect is also keeping VPN connections from being made if you use UDP

  12. Robert T
    Stop

    ISP Bittorrent caching

    I've said it before and I'll say it again. ISPs should be caching bittorrent traffic for the benefit of all their users. They can capture the downloaded packets anonymously, and force feed them to future requesting users of theirs.

    Let's face it - at a large ISP, users are probably downloading and uploading the same single file thousands of times, and costing a lot. A few Linux/Unix boxes and a few TBs of storage are nothing compared to the ongoing bandwidth costs. My guess is that they could reduce their traffic by up to 40% overnight with an effective system. Frankly, I think it's irresponsible of the likes of Bittorrent the company to not have included easy support for caching proxies from the start.

    Additionally, caches are almost always exempt from legal responsibility for copyright infringement because they are indiscriminate about their content, service only their customers, and are for network performance reasons.

    I'd also like to see end user dumb indiscriminate caches & proxies, to provide reasonable deniability in the event of lawsuits. As a point: Onion router users don't normally get successfully prosecuted, unless they're poorly represented or the law of the land is specifically against these kind of services, which most aren't (law enforcement loves onion routers, too!).

    Of course, this potential windfall benefit will not eventuate if most bittorrent traffic starts to be encrypted. They're shooting themselves in the foot in the long term.

    There is one proprietary BT cache that I know of, but they claim to only cache legitimate content...... I don't like the implications of such a statement, even if it is just marketing. But it shows that the technology is out there.

  13. Phil Bennett
    Alert

    Economics

    "According to Ofcom a 155Mb central from BT costs £316200 annually " - this seems a bit steep, but then it is BT. So, lets max this sucker out. 155Mb/s = 19.375MB/s, so over the course of a year you can grab 19.375*3600*24*365=611,010,000 MB of data. That works out at a cost of £0.53 per gig for the ISP, assuming they can saturate their connections. If a heavy user grabs 150GB a month, then they are costing the ISP close to £80 before other business costs.

    The best traffic shaping I've been subjected to is PlusNets (not sure if its been changed since), where if you shifted more than a certain (high) amount in a month in peak hours, you were warned. If you went over again the next month, you got moved onto the "heavy users" pipe, where you still had the same contention ratio, but everyone else on the pipe liked to download too. If you spent a month under the cap, you went back up a level. Simple, easy, and relatively fair.

  14. Carl
    Thumb Up

    @Oliver

    'ISPs aren't likely to shed many tears over people complaining that they can't play Quake III Arena on their mate's game server anymore...'

    Unfortunately, we are currently in an age of online gaming - not Quake III, but XBOX Live and to a lesser extent PS3 - so, yes ISPs may start shedding tears if gamers start walking...

    In fact, I recently had (and have had in the past) an email from Microsoft about special offers for BT Internet / XBOX Live... That seems more like actively embracing gamers rather than not caring...

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    See both sides

    Several years ago I was the chair of a citizens group that tried to implement Fiber service in our community. Comcast and the local Bell dumped hundreds of thousands into an effective marketing campaign that shut the initiative down.

    But, it got them off their asses and forced them to start infrastructure upgrades in the several communities involved in the effort. So I have little sympathy for the ISPs that let the infrastructure languish for generation after generation until finally forced to institute an upgrade policy because of the potential for third party competition.

    On the other hand, I've suffered at the hands of "shared bandwidth" being "hogged" by the inconsiderate users in my neighborhood. I don't care what services they are using, if they are grabbing a significant portion of the available bandwidth and monopolizing that bandwidth consistently in any given billing cycle, they should be throttled or caps should be put in place and they should be forced to pay for exceeding the cap.

    The same principle can be applied to any shared service like water and electricity. And circumventing the controls that legitimate businesses are placing on the services they provide will only result in everyone getting hit with pay as you go business models.

    But finally, I'm back in the camp with the BT crowd. Although Comcast has a right to do what they want in relation to controlling the product they provide, they should create a policy, publish the policy and enforce it consistently. If they keep trying to backdoor the process, they will continue to be forced to fight a game of one-upmanship with a very determined and capable foe.

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  17. Robb Topolski
    Gates Halo

    @system Re: Doing everything we can

    Regarding the new BitTorrent extension, I don't get it either. Their overall strategy has not been shared with me, but for the very reasons you have mentioned here -- both the effectiveness and the lifetime of this BitTorrent extension seem to be limited.

    And maybe THAT's the plan. Every time one of these DPI devices needs an upgrade, the Cable-Internet companies bleed. Comcast and its CableLabs cohorts now have no choice but to pony up.

    I suspect that the Cable-Internet industry has relied on DPI for so long to keep their bandwidth costs down, that to ditch it now would mean having to spend the time and unacceptable amounts of money to do the upgrades that DPI has enabled them to "delay." (heh, interesting word, isn't it).

    So by upping the anti in the war for a neutral Internet, perhaps the BitTorrent people really only intend to show them that the industry has left itself vulnerable. By making a minor change on the users end, major outlays have to be made at the ISP end.

  18. Ed

    @Fraser

    Amen. Eventually the bittorrent-ISP wars will end with the ISPs being the victor.

  19. Robb Topolski
    Stop

    @Richard Bennett, Re: Gullible

    "... I don't consider poor Robb Topolski's addle-brained theories 'facts.' ..."

    Why, thank you! Now how about a little substance to your attack -- what theory of mine are you taking issue with?

    "... 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. ..."

    And precisely what time would that be, Richard? You see, I have run the tests around the clock, and I have monitored that the same rate of interference exists around the clock. It is not dependent upon network congestion.

    I have also explained this to you on more than one occasion. Yet you seem bent on attacking me personally rather than exploring the facts or explaining the findings. After all of this time, one might begin to think that you have more of an interest in advancing an agenda than in finding the truth.

    ... "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."

    Generally, I agree with you that the obfuscation extension is -- if anything -- just another weapon in a cat-and-mouse war. However, I don't see Verizon running toward a metered plan, regardless. At least they know who their customers are.

  20. Morely Dotes
    Flame

    @ Eponymous Cowherd

    "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."

    I hope your ass hurts terribly after you pulled that number out of it. You have just stated that 95% of BitTorrent users are violating copyright law. It's possible I am mistaken, but I believe that under UK law they can now take you to court for defamation, and you have to *prove* what you said - and further, I believe that UK and EU law permits them to demand your contact information from El Reg, and you have no "reasonable expectation of privacy."

    Lastly, I would point out that ISPs got themselves into this pickle by advertising "unlimited" bandwidth for a flat fee, and frankly, if they can't deliver what they promised up front, I'd be perfectly happy to see them either go titsup and out of business, or see their Boards charged with fraud - or both.

  21. Morely Dotes
    Flame

    @ Eponymous Cowherd again...

    "Never has anyone offered any proof that BitTorrent *isn't* mostly used for distributing copyright material."

    In a free society, the burden of proof is upon the accuser, not the accused. If you want to be able to make accusations and force your victim to prove he's innocent, move to Russia, or France. You imply that it is always unlawful to distribute copyrighted material. This is patently false; all Linux distributions, and World of Warcraft patches (to name two items that come instantly to mind) are copyrighted, and *legally* distributed via BT.

    Disclaimer: Above defenses of "free"societies do not apply when GWB gets involved.

    Now... Since you are making accusations of unlawful behavior, either put up or shut up.

    Personally, I use BT to download (and upload, of course) Linux distros, WoW updates, and videos produced by my son's video production company. Any accusations by yourself to the contrary can only be offered in knowing and willful violation of the anti-defamation laws.

  22. Morely Dotes

    @ Oliver Jones

    "ISPs can simply render encrypted Torrent traffic irrelevant, by firewalling all incoming ports on your internet connection at their network level, thus preventing your PC from being contacted for a Torrent (or any) download. Quick, easy, simple - and it requires no throttling, filtering or packet analysis. In fact, I'm surprised it wasn't done years ago, because it neatly blows a hole in BitTorrent and any other P2P protocol - and it's something that nobody could possibly design around, no matter how much encryption they used."

    Unless, of course, the BT client were so designed that it automatically sought out open ports for bit inbound and outbound traffic.

    An ISP which firewalls port 80 will not last long. Ever heard of AOL? They used to be considered an ISP.

  23. Steen Hive
    Boffin

    @Eponymous Cowherd

    "In other words apart from a *couple* of legitimate downloads everything he downloads is in violation of copyright."

    Is it violation of YOUR copyright? If not, then stuff it where the sun don't shine, sunshine.

    Copyright is a contract between the producer of works and the state, not involving ISPs, their users or you.

    None of which applies to ISPs blatantly flouting trade-descriptions legislation in spirit and probably in letter.

  24. Daniel B.
    Boffin

    @Oliver Jones

    Hm... nice for kicking on online gaming, but you know ... gaming isn't the only thing that uses incoming connections, or UDP.

    Point in case: VPNs. Blanket dropping of all incoming connections and UDP effectively kills any VPN entry point, and well VPN endpoints actually require UDP (not TCP) traffic these days.

    Cable internet operators nationwide (this is Mexico) use NAT, so every single cable internet subscriber has a private IP (the standard class A private network 10.0.0.0/8 range is their favorite) which means they can't play games with non-cable users (if they're hosting), and well with some recent portblocking and traffic shaping that went into effect around mid-2007, p2p is practically dead.

    Telmex's ADSL service, on the other hand, has been stable for some time now, with 1Mbit for residential (and REAL 1Mbit: 1024Kbps) while having 2Mbit and 4Mbit options for commercial lines. I get a real, public and routeable IP, no firewalls, proxies or anything else. Somehow I'd think it would be easier for other telecom giants to be able to provide something like this in the US, UK and similar places.

    Wasn't one of the major reasons behind the dot-com crash the "overexpansion" of backbones over what was really needed? I remember reading something like that, and asking "Gee, if that's true, why do I still have to pay $300/month for a DS0 link?". While most web-surfing wasn't that demanding, my Quake, Quake2 and TeamFortress needs were complaining about 400+ms pings, and the term "LPB" was fairly common. Remember that??? So surely, if you believe that crap, telecoms should have all the backbone they need for the next 10 years (back in 2000, they said 20 years, didn't they??)

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Wondering about ElReg

    http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33628733-virgin-media-ad-deal-updated-see.html

    Surely they didn't pay your Diamond rate for no coverage. Otherwise right up your street.

  26. Eponymous Cowherd
    Thumb Down

    Legal Eagles

    Hmmm, we seem to have a surfeit of legal experts here (Morley Dotes and Steen Hive).

    Shame you are both completely wrong in your assumptions.

    No, I *cannot* be sued for defamation for making comments about filesharing in general.

    No, Copyright is *not* a contract between the producer of the work an the state.

    And crude epithets don't make your arguments any more compelling, BTW, but if they make you fell better, go right ahead ;-)

  27. system

    @Robb

    Doing it in small steps may cause the ISPs to at least invest time in improving their rulesets, but this extension requires tracker admins to implement RC4 into their tracker.

    With SSL, all we have to do is let openssl and the webserver handle it. With the extension, we either have to code in our own RC4 algorithm or call in an external library/program. On a c/c++ tracker, it shouldn't be that big a deal to call in a library, but in a php tracker (think every copy of tbdev) we'd have to make calls to a program with exec() or similar (slow).

    If implementing the extension is more trouble then it's worth, I don't see tracker admins going for it in any big way, especially if they have to do it all again in 6 months.

  28. Edward Dore

    Re: "155MB central from BT costs £316200"

    The BT central connection is the connection from the BT Colossus ATM network to the ISP's network. This is just the handover of traffic from BT to your ISP. The ISP still has to pay for the bandwidth from their network onto the internet, not to mention maintaining their network etc.

    It has been mentioned several times by ISPs that the price BT charge for the "central" handoff is ridiculously expensive but Ofcom refuse to do anything about it.

  29. Richard Bennett

    @Robb Topolski

    One thing you should clarify, Robb, is that the only trackers that care about seeding/leeching ratios are private trackers used predominately by pirates. Legitimate downloads, like Linux distros and licensed content from BitTorrent, Inc., don't care about how much seeding you do. You shouldn't have misled poor Cade about that, he's a trusting soul who admires and respects you. So be honest with him.

    I did another experiment on Comcast with BitTorrent last night, downloading a talking book version of the King James Bible I found in Mininova. After the download completed, I seeded quite successfully all night long. I started this around 8:00 PM and the pure seeding started at around Midnight and ran at 160 Kb/s.. I had no problems at all, and it's on my OGG player right now.

    I've attacked you personally on this issue because I don't think you've been forthright about it, and I'm encouraging you to become a more responsible citizen.

  30. Mark

    @Eponymous Cowherd

    Where are your legal credentials, Coward?

    What methods did you undertake to ascertain the 95%+ figure? Are you accusing ME DIRECTLY of this illegal act? If not, who are you accusing? Nobody? Anyone who isn't listening? Who is downloading all this criminal literature?

    PS copyright is a government grant of right and its terms are an agreement made between the producer and the public (because the government when making agreements are actors on the behalf of the public). You're talking out of your figurative arse.

  31. Eponymous Cowherd
    Heart

    @ Mark

    ***"Where are your legal credentials, Coward?"***

    In a frame on the wall, actually. And its CowHERD....

    ***"What methods did you undertake to ascertain the 95%+ figure?"***

    Its an estimate based on the percentage of files on 10 (most popular) different trackers that are likely to be there without the permission of the copyright holder.

    ***"Are you accusing ME DIRECTLY of this illegal act?"****

    Err, No.

    ***"If not, who are you accusing? Nobody?"***

    Yes, that's right!! Glad we got that sorted.

    ***"Who is downloading all this criminal literature?"****

    I don't really care as long as they do it at 2am.

    ***"PS copyright is a government grant of right and its terms are an agreement made between the producer and the public (because the government when making agreements are actors on the behalf of the public)."***

    Almost correct.

    ***"You're talking out of your figurative arse."****

    Nice! Feel better now?

    A nice heart icon, as you seem rather stressed out and could do with some love ;-)

  32. Robb Topolski

    @Richard Bennett, Re: Private Trackers

    Well, you can ask Cade for verification should you doubt me, but I actually said during this interview -- practically verbatim -- the words that you thought I should say. I also mentioned that the very thought of 'private trackers' seemed antithetical to file sharing. While I have little use for private trackers, they are more popular than public ones. I did not mislead Cade at all. I said those things.

    But neither you, nor I, nor Comcast are in the business of collecting royalties for copyright holders. Comcast's actions are network management to ensure a positive user experience, according to its response to the FCC. It doesn't mention copyright or piracy as any motivation. Neither Vuze, the Free Press, Comcast, or I seem to believe that copyright enforcement is relevant to this conversation. It is an issue that only seems to distract from the issue at hand. This is probably why (I'm guessing) that the subject of copyright does not appear in Cade's article -- it is a distraction from the issue.

    The issue is whether Comcast's actions affect downloads -- and, yes, they do in exactly the ways I described.

    But as for the talking KJV, while the text may be in the Public Domain, the recording is likely covered by an active mechanical copyright. I accidentally run into that myself, from time to time, with some of my downloads -- when the musical composition and arrangement are old enough to be in the Public Domain but the recorded performance is not. Again, it's not relevant and is an easy mistake to make. Mistakes are mistakes and have no nefarious intent -- I'm not accusing anybody of anything. In my case, when I figure it out, I delete the file and move on. (Since it's the Bible, maybe the performer/publisher intentionally avoided mechanically copyrighting the work -- so it might be okay after all.)

  33. Richard Bennett

    @Robb Topolski

    OK, Robb, let's be very clear about what we're saying. You seem to believe that it's impossible to seed on the Comcast network, and therefore BitTorrent downloaders are severely affected across the whole Internet. If this were true, we'd have reports from all over about how Vuze and BitTorrent, Inc. were having trouble delivering HDTV and movies to their customers, but we don't. To the contrary, Vuze said in their FCC petition that they haven't been affected by Comcast in any way.

    And moreover, Linux distros are still moving quite nicely across the net, even inside of Comcast. My last Fedora 8 download ran at 4 Mb/s the whole way to completion. So your argument is obviously lacking substance.

    In fact, there's no relationship between your MIDI seeding and the kinds of transactions that are typical of legal uses of BitTorrent. You've had trouble seeding because you don't have enough of a swarm going to reach the critical mass that BT needs to run really fast. And in fact, BT is not even the appropriate tool for the job you're trying to do. You'd have much better luck putting your music files on your free Comcast web space and letting people download them with HTTP.

    So why don't you do that?

  34. Robb Topolski

    @Richard Bennett, Re: WTF?

    > You seem to believe that it's impossible

    > to seed on the Comcast network

    Nice try at a subject change. Go put words into someone else's mouth. I do not need your abuse. You've pulled this crap repeatedly. As I told you and George the last time we tried this -- it's pointless. You don't want to discuss and examine, you simply aim to "win" (whatever that means) by outlasting anyone who tries to converse with you about this.

    In my neighborhood, using BitTorrent, what I've said was "39% of connections are terminated using the RST flag." And as I've told you both in private and public, I have no problems reaching my desired maximum upload speeds (usually around 16 kB/s - 20 kB/s). I've also told you and the public that I cannot upload at all on Gnutella.

    http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18323368-Comcast-is-using-Sandvine-to-manage-P2P-Connections

    Richard, stop being an ass. I've tested this. I've published my results. It's observable and reproducible (and it subsequently has been independently reproduced by the AP and the EFF and finally even admitted by both Sandvine and Comcast itself). You're the only one left -- well, you and George Ou -- who seems to be in denial and deflection mode.

    I'm done with you. I started with a fair amount of esteem for you, but I have none left. You've outlasted me, for whatever that is worth to you.

  35. michael

    @Oliver Jones

    the torrent client I use (I am not saying for what) randomizeses ports every time it oppens unless they block all ports it will work and if they did that they might as well not have a connection I know for a fact that almost every program execpt browsing uses diffrent ports and for yor infomation there are a LOT of online gamers

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    just make an 'Encrypted Multicast Tunnel' and be done with it.

    it seems quite simple really if the open coder java developers were to just extend the torrent protocol and just make an 'Encrypted Multicast Tunnel' and be done with it.

    make it an experimental Azureus Multicast plug-in, tell people about it or get it included in the base package, and setup some trials , a simple small 4 to 1 ratio of peers would save masses of bandwidth and you could be happy knowing its Encypted at the same time.

    Encypted Multicast P2p tunnels are good for everyone , just make the thing.

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