Comcast Makes Nice with BitTorrent

An anonymous reader writes "In a dramatic turn-around of relations, cable provider Comcast and BitTorrent are now working together. The deal comes as BitTorrent tries to put its reputation for illegal filesharing behind it. The companies are in talks to collaborate on ways to run BitTorrent's technology more smoothly on Comcast's broadband network. Comcast is actually entertaining the idea of using BitTorrent to transport video files more effectively over its own network in the future, said Tony Warner, Comcast's chief technology officer. '"We are thrilled with this," Ashwin Navin, cofounder and president of BitTorrent, said of the agreement. BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. It was important that Comcast agreed to expand Internet capacity, because broadband in the United States is falling behind other areas of the world, Navin said. Referring to the clashes with Comcast, he said: "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."'"

Half a loaf is bad when you are thirsty.

[Mactrope]

This sounds more like, "sorry I got caught" than sorry:

BitTorrent traffic will be treated the same as that from YouTube Inc., Google Inc. or other Internet companies, he said. ... "We are not happy about the companies' being in the limelight."

No one caught doing something wrong is happy about the attention but they need to admit what they did was wrong not because a company was involved but because it harmed their customers. The above makes it look like they think they still have the right to block traffic their customers want. Beware of special deals like this.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a trap!!!

Jacking off into a hat

[Gizzmonic]

This, to me, is like Comcast jacking off into a hat and BitTorrent wearing that hat with the full knowledge of what's just been deposited in that hat.

What they said.

[Mactrope]

I'm not sure they have said anything but it looks like nothing good if they want to make a special deal with a single company [slashdot.org]. If they want some good attention, they can unblock ports and dedicate themselves to network buildouts. The core issue is one of network freedom. Without freedom, the internet is no better than cable TV.

Re:I think I speak for all Comcraptastic Customers

[compro01]

i think itsatrap would be more appropriate. something tells me we're not getting the whole picture here.

Re:I think I speak for all Comcraptastic Customers

[qoncept]

I mistakenly feared slashdot users would have one less thing to whine about now. But the real difference is instead of "Comcast sucks because they do this!" we'll be hearing "Comcast sucks because they once did this!"

Re:all bittorrent traffic, or just BitTorrent, Inc

[morgan_greywolf]

Right. All you people going "about time" "suddenoutbreakofcommonsense" didn't even read the summary. The deal is with BitTorrent, Inc. and probably has nothing to do with ALL bittorrent traffic, just the stuff Comcast is doing with video.

BIG HINT: This is probably why they started throttling bittorrent traffic to begin with.

Re:huh?

[Ossifer]

No, read the article more closely, especially in between the lines -- Comcast will starting screwing with *other* protocols on an even keel with bittorrent.

Soon you can expect to get false 404's on port 80 if you've used "too much" of your "unlimited" bandwidth...

Useless article

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

The article states:

"The Comcast-BitTorrent dispute has been a cause celebre among Internet advocacy groups and others who called for greater regulation for an open Internet, citing Comcast."

I fail to see how greater regulation would ever be the solution. It was regulation that made Comcast's monopoly possible in the first place, allowing them to pull idiotic stunts like traffic filtering. No company in a competitive environment could ever get away with that, because users would simply switch to another provider. Greater regulation is definitely not the answer. Instead, the government should be keeping its claws out of the economy in the first place.

Bittorrent Inc., NOT bittorrent protocol!

[Toasty16]

This is just Comcast PR spin doctor damage control, since most people won't differentiate between Bittorrent, Inc and the bittorrent protocol. Comcast is just saying that they will stop inhibiting Bittorent, Inc's traffic without mentioning other bittorent programs/services like Azureus, utorrent, etc... Or possibly Comcast will give Bittorent, Inc. preferential treatment as compared to other bittorrent programs/services - so long, net neutrality!

The real issue is Comcast underinvesting in its infrastructure to the point where nodes meant to serve 400 residential customers are serving up to 700 (as confirmed to me by a tech who came in for a service call). In fact, Comcast actually INCREASED it's dividend to shareholders this year, meaning that instead of investing its increased profits into its own network for the benefit of its customers, it paid out to investors since the stock price is stagnant and it hopes they will plow that dividend back into Comcast shares.

Without investing in its infrastructure Comcast will continue to use underhanded tactics to scrimp and save bandwidth costs on a seriously overburdened network, to the detriment of its millions of customers. Complain loudly enough to Comcast and threaten to switch providers unless their service improves - ultimately that's the only way to make it change course to a customer-centric business model, which ultimately is the only way for it to stay in business.

Using comcast peers

[grahamsz]

Isn't that the perfect network model?

I'm surprised more ISPs (particularly foreign ones where bandwidth is pricey) haven't looked at ways to bias traffic to share internally. I know i talked with some ISP in the UK and tried to convince them to let their cable modems run much faster but to apply the traffic caps at their network boundary. Unfortunately it didn't seem practical to do that on that scale at that time.

If comcast were to double or triple the upstream available when staying within their network then i'm sure p2p tools would start exploiting it.

Re:huh?

[esocid]

Mod parent up. It's exactly what Comcast will be doing, slowing all traffic for people who use more bandwidth than they deem acceptable. They're still as seedy as ever. I just hope this doesn't throw the FCC of of their track, if they even intend to do anything about it.

No

[Wiseman1024]

This still smells bad on Comcast's part. What the heck does Comcast care what is BitTorrent used for? So if it's going to be used to share files with a friend (the extent of which is illegal is questionable) it's wrong and needs to be censored, and if it's going to be used for business it's acceptable?

This is still comcastic censorship, corporativism and licking the media mafia's asshole. Keep boycotting Comcast.

Re:huh?

[Jellybob]

What I don't get is why they're not just advertising that you do in fact have a bandwidth limit - that way the customer knows what they're *actually* getting, and Comcast can make a few extra dollars selling top-ups to people who hit their bandwidth limit.

In an ideal world, you could do whatever you want with your connection, but this is the real world, where bandwidth is expensive, and ISPs would rather not be the ones paying to feed your free porn addiction ;)

Re:Half a loaf is bad when you are thirsty.

[Anonymous Coward]

That line is from Navin. He's the BitTorrent guy, not the Comcast guy.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need bittorrent to share files with your friend, and there is no advantage to using it when there are only two peers. Just set up an FTP server on your machine and let him upload/download. Why go to the trouble of using bittorrent, particularly as Comcast are going out of their way to make life hard for you?

Unless by "friend" you mean "thousands of Pirate Bay users"....

Re:BAANNNGG!!!! SPLLAAATTTT

[value_added]

My head just asploded!

As it should.

Heavy users (typically the younger crowd who typically don't have landlines) are precisely the demographic that Comcast targets.

The situation is not unlike the media companies complaining about widespread piracy when the category of people who regularly pirate music and movies are the media company's best customers. You think, for example, someone over 40 buys or watches the same number of movies? Or would even consider buying the same number of new CDs?

Good to see that progress is being made. I expect similar "ironical" situations will be resolved by others, but not before more gnashing and wailing of teeth is heard from those trying to resist change.

Re:I like-a to say

[c_forq]

Remember the protocol is now closed source. It is very possible they will allow Bittorrent Inc.'s protocol, leaving the other clients having to reverse engineer/hack if they want their clients to work.

Re:No

[Teflon_Jeff]

I completely agree, this still smacks of something fishy.

I wouldn't be surprised if this "turnaround" is in direct relation to a behind-the-scenes "bit of advice" from the FCC.

Comcast still hasn't said they won't mess with your traffic, only that they're working with this company for their own ends.

Re:No

[smartaleq]

Maybe you want to share something with a friend, that several thousand other users have an identical copy of. The scenario itself is not implausible, abandonware computer games come to mind for one. Free online CD quality releases are another.

Re:BAANNNGG!!!! SPLLAAATTTT

[CastrTroy]

The difference is that the record company's favourite customer is the one who buys the most CDs. I ISPs favorite customer is the one who pays for the service, but doesn't use it. Nothing better than a guy paying for a 10 mbit connection, so he can check his email, chat on msn, and read a few news articles everyday. The ISPs don't like people who download 100 GB of stuff every month.

Re:In many ways it is worse.

[node 3]

'Good Laws?'

Laws are neither good nor evil. It's a persons perspective that attaches good and evil. It is also worth bearing in mind how laws are created and how they are enforced. In short, the law is not there to protect you but to cage you.

Almost. Good and Evil are subjective concepts, which means they can potentially apply to anything that interacts with people. There have definitely been both good and evil laws.

'User Privacy?'

There is no such thing as privacy the sooner people understand this the sooner you can see what a childish concept it is.

It's absurd to say something doesn't exist when it actually does. Do *you* have anything that you've kept private? If you do, how can you possibly say it doesn't exist?

'You are in prison and don't know it.'

The size of the cage is limited by the size of your mind. If you wish to be caged then you will be.

I'm not even sure what to make of this one. How is merely "thinking" going to change the "cage"? The only way I can think is via Orwellian "the cage is freedom" style self-delusion.

Re:Notice the Fine Print, please...

[Andy Dodd]

Some of the wording scares me, because, to be honest, treating all protocols equally during peak periods could do really bad things to protocols that are latency/throughput critical such as VoIP, gaming, and videoconferencing.

BT is bulk traffic, so it's really not a big deal if it has a lower priority than other packets, AS LONG AS no extra throttling is done. That is to say - If BT runs fast during offpeak periods when no one is using the network, but slows down significantly during peak times of the day in favor of VoIP, web browsing, gaming, etc, that's fine. The problem is that many ISPs have been "overkilling" P2P protocols by explicitly throttling them to a very low fixed and pre-set bandwidth (instead of dropping their priority) or in Comcast's case, specifically taking action to outright stop them, regardless of time of day or network conditions. That's extremely bad. Also, Comcast's approach was so aggressive that other protocols were negatively affected, moreso than BT. If a BT connection gets RSTed, the client just tries again in not too long, and is able to resume a broken connection where it left off. Other protocols can't resume and so may be completely unable to complete certain tasks. (See the reports that Comcast's RST injection scheme completely broke Lotus Notes for some people.)

Re:O RLY?

[Quince alPillan]

An example along the lines of "if the network is under heavy use, then going over X Mbps is excessive and will be cause for cutoff" would suffice.

The problem is, they don't know what X Mbps is. What they'll likely do is when load gets to the point where its interrupting service to other users, they'll start cutting off the ones with the highest amount of usage. Its not a set Mbps that they'll cut people off so they can't give you a number or time. Its done arbitrarily by network load.