How to Thwart Comcast's BitTorrent Shenanigans

If Comcast will have the brains enough to cross reference whom are business clients and whom are home users in order not to cut off vital VPNs?

Is it who or whom?

Who.

The rule is, use "whom" when it's the object of the verb that can't be replaced by "he" or "she.

So, "To whom did you give the gift." Because "whom" is the object of the verb "to give" and you would also say, "I gave the gift to him or her."

Now in your case, "Comcast will have the brains to cross-reference who are business clients." Because you could also say, "cross-reference [if] he/she is [a] business client" or, "cross-reference if they are business clients."

Bottom line is, when the question is who/whom, try replacing the who part with he, she, they. If the sentence works with that replacement, use "who."

Umm, actually no. In this case, you need the pronoun to agree with the subject-verb constructs "are business clients" and "whom are home users"

So, the correct word is indeed who, because you need the word to be the subject to are.

This is all true but it really depends who's style book you use. I have several here, New York Times, AP, etc.

Y'all dun screwed up da whole thang.

Whom did?

Err... that's who did.

Brilliant!!!

Oops just adjusted the tongue-in-cheek detector and reread the original post. Never mind.....

*brushes off his Sgt Oblivious nametag*

Sandvine forges a packet to cause a dropped connection? Sounds dangerously close to a Denial of Service attack to me.

I was wondering about the legality of forging a packet while still having a IP header with the originating users IP address as the sender of said packet. Further, this said packet informs the recipient that the sender wishes to terminate the conversation.

This clearly is a fraud.

Yes, and somehow I suspect that if a Comcast customer started forging packets to sabotage someone else's internet connection, it would be against Comcast's rules. Kinda hypocritical.

"Funchords continues to dissect Comcast's efforts, and has since come up with some solutions."

SOLUTIONS. Good one. Just like radar detectors are a "solution" to police trying to enforce the law.

You know, there ARE legitimate uses of BitTorrent.

as far as comcast is concerned, so what.

comcast and others are throttling bittorrent for two reasons:

1. they can get away with it because bittorrent has been so vilified by the content industry, that anyone that supports using bittorrent MUST be a pirate - this doesn't cause a big stink in the main stream media because they are battling pirates, not violating network neutrality; they also get away with it because there is so little competition in the U.S., pissed off customers have no other ISPs to go to

2. bittorrent uses bandwidth and by throttling one of the primary applications using that bandwidth they reduce bandwidth demands on their system

I suspect it has much more to do with oversold nodes than anything else.

"We're gonna give you 12Mbs down, but don't you DARE use it! You pay to HAVE the 12Mbs service, not actually download anything more than a webpage with it."

My sentiments exactly - I'm surprised some idiot didn't respond with "Show me in the TOS where it says 'Unlimited"..." - which is the usual stupid reply to the type of statement you are making. I could car less what's in a TOS - if I am paying for something, I want and expect to use every last bit of what I paid for. If Comcrap cannot provide my 8+mbps, and I have been using all of the bandwidth I am paying for, 24/7 for 500 years straight - I should not be penalized! It's Comcast that failed to be able to deliver (or just flat out lied about it) the service they sold to people, and it's COMCAST who should bite the bullet for it!

This happens in UK with British Telecom's DSL service - My elderly aunt couldn't understand why she kept loosing her connection - She was merely browsing and e-mail - Turns out the hardware just couldn't cope with the bandwidth demand in a small rural area - A few terse phone calls to BT explaining that the elderly lady had some very tech savvy family ready to turn it into an issue...

Yes, just like that. So?

Who said anything about impacting VPNs? Stop the FUD

Did you even READ the summary at the top of the page. In case you missed it, I'll highlight the key part:

quote:

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The question now becomes whether this evolves into a game of cat and mouse now familiar to subscribers of Canadian cable operator Rogers, who took traffic shaping to an entirely new level by using deep packet inspection to strangle all VPN and encrypted traffic in order to thwart such workarounds.

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I can still access all of my VPN's. The problem for me only seemed to be with SecureIX VPN services. I was never able to figure out if Rogers was causing the issue or if Secureix's vpn servers were down.

I have long given up on bit torrent now with Rogers. I have been hearing rumors that they have laxed their throttling nowadays tho.

It's more like the police sending all red cars on twenty-kilometer detours on remote streets. while letting the rest go on their way.

And if you ask why, they say, "There are too many cars on the roads. We have to reduce the number on the main roads. And our statistics show that red cars are more often driven by criminals than other colors, so this is the best way to manage the roads."

Then when someone points out that lots of innocent people drive red cars, and workers are kept away from jobs, and parents from children, and that policies affecting all cars equally would be a fairer way to reduce traffic jams - such arguments are denounced as attempted excuses for criminals.

I work at a job that requires me to be on call. I'm sure as heck not going to take the train or drive to the office at 3am on Saturday, so I VPN in from home. If Comcast starts blocking VPNs I will have to switch to Verizon DSL. Even though it is slower, I need to be able to connected to my VPN or I would have to go to the office at all hours of the night. If I worked out of my home and my work paid for the connection I would get a Comcast business line or a Verizon DSL line. However, for someone using it occasionally, I hope something like this doesn't happen. I can see limiting traffic to a particular speed, but purposely killing connections is just not acceptable.

No VPN issues... This is FUD

i was just using VPN a few days ago, so unless they just started blocking VPN in my area, no problems here.

I don't see how you can complain when you are using a RESIDENTIAL connection for BUSINESS purposes.

So, when you are using your home account, you do not check your business email. Is that right? Otherwise, you are using a residential account for business purposes.

Gimme a break. I'm not Comcast, but with AT&T, there's nothing in the TOS that says that I can't use my residential account to connect to my business with a VPN. As long as I don't violate the TOS, it shouldn't matter what I do online.

Everything I use my residential connection for is business, MY BUSINESS

Hear Hear!!
Where does it say your residental phone can't be used by you to call your business to say that you'll be late. As far as I'm concerned to only differential between business and residential service is the level of support you get. Obviously a business is perhaps more mission critical - Ooops - I messed up there - Did I say business is more important than the very necessary lifeline a phone provides to a sick person???
Anyway you get the point - If it says 24/7 then it had better be available 24/7...

I would ditch them as fast as customer sales would pick up the telephone.

I rely HEAVILY on VPN traffic when I'm away from my apartment. EVERY connection I initiate tunnels through my VPN. Just cause

take this issue to the same level as the "capping" issue.

And, by that ..I mean ...Let's have BBR just continually rip this company to shreds for taking steps to preserve the integrity of their network for those of us who do NOT abuse it.

Heck, why not just post the "solutions" for how people can even get around this and continue on with their ever loving ways of soaking up so much bandwidth that there's simply none left for the rest of us to use and enjoy.

Oh.Wait. That's exactly what this story now does.
Silly me for thinking that is what would come next.

Well, allow me this post to post my opposing view.
As a comcast customer.

Dear Comcast..
Keep right on doing whatever it is you're doing.
We love you for it.

Some of us are of the belief that you give us a tremendous amount of value for our money. And even believe that 300 gigs per month is still a WHOLE lot of data..and those who seek to use their connection more than that really should
a)cough up the money for a business class connection or
b) get a secondary line to split your use between the two services.

Ladies and Gents..Comcast does not owe us the world for 42.95 per month. Nor do they owe the abusers an unlimited license to take whatever it is they want..at whatever cost it is to comcast..in order to satisfy their own demands.

You see...the problem with that..is that SOMEONE is going to pay anyway..and who it will be will be YOU..and I..
those who do use our connections for very reasonable and then some...downloading and uploading.

Comcast is VERY fair when it comes to their limits..
and those limits are in place for the benefit of us all..not the detriment to us all.

Comcast should NOT be engaged in the business of allowing the kinds of copyright stealing abusers who exist out there to seed an entire p2p network. And, for this website..BBR..to post "solutions" and "workarounds" to that is really..just flat out wrong.

And, you elevate yourself to a much LOWER level..IMHO.

Listen. I'm not against people connecting to work..nor even using their connections..a LOT.
And Comcast does allow for that.
I'm always using my connection. It's my right arm...and it's always there to serve me..no problems..no questions asked.

What that tells me is that the people who ARE having problems are by far..exceeding EVERY reasonable boundary there is.

And quite frankly..for BBR to be aiding that kind of behavior..and worse yet..to be presenting Comcast in an unfavorable and negative light because of it..almost non stop these days..

Is really...

Just plain..

Flat out...

Wrong.

Thank you for allowing me my op Ed piece.

~Rick
Satisfied Comcast Customer

I have two homes (one summer home), both with Comcast basic tier. No issues at one, but at the summer home when I was trying to use bittorrent (to download some files that were in fact legally shared!), my net connection went down; I was not able to get it back up until I changed my router MAC address to clone my computer network card. I contact Comcast about this, they couldn't explain why it happened, and said that they do not block MAC addresses.

For the past two days, I've been calling into work using VPN from this address, and that has not been a problem. However, when using my company-provided VOIP my entire Internet connection simply drops and restarts occasionally.

Could these things I'm experiencing be related to this?

I'm against any network provider who would in any way tamper with my use of the internet. If I choose to use bit torrent to download something, who cares what it may be, then allow me to do so.
If I understand what Comcast is doing, a torrent is unable to be seeded once complete. Well gee the upload is always going to be lower than the download by several times, so what's the big deal here? a few users uploading at 384kbps or 768kbps I highly doubt will kill comcasts backbone. After all aren't they connected to their upstream providers at 1 gigabit a second symmetrical? I have a friend who backs up large files of 600MB or more to an online backup storage location. He'll often use his 384kbps upload speed for 1 day or two straight uploading these files. Now just how exactly is that different than using bit torrent? You're still using bandwidth, which you pay for, and if Comcast doesn't want you using bandwidth, why set speed caps on our modems at all then? Just open the pipe and cap users whenever they feel like it! This is the wrong way to do things IMHO.

Is this pretexting? Is comcast pretending to be someone else you intended to communate with? Interesting legal question, is it legal for Comcast to pretend to be someone else and send you information (i.e. an IP packet) from that person's address?

I mean, if I sent you a letter and signed someone elses name, wouldn't that be illegal? Is this the same thing?

A very interesting question. Network providers in the US typically have very limited rights to interfere with the content that users transmit/receive over the network. (Then again, that presumes the content is legal.... it could be argued that Bittorrent content has a default presumption of illegality.)

The Sandvine equipment sounds like direct manipulation of customer-transmitted information. Then again, I imagine that Sandvine's legal team analyzed this issue for some time before starting the company. Somehow or other it is probably legal in practice.

What may be happening is Comcast is feeling some pressure over the capping and is turning to this alternative. I don't know what percentage of Comcast bandwidth usage is due to bit torrent but interfering with bit torrent applications is a bad way to manage the bandwidth issues.

But its cheaper than actually spending money on upgrading your network!

Stinks like one

Oh please! You don't need to be a "Comcast employee" to think that customers should respect basic standards of consideration and good citizenship when using a public utility.

Comcast's cable internet service is a public utility?

Updating your World of Warcraft client using the built in Bit Torrent based updater is being inconsiderate and lacking in good citizenship?

business has a different type of account than normal end user

That's how they will learn.

Comcast preventing people from seeding is wrong. That is why these work arounds are being allowed on the site. At least that's what I think.

This has nothing to do with people downloading 300 gigs or for that matter even uploading 300 gigs. Comcast is preventing people from using their connection that they pay for. The issue isn't how much data is being transfered, it's the fact that comcast is flat out preventing people from sending ANY data outside their network. Thus saving comcast money, so the fat cats at the top can keep their fancy cars and big houses.

It's a simple matter of comcast being cheap and not wanting to improve their network.

I'm overjoyed I don't have those crooks as providers.

---

Said by sharingislegal@rogers.com...
I'm overjoyed I don't have those crooks as providers.

---

I was thinking the same thing about your provider!!!!

Why is Comcast in the spotlite? Every MSO I have ever worked for has Sandvines in place. How each chooses to shape or filter the traffic differs... but it's out there.

I do not work for Comcast, but I have/do work for other MSO's that employ Sandvine technology to limit and filter traffic.

Also... the "article" if you can call it that... states the Sandvine is somehow connected to the CMTS ??? Never seen that configuration. It's usually on 2 GigE ports on an HSD router... and routes are in place routing traffic from specific Vlans or scopes out one GigE interface to the Sandvine... then back into the router from the Sandvine and out the MSO's circuits.

At any rate... don't hammer Comcast for trying to keep the situation under control. At the rate which people are starting to P2P more and more... they would have to add so many new circuits to the backbone to support the added bandwidth that the customer could no longer afford the charges they would impose to cover the cost of said circuits.

I think some points go into Sandvine's column for coming up with a solution that has generally remained transparent to the user for as long as it has.Gee, thanks! This fact surprised me, too. Statements from Comcast employees initially alerted me to it, and later my testing showed it to be true.I've never worked for your industry, but everything I've read about how it is recommended to be deployed agrees with you. Comcast's implementation is different, however.

Part of the explanation, possibly, is that Comcast.net alone, is a very vast network -- and one that has been consuming other networks at a regular rate. Comcast's internal congestion problems and topology realities may vastly overshadow those of most of Sandvine's customers. The conventional wisdom may be different.

But one of the reasons that Comcast is getting a lot of attention is that their implementation seems broken -- and we can't get it fixed because they entirely deny it exists!!I hope you really did read my articles. I've tried to see it evenhandedly, and I've strived to both be factual and to differentiate between objective fact and subjective opinion.

It's been suggested by more than one person intimately familiar with the technology that it sounds like Comcast's implementation is both inconsistent and broken. I have no way to prove that -- all I can do is report what happens when I try to do something and it doesn't work out as expected.

I just read all of the above comments so let me add mine to the bottom of the long list here.

As far as a large amount of bandwidth being used.

The very first month I had Comcast I received an excessive bandwidth notice. How much did I use you wonder? 300GB? 500GB? Not even close. I only used 45GB. That's total, up and down.
I politely responded to the letter inquiring as to the cap also including a copy of my invoice when I signed up (this was my first month with them remember). Clearly written on the invoice is "Unlimited Bandwidth".
They couldn't be bothered to respond to my request so I couldn't be bothered to curb my usage as I didn't consider a mere 45GB to be excessive.
Five more months have gone by. I have used more than 45GB each of those months, never exceeding 100GB during any of them though. I have not received another excessive bandwidth notice to date.
My point here being excessive usage is not always the issue.

As far as the BitTorrent (BT) network.

This is where it gets complicated and frustrating for me. I signed up with the 8/768 tier-2 plan in order to have a faster upload speed because I use the BT network.
I am a photographer and use the BT network to help distribute my work.
The solution of slowing the download speed so the torrent finishes at about the time you have shared the entire copy does not work when you are the initial uploader of the torrent.
I am the creator and owner of the files that I share and Comcast is denying me the right and ability to share these files over the network of my choice. It is almost impossible to seed a torrent that I create anymore. The latest example being that even after more than two entire days of seeding I had not uploaded more than 20MB of data. With the tier-2 plan 20MB should have been uploaded in a matter of mere minutes.
If Comcast is concerned with bandwidth hogs then the proper thing to do would be to identify these individuals and rectify the problem on a per-user basis. But they are not doing it like that.
By blanketing the entire BT network with the Sandvine Technology they are also blocking the legal uses of the technology and that should be a suable offense against them. I am paying them $75/month for their bandwidth, but they are deciding where I can and cannot upload files that I am the legal owner of. That should be illegal if it is not.

Yes I am now looking into other options in my area, but there is only one and it is only about half as fast. Yet when you consider Comcast ups at 0KB/s, even half as fast would be better.

Something definitely needs to be done though. When an ISP has the power to decide for their customers where they can and cannot share files they are the owners of it has gone too far. They need to provide the bandwidth, with concrete caps if necessary, and not interfere in any other way.

Simply put, Comcast is an awful cable company. I am shocked that so many people tolerate their draconian policies and actually go so far as to defend them. About 3 months ago, I moved from a location that was serviced by Cox to a location now served by Comcast. The difference in how the two companies are run is simply amazing. Cox doesn't have any invisible download caps, nor do they throttle bittorrent traffic because they had the foresight to build a good enough infrastructure from the beginning. They also were awesome with their business services. My old company in my old city had just recently gotten hooked up to a Cox 22mbps local fiber line to connect us with a remote office about 20 miles away across a river. It was previously served by a crappy old T1 line, which made copying files over the network a nightmare. However, that new fiber line gave us something that approximated lAN speeds and a latency below 3 ms....it kicked ass, and so did Cox.

The reality is that most people serviced by Comcast likely don't know what other Cable ISPs are like and have somehow convinced themselves that Comcast is like all the others. Sorry, but nope! I laugh my ass off whenever I see people (who don't know any better) defending these ridiculous measures as "neccessary". As if that weren't enough, you have people who are stupid enough to go so far as to applaud these measures.

I am not going to worry about any download caps, and I will do everything in my power to get around their stupid bittorrent throtlling. If Comcast wants to send me a nastygram, I will cancel my service and take my business to Qwest. In the meantime, I will derive great pleasure from the fact that somewhere, the people defending Comcast will be pissing their pants over the fact that people like me are circumventing these draconian measures.

Comcast needs to stop messing with my TCP packets. That is all.

I am already searching for an alternative provider. This degradation is service is unacceptable, and that they're lying about doing it to boot just makes it worse.

Additionally, IMHO, "Rick" sounds entirely too much like a Comcast shill.

When the cable companies throttle, it proves to me the technology wasn't designed for: broadband.

Read my old/recent blurb on it...
»Killer App Will Kill the Cable Modem?