Comcast blames BitTorrent for its woes
p2pnet news | P2P:- Comcast is blaming BitTorrent for its troubles.
“In an 80-page filing with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday, Comcast gave its most detailed explanation of how it manages Internet traffic on its service, naming BitTorrent as prime culprit, but again denied it blocks content, applications or discriminates among providers,” says Reuters.
“Comcast continues to issue incomplete and misleading statements about their practices and their impact on its customers,” said the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) last November.
It’s, “discriminating among different kinds of Internet traffic based on the protocols being used by its customers,” said the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann.
“When confronted, Comcast has been evasive and misleading in its responses, so we decided to start gathering the facts ourselves.”
The result?
“Comcast is forging TCP RST packets which cause connections to drop (a technique also used by Internet censorship systems in China),” stated foundation tech expert Seth Schoen, adding:
“These packets cause software at both ends to believe, mistakenly, that the software on the other side doesn’t want to continue communicating.”
Now, Comcast says network management is essential, “to avoid congestion and impairment of some applications such as online video sites Joost and Veoh,” states Reuters, continuing:.
“Net neutrality is the principle of allowing all content that flows over an ISP’s network to be treated equally, without any preference. Although it is not law, it is supported by a wide range of pressure groups and businesses concerned that ISPs will start charging to prioritize the delivery of users’ content. Though Comcast reiterated it does not give preferential treatment to any content it argued that Web traffic needs to be managed to provide the best service for its customers.
“Simply stated, there is nothing ‘neutral’ about a network that is not managed,” the story has Comcast saying in the filing, with BitTorrent users blamed for, “causing network congestion”.
Comcast, “said its network management practices manage traffic in a method similar to a traffic ramp control light on a freeway during rush hour,” states the story, adding
“Last month Time Warner Cable Inc, which has more 7.5 million Internet customers, said it is planning a trial to bill high-speed Internet subscribers based on their amount of usage rather than a flat fee, the standard industry practice.”
Also See:
Reuters – Comcast defends Web traffic methods with U.S. regulators, February 13, 2008
incomplete and misleading – EFF report on Comcast packet-forging, November 28, 2007
cause connections to drop – FCC grills Comcast over file share claims, January 9th, 2008
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February 13th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Comcast is a bunch of liers! I hate this company and I can not wait to be able to switch to another company.
If I lose patience I will go back to dial-up! Yes it will be slow but at least I will not be limited to where I can go on the net!
February 13th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
IMHO… North American ISPs provide the narrowest “broadband” connections to the net of any developed nation. They have routinely invested inadequate resources into “last mile” network bandwidth. They are simply attempting to point a finger at anything other than their own obsolete infrastructure. Comcast (along with the rest of the US cable industry) has been charging it’s customer base ridiculously high prices and pocketing the steep profits rather than reinvesting in networks that are capable of supporting the bandwidth demands they now face. As internet video content becomes the norm they are now looking at stop-gap ways to prop up an ineffectual already failing network. Bittorrent is just a convenient fall guy for the moment. ALL Bittorent traffic could go away right now and they would still FAIL in the foreseeable future unless significant widespread improvements are made to their systems. And it’s not happening…
February 13th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
You know if they just made HD DVD’s reasonably priced, like $8 and put it in a reasonably priced gaming console like the Wii, there would be so much less torrent traffic. In fact now that HD DVD is on it’s last legs, and the RIAA studios have all ditched the format, maybe Toshiba will finally give Nintendo a reasonably priced license to use HD drives in their console. And Nintendo needs a hi def drive in some form or another for their next generation Wii.