FCC Chief Says Comcast Violated Internet Rules

Several readers sent in word that the FCC chairman, Kevin Martin, is calling for sanctions and enforcement actions against Comcast for resetting BitTorrent traffic. "Mr. Martin will circulate an order recommending enforcement action against the company on Friday among his fellow commissioners, who will vote on the measure at an open meeting on Aug. 1... Martin, a Republican, will likely get support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are both proponents of the network neutrality concept. Those three votes would be enough for a majority on the five-member commission."

Re:wow, a sudden outbreak of commonsense?

[bsDaemon]

Yes, because after all, this is clearly just an elaborate rouse to deflect the criticism of slashdot hoards and FCC /totally/ equals FBI+NSA.

Re:Interesting...

[Docboy-J23]

I've noticed that Comcast's approach to advertising also indicates an assumption that their customers are dim bulbs and don't know what's good for them. There are at least these two types of TV commercials:

1) You, the customer, are a dim bulb and have no idea what our "Internet service" is. Just buy it. Whatever it is, we assure you that it's fast and you have no other choice.
2) Our competitors are hapless morons.

They may boil down to a couple more similar bases, but those two stand out in my mind. Moreover, telecommunications advertising is a dirty, competitive game.

Make Sure to Say Thanks!

[Waterppk]

Make sure you drop the commissioner a note to say thanks! [fcc.gov]

Re:Is Martin acting within his bounds?

[value_added]

Nicely done, but to elaborate further, the following excerpt from a better article on Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] should help.

But the precedent this could set has ramifications far beyond the narrow matter of Comcast's particular throttling scheme. Should the order go through, it would send a strong signal that the "four freedoms" outlined in the policy statement have teeth behind them, that these are more than "suggestions," and that the principles of openness and consumer choice will guide the FCC's approach to broadband. In case you're one of the few who don't have the principles committed verbatim to memory, here's a recap (emphasis added):

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Re:The problem is not addressed

[u-235-sentinel]

Increasingly, ISPs are getting weasely with their terms of service. "Unlimited access" that's not unlimited, shafting entire protocols, etc. How about changing fair advertising laws and such to make it so that you cannot hide behind the fine print, but that you must give your customer either a print out or a web page the describes, bluntly, in itemized terms, what all of that legal gobbledeegook really means?

At times the company will also terminate your internet because you used too much bandwidth without telling you how much is acceptable and how much is not.

They say only .001% of their customers are cut off.... so what are the odds of two people on the same block being terminated? how about three?

Within 4 months of my family's account being terminated there were other's on our street also terminated. I'd like to take those odds to Vegas personally :-)

Oh and all of us had signed up at the same time 5 years ago when it was advertised "Unlimited use for a flat monthly fee" not "Unlimited Access" which isn't the same thing.

Re:BT Encryption

[brother.sand]

How about if you set your iptables firewall to block the Comcast reset packet? From: http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9608/GUIDE%3A+Using+Linux+to+Beat+Comcast's+BitTorrent+Throttling [zeropaid.com] If you are using Ubuntu or another non-Red Hat Linux derivative, then place the following in a file and execute that file as root. #!/bin/sh #Replace 6883 with you BT port BT_PORT=6883 #Flush the filters iptables -F #Apply new filters iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT #Comcast BitTorrent seeding block workaround iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT --tcp-flags RST RST -j DROP iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT #BitTorrent iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp --dport $BT_PORT -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -j REJECT --reject-with icmp-host-prohibited Not so hard really. There's an iptables file on that page for the RedHat distros too.

Re:... except when you want it

[nabsltd]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

Prioritizing (i.e., QoS) is OK, but what Comcast did wasn't any sort of QoS...it was forging packets to say "please permanently disconnect". I know that some people may define cutting off connections as QoS, but it isn't. QoS implies that every connection gets to send all of its data, eventually.

Re:... except when you want it

[slashgrim]

Hmm. I'm not convinced. What about VoIP? I *like* my low-latency reliable VoIP, and I like the fact that my ISP is able to prioritize it over bulk traffic like BT. Ditto small HTTP traffic bursts, DNS requests, etc.

This is not an issue of prioritization; this is a forced destruction of undesired (by ISP standards) streams.

Besides your ISP more than likely uses hot-potato routing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-potato_routing [wikipedia.org] which does its best to take the shortest path _out_ of their network regardless of increase in latency caused by taking a longer path once out of their network. Unless you have a SLA, you're getting the worst service available. Oddly, with hot-potato routing, you even have a chance of some streams taking a shorter path when the network gets more congested (depending on topology, of course).

Also, congestion is hardly an issue with modern ISPs (in the US, tax dollars funded development of new optical backbones): http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/09/65121 [wired.com]

IMHO, if I purchase a "bulk" link, I expect all traffic to be treated equally and the ISP to not cancel streams. I do like you're idea of users flagging traffic as bulk but wonder about the implementation, incentive and enforcement details.

Re:BT Encryption

[Craig Ringer]

Er, that blocks *all* TCP packets with the RST flag set that're destined to your BitTorrent port. That'll cause some interesting problems, though probably nothing worse than your tretcherous ISP is doing to you already.

In particular, you might have to increase kernel limits on open TCP/IP connections, decrease connection timeouts, etc.

Blocking RST packets with iptables is trivial, but an ugly hack at best. It also won't stop more thorough blocking methods like corrupting BT traffic (so your machine eventually blacklists the sender), injecting fake data packets, or simply dropping traffic.

Re:BT Encryption

[Craig Ringer]

Yep. I have no idea why they're being permitted to get away with it. It's *way* more than "reasonable network management". Reasonable network management would include dropping packets, using ICMP destination host/port unreachable messages to ask the remote peer to terminate the connection, and many others things that are not forged RST packets.

I don't even understand why they chose this method. ICMP destination-port-unreachable would do the job just as well, and with way less legal ambiguity.

Re:BT Encryption

[Khyber]

That doesn't work totally. It seems some RST packets work directly with the modem (at least with mine) and regardless of using iptables the modem itself will stop and reset.

Re:BT Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Their mistake was crushing/buying out all the competition, forming a monopoly, and then implementing draconian rules - all the while thinking that they could get away with it.

Re:Interesting...

[Obfuscant]

I think not. Townships rarely allow more than one cable / internet provider. Politicians prevent this from happening ...

I have been on two local cable television advisory boards in two very different parts of the country. We followed these kinds of things closely.

Every franchise agreement I've seen (and clearly, it isn't all of them) have been non-exclusive. There are technical and social standards that are set by the locality, and any company that wants to agree to meet those standards is free to sign the franchise agreement and start building.

What keeps multiple companies from competing is not the nasty government creating a monopoly, it is the simple cost of building a system versus the payout from customers. As soon as two companies compete for the same pot of customers, the payouts cut in half, but the costs of wiring stay the same. (You have to cover the same area as the other guy, but you only get half the customers -- he's got the other half.)

I think we can look at DSL/Cable as evidence of this. Once the telco's got the technology to use their existing wiring for phones as network (and even cable TV) pipes, they started offering that service. Their wiring was, for the most part, already in place. A few upgrades and bingo, they can access the same customers that cable has. If Verizon had to install all the wiring they are using to provide DSL, they simply could not compete.

The buildout cost/return ratio was used many times when we would get complaints from "less citified" areas (less densely populated) when the cable company wouldn't wire their area. The cable co would trot out their numbers showing the return on investment in building hit zero right around two houses per "block" (1/10th mile). That's only about 1/3 or 1/4 of normal city density (in suburbs/small cities).

simply by overstating actual "TV Tax" increases that would happen with a second cable company coming into play...

You lost me on this one. In the US there is no "TV Tax", so I'm assuming you're talking about England or someplace where they do tax TVs. The franchise fee would not go up when a second system comes to town. If you subscribe to two services, of course you pay two fees.