Comcast Cable and P2P problems?

[StatFreak]

I'm not sure what cable ISP you're using but Comcast will snatch your ass right off the internet if they think you're P2P'ing, they lost a lawsuit so they're doing what they can to piss everyone off.

Could you elaborate?   Enquiring readers want to know!

[Brianzz]

Here's the first initial report - including the lies in the last paragraph from Comcast...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080220-disgruntled-customer-sues-comcast-over-p2p-throttling.html

Then Comcast gets bitched slapped with a nationwide class action lawsuit....

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2008/02/28/class-action-lawsuit-filed-against-comcast/

Comcast lost the civil lawsuits.. then ran to the FCC only to get curb-stomped by them too...

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10004508-38.html


And here's comcast's retaliation... Mind the last paragraph again, no complaints 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080919-comcast-loses-p2p-religion-goes-agnostic-on-throttling.html

And the so-called final chapter of it.. more lies from Comcast...

http://www.p2pon.com/2009/01/09/comcast-we-will-no-longer-block-file-sharing/

[stayouttadabunker]

What, for example, are "peer 2 peer" sites?

Websites like Ares perhaps?( a music sharing site)  sort of like the old "Winamp"?

Or like "youtube"?

[StatFreak]

Thanks Brianzz for the details. K+ 

[Brianzz]

There's really no way to know if an internet user is peer to peer sharing, which is using a program that makes your files available to other internet users to download directly from you, for all ISP's know everyone is like me with 20 or 30 tabs open to all kinds of websites.

[rickhunter]

If you are the ISP, there's always a way to know what you are doing.  All I have to do is capture some of your packets (since they are flowing through the ISP's network) and analyze them.  It doesn't take much to see if you are running a p2p program.  I used to do this all the time in our old coprporate network as it got out of hand at one point.  Now all this work is done automatically through a monitor system.

I think most ISP's nowadays just throttle the connections to bug the p2p and torrent users.

[jay]

Thats not entirely true.
I can't quite remember who quoted "When you rule all all that is possible what you are left with.....
Some of the traffic management schemes work on this principal.....
Just the act of intercepting and managing protocols takes a lot of CPU power and indroduces latency so the less that they have to manage the better.

First they would have different types of accounts, the ones they are concerned about are consumers as they pay the 29.95 type rates for all that you can eat. They are quite happy when business accounts use a lot of traffic as they are charged more on a pay for what you use basis. This is also why most consumer accounts are unbalanced. Ie 3mb down, 768k up and why ADSL is a popular medium.

As such most consumer traffic would be downloaded to the user and not up. For instance you type www.yahoo.com - this is less than a 64k packet, and then your response is a puke of about 850k of graphics and content.  Google being less graphic intensive is still about 300k. So you can see the ratio. You typically download music, video, etc.  Its rare that you upload this stuff, unless you are sharing.  Occasionally you may upload a large file, but the traffic is not sustained and on a 3 day moving average is not statistically relevant.

As an ISP the first acid test is simply a threashold of how much you are uploading. In percentages most users who just surf would be under 20% of available bandwidth so if they set this to 50% then it cuts down on the number of sessions "managed"

Next they would identify which TCP sockets are in use. Standard ones like 80:80 and 10:80 would be ingored providing that the session has ack packets. One of the characteristics of "streaming" or "multi-casting" is that the traffic is sent UDP without ACKs. So if you were running your own video channel ..... this would identify you.

So having 20 windows open might keep 20 "sessions" with 10second keep alives but its not going to generate a lot of traffic, and if you were doing 20 downloads from 20 web sites they could identify this as Port 25 (FTP) and give this a lower priority bit.
HTTP (port 80) is sometimes used for downloads too but is less efficent so its usually not as widely targeted.

[jdkmunch]

If they look for high upload rates I would be in trouble -  I am always connected via VPN to work and always have several RDC sessions open.  Also I have a sling box.  So when I'm at work I have Fox Business Network streaming.      I would say I push at least several gigs a day up and down. 

As an ISP the first acid test is simply a threashold of how much you are uploading. In percentages most users who just surf would be under 20% of available bandwidth so if they set this to 50% then it cuts down on the number of sessions "managed"

Next they would identify which TCP sockets are in use. Standard ones like 80:80 and 10:80 would be ingored providing that the session has ack packets. One of the characteristics of "streaming" or "multi-casting" is that the traffic is sent UDP without ACKs. So if you were running your own video channel ..... this would identify you.

I've never heard a peep from my ISP.