Comcast Continues to Block Peer to Peer Traffic 283
Posted
by
Zonk
from the seems-to-have-a-hyperinflated-sense-of-self dept.
from the seems-to-have-a-hyperinflated-sense-of-self dept.
narramissic writes "A report released Thursday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) finds that Comcast continues to use hacker-like techniques to slow down customers' connections to some P-to-P (peer-to-peer) applications. The EFF said that Comcast appears to be injecting RST, or reset, packets into customers' connections, causing connections to close. 'The investigators say that their tests confirmed an earlier one conducted by the Associated Press that showed that Comcast is interfering with BitTorrent traffic. BitTorrent is a protocol used to efficiently distribute the online transmission of large files, and some entertainment companies have partnered with its creators to distribute its content online. Comcast has said that it doesn't block BitTorrent, or any kind of content.'" If you're the type that always looks for a silver lining, Comcast's skulduggery may be pushing Congress to reconsider Net Neutrality.
Straight from thier lawyers mouths (Score:5, Informative)
-- begin bunch of shit ---
Thank you for contacting Comcast Cable Mark.
Thank you for writing to us in response to reports about Comcast's
efforts to manage peer-to-peer traffic on our networks.
Mark, we have posted new FAQs on our Web site making clear to our
customers the steps we are taking to protect the customer experience for
all of our customers. You may access content related to this issue in
the FAQ section of http://www.comcast.net/ [comcast.net]
First, and most importantly, you should know that Comcast does not block
access to any Web site or application, including peer-to-peer services
like BitTorrent. Our customers use the Internet for downloading and
uploading files, watching movies and videos, streaming music, sharing
digital photos, accessing numerous peer-to-peer sites, VOIP applications
like Vonage, and thousands of other applications online.
Mark, we have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a
good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage
our network so that you can continue to enjoy these applications.
Peer-to-peer activity consumes a disproportionately large amount of
network resources, and therefore poses the biggest challenge to
maintaining a good broadband experience for all users, including the
overwhelming majority of our customers who don't use P2P applications.
It is important to note, however, that we never prevent P2P activity, or
block access to any P2P applications, but rather manage the network in
such a way that this activity does not degrade the broadband experience
for other users.
Mark, network management is absolutely essential to provide a good
Internet experience for our customers. All major ISPs manage their
traffic in some way and many use similar tools.
Comcast believes we have a responsibility to our customers to provide
this service. Network management helps us perform critical work that
protects our customers from things like spam, viruses, the negative
effects of network congestion, or attacks to their PCs. As threats on
the Internet continue to grow, our network management tools will
continue to evolve and keep pace so that we can maintain a good,
reliable online experience for all of our customers.
I understand you have some questions about Comcast's policies. You can
view all of the Comcast Subscriber Agreements and Policies by visiting
the Comcast Online Customer Support Center at http://www.comcast.net/terms/subscriber.jsp [comcast.net]
On this site you will find the Subscriber Agreement, the Acceptable Use
Policy, and other policies relating to your Comcast Service. You can
also view our Privacy Policy Statement at http://www.comcast.net/privacy/index.jsp [comcast.net]
Links to the Privacy Statement and Terms of Service are located at the
bottom of every page at www.comcast.
-- end bunch of shit --
Encrypt your P2P traffic! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Silver lining? (Score:4, Informative)
Net neutrality was the rule of the land until just recently.
It is not something new, it is a return to the way it was only a few years ago.
In 2005 the SCOTUS ruled [wikipedia.org] that broadband internet was an "information service," and not a "telecommunications service." Thus freeing broadband ISPs from the laws that have enforced "network neutrality" for telephone service for decades.
IPsec and other stuff (Score:5, Informative)
Use IPsec. Not only can they not tell what your packets mean (only where they are going and came from), but they cannot forge an RST since that also needs to be encrypted with the association key.
So they could do a man-in-the-middle attack on a simplistic key exchange done over IPsec. But that would require far more resources (they have to get in the middle of each connection) than they appear to be willing to use (RST forgery is about the cheapest form of net interference there is). So I think even minimal IPsec would bring this blocking to and end until such time as they want to invest in whatever it takes to mount an attack on IPsec. Then we just use a strong key infrastructure and end that.
If the protocol involved understood the work to be done (e.g. how many bytes to be transferred), it could also re-establish a new connection if the existing one got dropped, and resume the transfer ... until done or one end decides to not do this anymore.
Re:It's not blocking per se...it's worse! (Score:3, Informative)
"The duty to carry does not mean that a carrier is never justified in refusing to provide service. It is well established that "if goods are not of the character that the carrier transports he may refuse carriage." Gorton, Supra at 109. Yet, the reasons for refusal are very limited and related to potential damage to other's goods, or to unreasonably high risks for the carrier in its capacity as insurer, or are beyong the reasonable capacity restraints of the carrier." http://www.cybertelecom.org/notes/common_carrier.htm [cybertelecom.org]
how is this different than other big ISP's? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There is already a law to apply here.... (Score:3, Informative)
NY Sec. 190.25 (Score:3, Informative)
A person is guilty of criminal impersonation in the second degree when
he:
1. Impersonates another and does an act in such assumed character with
intent to obtain a benefit or to injure or defraud another;
Re:Archaic Cable shared node topology is to blame (Score:3, Informative)
From the article that I linked to that you obviously failed to read:
The network is physically large, with a long propagation delay relative to the size of the collision window. And when collisions start to happen, they ripple as more and more stations have data queued for transmission. So the only way to make this protocol stable is to actively limit the amount of data queued at the cable modem for upstream delivery, and only way to do that for Torrent is to stifle connections at the TCP level. I've tried to scheme up a better way to do this, and there isn't one.
Re:Straight from thier lawyers mouths (Score:2, Informative)