Comcast 'Delaying' Not 'Blocking' Traffic

So for the sake of speeding up the network they're slowing it down? Yeah, that sounds like the typical Comcast oxymoron.

Bull$hit bingo that is... I had to get out my hip waders for this one.

A poster on Slashdot put it rather succinctly when he posted: "I compare it to paying a gym membership, heading towards the treadmill only to be stopped by a trainer and told there is someone on it already. You look, see no one is on it, ask again and are allowed to use it. Sometimes the trainer comes over and tells you that you have to get off for someone else. Every time you get off, no one else gets on. So you have to restart your workout whenever the trainer asks."

He got modded +5 so shut your trap.

both want to go through at the same time, but the packet wearing the Pirate Bay t-shirt isn't allowed in while the other packet is.

that packet has just been blocked.

Sounds like good policy to me.

LoL PR at its best here folks. lol

If you "delay" a packet beyond it's TTL, then it's the same as blocking it, not to mention totally rapes TCP, thus actually making traffic go SLOWER (remember, TCP is VERY easily congested).

Anyway, that's just blatantly wrong.

Is that why you keep changing your name?

I know, don't feed the trolls... but i can't help it

considering the internet is a marketplace, it sounds like it is anticompetitive measure that is blocking smaller outfits to distribute unless they go through the channels of distribution controlled by the incumbents. There is something very unAmerican about that.

T-Shirt anyone?

Either way a spud's a spud, and no matter how CC slices and dices their explanation, the net effect is the same.

not feeding, just responding. might be why the name changed - hard for the BS to take root when someone comes along and cleans it up.

comcast's problem is they don't care about their customers and treat 'em like mushrooms - you know the saying.

Why would we not consider Comcast's latest "explanation" as just another lie? Their first inclination in all matters of their discovered shenanigans is to lie.

And Comcast wonders why people hate them so much.

Good comparison, but since when do /. mod-ups really mean much of anything anyway.



K.

is that offical or unoffical statement of comcast?

Isn't this going to be fairly easy to circumvent?

Using some sort of encrypted tunneling?
Multiple virtual circuits?
Rapid re-connect / switching to alternate virtual circuit?

File sharing is expressly prohibited through their AUP, but they're only delaying packets instead of blocking them? Sounds like they're too timid to enforce their AUP and the ensuing negative PR that would generate.

B.B..B.but they're the BMW of the internet. The "premium" product.

Just don't try and take that shinny beemer through "Checkpoint Comcast" or the network Stasi will snag you and send your packet to the digital gulag.

BBR's persistence in presenting this issue in a negative light is disturbing.

A company does not have to tell all about how they police their network from abuse. But yet, you somehow feel that "honesty" is the best policy in this case because "mom said so".

Well, I doubt that Mom encourages her little darlings to steal and trade copyrighted material.
And folks, raise your hands if you REALLY believe that that isn't what 99.9999% of bit torrent is really all about.

BBR says this.
"So is using hardware to send forged TCP packets with the RST (reset) flag set blocking or delaying? Does it matter? "

Of course it matters. There is a world of difference between blocking someone from doing something..and shaping and managing the way it impacts your company and customers.
I mean if that's not the case, why have lines at movie theaters? Everyone should just be able to jump over the counter and print out their own tickets and let it be a free for all.

The vast majority of people using these bit torrent services are not only breaking the law, but they're also the ones consuming the massive amounts of bandwidth that cause the rest of us problems. But it's important to remember that even given this..comcast is not cutting them off. Not blocking their access. They're managing it to keep the service viable and a good one for the rest of us.

Again, it's rather disturbing to see BBR continually present this issue as Comcast doing something wrong..in favor of the very small percentage of people who abuse this and other networks.

Network neutrality is not the issue here. The issue is flagrant abuse of isp's networks. And their right to control it.

Network neutrality does not have to say Comcast or any isp has to give someone 400 gigs a month of access for 42.95/month.
That is unreasonable..and damaging to the rest of us who want to use the service either modestly or, even heavily for that matter.

That kind of flow of data surpasses anything and everything reasonable. And it's coming from the bit torrent users.
If these people don't want these issues..they should divide up their services among ISP's..or buy their own T1 or more lines to the internet.

That is not what a residential service should be all about.

In closing, I'll say that I really think that BBR should get on the side of what's right here..and stop presenting comcast and others in the negative light you are.

You risk becoming much less as a website I think..something along the lines of a renegade website here to promote pirate bay or something.

I've always viewed BBR as being mainstream..but on the cutting edge of technology. Not out to rip companies for protecting and preserving the rights of we users.

Comcast is not wrong with what they're doing.

Not at all.

and just a quick question,

Do you think a sandvine box is free? If not how much do you think it costs to buy them for a entire network?

My objections to this technology are mostly around the cost of implementation vs. upgrading the network.

If i were management i would shortlist the most congested nodes on the network and see how many we could upgrade for the same money as the sandvine boxes.

two ways to look at it:

1. so called illegal file sharing sucking up bandwidth gets blocked, freeing up "legal" activities for customers.

2. the "legal" activities of today are tomorrow's "illegal" activities. for example, posting on messageboards. sorry, you've reached your keystroke limit for this billing cycle...you're blocked.

be careful as what you preach as moral today might be immoral tomorrow.

Everytime I try to download the latest linux distro release via bittorrent my connection drops. The modem will show as being online, but I won't be able to access the web.
I have Comcast.

But that isn't what happens. No one knows which packets will be blocked. It could be the packet destined to a linux distro, or to download a new patch for a game. So in that sense they are being neutral as they will block/delay any P2P packets.

I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a bit.

I do not mind they delaying mass downloads if that means when I want web pages to work they will not timeout because of a network congestion issue.

I know firsthand how bad bittorrent can be for an ISP who is trying to provide customers with a consistent service level. It throws all your bandwidth predictions out the window because every time you upgrade that 10% that causes the problem just sucks the upgrade right up with it.

There really needs to be some honest discussions between users and service providers as to what an acceptable method of dealing with bandwidth hogs.

One issue is the lack of a good point to multi-point distribution model that does not destroy network resources. It's now the upload that's the problem it's the download. Even if they were to put caching bittorrent servers on a cablecompany's head ends there's still the issue that the torrent application would suck down a good chunk of the bandwidth. On a dedicated medium such a DSL that would eliminate a huge bandwidth issue.

I think that's part of the reason the bad guys right now are the cable companies because their model for broadband delivery has the big flaw of not being able to provide dedicated bandwidth per customer in the same way a DSL/Fiber connection is capable of.

WISP/WiMax will also suffer this problem and even EVDO has an issue where the cell tower and the radio link are the choke points in the network.

Customers shouldn't have to resort to such workarounds. Bittorrent is a legitimate protocol and people should be able to use it without interference.

The talk about bandwidth is an irrelevant pretext. An ISP can limit amount of traffic per user without discriminating against certain types of traffic.

If the only broadband option in an area is ISPs that systematically sabotage customers' connections, then we need laws to prohibit this abuse.

Here's where you are somewhat wrong. If they upgrade the network, that 10% are still stuck using the same speeds they are already maxing out. There's nothing more for them to suck up yet there is now additional bandwidth for the other 90% to take advantage of.

And who's really to blame here? They keep jacking the speeds. People will use those speeds. Where's the bandwidth to compensate? They keep adding customers. Where's the bandwidth to compensate? Don't blame the users for their own short-sightedness.

You're not Comcast management. But you're welcome to send a resume to Comcast with your ideas and maybe they'll want to hire you.

You can also buy a bunch of their stock and get on the board of directors, and change things that way.

Your real objection is that you aren't getting your own way.

While I agree BBR often vilifies Comcast in favor of abusers, this is not one of those cases. Enough users have been adversely affected by this to cause a major news outlet, the AP, to test for this. Not everyone, maybe not even most users of BitTorrent. A major Linux distribution, Ubuntu, just release a new version (7.10, Gutsy Gibbon) a Linux distribution heavily rely on BitTorrent.

Furthermore, I have technical reservation with what Comcast is doing, TCP is intended to be a network-friendly protocol; there are other packet games Comcast could play to make this more subtle and less customer affected, but by playing RST games this can only lead to "arms race" by switching to UDP, which this trick doesn't work on. And nobody ever wins an arms race.

Comcast has done some questionable things, but this particular measure is ill-conceived. While the majority of Cocmast subscribers have probably never heard of BitTorrent (although they may use WoW which uses it). a significant minority does. Comcast equivocation on this issue is reprehensible. The public has already figured out what going on ANYWAY, its time for Comcast to come clean and stop the equivocation. Heck, we impeached a President over this kind of equivocation.

As I said earlier - this time, its not just a case of pirates vilifying Comcast. Many legitimate users are being affected. Sure, maybe it minority, but a large minority, many orders of magnitude of those who hit invisible quotas. Comcast has been honest with its subscribers in the past (the invisa-quota thing is controversial but its not like these subscribers weren't warned. The KNEW they had it coming).

They don't look at which BT tracker the customer is using, only whether the packets are BT.

So it's more like, commuters are in line to get on the train, and Comcast is checking tickets at the gate, and they have an idea that people with brown skin ride the train too much, so they make them walk around the building a hundred times before they can get on, while the pale-skin commuters can go right through.

Here's how I see it.
Comcast..is a chinese buffet.
All you can eat for 7.99.

There's a line of 50 of us at lunch.

4 or them weigh 800 lbs and will consume 40% of the whole table leaving a whole lot less for the other 46 of us.

You say that Comcast should feed them what they want.

I say they should eat less or divide up their meals with some other establishment.

Comcast does not owe them that much food for 7.99 and is not here to accomodate them.

Their use is impacting all the rest of us.

They are the ones who need to make other arrangments...
Comcast needs to keep doing what they're doing.
Stopping them from taking all the food because it hurts the rest of us.

Comcast should not have to put more food out on the table to feed those 4..for that same price.

Damn..now I'm hungry.
Time for an early lunch.

With the amount of data needs growing, adding more bandwidth would only delay the issue at hand. Bittorrent takes as much as it can get. I have seen school T3 and above networks go to a crawl by just 20-30 users on it with file sharing software and sharing gigs of data. Even if you add more bandwidth, the problem won't go away because P2P isn't going away anytime soon.