Cable company cuts heavy internet users

[zenkidori]

I like how you think you know stuff.

"harder" doesn't mean "can't be done".

[nomix]

Actually, to quite a lot of people, it does.

[zenkidori]

I stand corrected.

[Tobias]

Originally Posted by zenkidori

I like how you think you know stuff.

"harder" doesn't mean "can't be done".

Good luck with that, hot shot.

[jeffy777]

I just had a really strange automated call where they said I had to call a number to discuss an important problem with my cable internet. I thought, oh great it's Comcast complaining about my excessive downloads! So I called it and it was just Charter trying to get me to switch over It didn't sound like a telemarketing ad at all, and I never get telemarketers on my cell, so I don't know how they got my number. Jerks.

[zenkidori]

wow that's a really douche move. are you on the do not call list? either you can sue or report them for that.

[otispunkmeyer]

were on virgin (formerly NTL)

NTL never had a download limit on their 2 and 4mb services but i think they did have one on the 10mb service which was 75gb a month. quite a lot IMO.

now virgin have take over, there are limits on all services, but all that happens is your connection is halved basically during the night and by the next day tis running full speed again so i really dont see why they bother.

guess its to stop people bombing the line over night.

at uni in my previous house we were on Tiscali, after 2 months they sent us a letter sayin that because we are high traffic users or whatever, that we'd be getting bunched on the exchange with all the other high usage users....which for ADSL effectively means your internet will go slow because theres sooo many people on it. i presume this means all the light usage people were left on a fairly uncrowded system so that their internet was fast and snappy at all times.

my problem wit this is the internet never even worked for the first month and a half and when it did finally work it was pitifully slow. my house mates didnt even know about how to use torrents or anything so i guess tiscali's bandwidth cap was only a few Mb. fuckers.

[Koenig]

http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-thro...ng-impossible/

Over the past weeks more and more Comcast users started to notice that their BitTorrent transfers were cut off. Most users report a significant decrease in download speeds, and even worse, they are unable to seed their downloads. A nightmare for people who want to keep up a positive ratio at private trackers and for the speed of BitTorrent transfers in general.

ISPs have been throttling BitTorrent traffic for almost two years now. Most ISPs simply limit the available bandwidth for BitTorrent traffic, but Comcast takes it one step further, and prevents their customers from seeding. And Comcast is not alone in this, Canadian ISPs Cogeco and Rogers use similar methods on a smaller scale.

Unfortunately, these more aggressive throttling methods can’t be circumvented by simply enabling encryption in your BitTorrent client. It is reported that Comcast is using an application from Sandvine to throttle BitTorrent traffic. Sandvine breaks every (seed) connection with new peers after a few seconds if it’s not a Comcast user. This makes it virtually impossible to seed a file, especially in small swarms without any Comcast users. Some users report that they can still connect to a few peers, but most of the Comcast customers see a significant drop in their upload speed.

The throttling works like this: A few seconds after you connect to someone in the swarm the Sandvine application sends a peer reset message (RST flag) and the upload immediately stops. Most vulnerable are users in a relatively small swarm where you only have a couple of peers you can upload the file to. Only seeding seems to be prevented, most users are able to upload to others while the download is still going, but once the download is finished, the upload speed drops to 0. Some users also report a significant drop in their download speeds, but this seems to be less widespread. Worse on private trackers, likely that this is because of the smaller swarm size

Although BitTorrent protocol encryption seems to work against most forms of traffic shaping, it doesn’t help in this specific case. Setting up a secure connection through VPN or over SSH seems to be the only solution. More info about how to setup BitTorrent over SSH can be found here.

Last year we had a discussion whether traffic shaping is good or bad, and ISPs made it pretty clear that they do not like P2P applications like BitTorrent. One of the ISPs that joined our discussions said: “The fact is, P2P is (from my point of view) a plague - a cancer, that will consume all the bandwidth that I can provide. It’s an insatiable appetite.”, and another one stated: “P2P applications can cripple a network, they’re like leaches. Just because you pay 49.99 for a 1.5-3.0mbps connection doesn’t mean your entitled to use whatever protocols you wish on your ISP’s network without them provisioning it to make the network experience good for all users involved.”

Customers on the other hand like to fully use their connection, and don’t agree that traffic shaping is the correct solution. One reader commented: “If you pay for an internet connection, that’s what you should get from your ISP — an internet connection. Not a connection that will let you browse the web and check email, but little else. If an ISP has issues with the amount of data a customer is transferring, then the ISP needs to address that issue with that customer, and not restrict every user in one class of traffic.”

I guess this battle will go on for a while and I would advise Comcast users to try setting up a VPN connection to get around the traffic shaping, other users who find out that they are throttles might try BitTorrent encryption first, that seems to work quite well in most cases.

Damn, this sucks balls.

[Firecat]

I just read that, it does suck. So far I haven't noticed any differences yet.

[Blind_Io]

Just because you pay 49.99 for a 1.5-3.0mbps connection doesn’t mean your entitled to use whatever protocols you wish on your ISP’s network without them provisioning it to make the network experience good for all users involved.

Yeah, how DARE you use the bandwidth you paid for - you dirty, greedy little customers!

I switched off Comcast last year because I had problems with the cables in my building. Now I'm glad I'm on DSL.

[jeffy777]

Well, I'm still having no problems on Comcast. Guess I'm one of the lucky ones.

[chaos386]

Originally Posted by Blind_Io

Yeah, how DARE you use the bandwidth you paid for - you dirty, greedy little customers!

I switched off Comcast last year because I had problems with the cables in my building. Now I'm glad I'm on DSL.

You're not renting the line (as opposed to something like a T1 or other commercial connections), so you're not entitled to use it at full capacity 24/7. I mean, come on, it's common sense.

ISPs have a fixed amount of bandwidth, which, if divided evenly over all their customers, would be much less than what they advertise (probably 512k instead of 6M). However, if they limited everyone's connection to 512k, the network would have tons of wasted capacity, since most people don't use their connections 24/7. In order to better use their available bandwidth, they give customers more bandwidth to play with, hoping that the average use will still stay around 512k. If you abuse this and keep your connection at 100% saturation constantly, you're hogging the lines and leaving less bandwidth available for everyone else (from what I hear, this is a bigger problem for cable, since the bandwidth is shared at the node, meaning a neighborhood will share a connection to the ISP, and one person hogging it all the time can slow down the connection for everyone else in that neighborhood).

I had the 6Mbit service from Comcast for two months this last summer while I was in the US. I used bittorrent quite a bit (leeching and seeding), and never had a problem. My downloads were never throttled, and I never got a nasty letter or had my service cut off. I wasn't exactly a light user, either: I estimate I was downloading 50-100GB per month, and I was constantly seeding at 40 KB/s. I wasn't an asshole about it though, and I would limit the uploads myself to around 20 KB/s during the day.

I have a feeling the people who've had their accounts canceled were of the "me first, you never" mentality.

[cvrefugee]

Originally Posted by chaos386

You're not renting the line (as opposed to something like a T1 or other commercial connections), so you're not entitled to use it at full capacity 24/7. I mean, come on, it's common sense.

Originally Posted by chaos386

I had the 6Mbit service from Comcast for two months this last summer while I was in the US. I used bittorrent quite a bit (leeching and seeding), and never had a problem. My downloads were never throttled, and I never got a nasty letter or had my service cut off. I wasn't exactly a light user, either: I estimate I was downloading 50-100GB per month, and I was constantly seeding at 40 KB/s. I wasn't an asshole about it though, and I would limit the uploads myself to around 20 KB/s during the day.

You are a piece of work, aren't you? You're making assumptions about Blind_Io while completing contradicting yourself in the same post...practice what you preach much?

[Blind_Io]

If I'm not allowed to use the service I paid for, then they need to tell me the limitations up front. It would be like a cell phone company saying you get unlimited minutes but then cutting all peak-time conversations off once you hit 5 minutes.
"But, you said I had unlimited minutes"
"Yeah, but you can't use them all at once."
If I paid for a line with a certain connection, I should be able to use it to the limit of what I purchased. Comcast took a gamble on how much people actually use their bandwidth and some people fell towards the tail ends of the distribution. I'll stop complaining when they give refunds to people who never use their connection, until then they are just a bunch of greedy corporate assholes.

[chaos386]

Originally Posted by cvg

You are a piece of work, aren't you? You're making assumptions about Blind_Io while completing contradicting yourself in the same post...practice what you preach much?

Let me boil it down for you:

1. You can download and upload quite a bit without ever getting an issue.
2. This doesn't mean you get a free pass to use the connection however you like. If you completely whore your connection out, your ISP is obviously not going to like that, and if you get a warning, ignore it, and then have your connection canceled, well, you should have seen it coming.

Originally Posted by Blind_Io

If I'm not allowed to use the service I paid for, then they need to tell me the limitations up front. It would be like a cell phone company saying you get unlimited minutes but then cutting all peak-time conversations off once you hit 5 minutes.
"But, you said I had unlimited minutes"
"Yeah, but you can't use them all at once."
If I paid for a line with a certain connection, I should be able to use it to the limit of what I purchased. Comcast took a gamble on how much people actually use their bandwidth and some people fell towards the tail ends of the distribution. I'll stop complaining when they give refunds to people who never use their connection, until then they are just a bunch of greedy corporate assholes.

I'll agree that they're not being completely honest about it, since their advertising would make you believe you can download eternal happiness and rainbows at lightning speeds, but they do mention "fair use" deep inside that massive EULA they make you agree to.

[Blind_Io]

Let me boil it down equally for you.

I paid for a connection with a given bandwidth that is always connected to my computer
Comcast didn't say anything about which ones and zeros were good and which ones were bad.
Comcast never said anything about when I can use my 24/7 connection and when I can't.
Now Comcast is imposing limits on consumers for actually getting their money's worth by using the service they purchased to it's fullest extent.

What if Comcast decided that streaming radio or video was the next biggest user of bandwidth and cut off service to anyone who used it? I'm paying for a service that allows me to download at speed X and upload at speed Y. If Comcast can't deliver that service then they are guilty of a bait-and-switch, plain and simple and they need to come clean with what they can actually deliver.

[chaos386]

Originally Posted by Blind_Io

Now Comcast is imposing limits on consumers for actually getting their money's worth by using the service they purchased to it's fullest extent.

A T1 line costs about $500 per month, for 1.544 Mbps.
6 Mbps Cable is about $40 per month.

Now tell me, do you honestly think you'd be able to use the latter as if it were the former?

[cvrefugee]

It's the inherent weakness of cable that causes strain on their infrastructure. That's why I think DSL is superior, as long as you live close enough to a CO or RT.

[tigger]

Originally Posted by chaos386

Now tell me, do you honestly think you'd be able to use the latter as if it were the former?

That's irrelevant. If you can't use the connection to it's fullest when they advertise that you can they need to change their advertising. Or if they're going to penalize heavy users, maybe light users shouldn't pay so much. But I would venture to guess that making users pay for the exact amount of bandwith they use wouldn't make them nearly as much money.