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125 Comments
- jimmy8091, on 10/12/2007, -5/+71Klyith:
By decypting my data stream, you're in violation of the DCMA. - andrewp, on 10/12/2007, -9/+53You just showed your own mistake, you're assuming noise is copyrighted material. I'm also pretty sure copyright infringment isn't having your name in a list of peers, it's the act that counts - what is this, Soviet Russa?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28You're saying all 300 kbps traffic is Bittorrent related?
Traffic shaping devices don't check the speed but the protocol headers. - atrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Mine just blocks the BT Port... changed it and running fine :D
- b0rg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Vuke69: You can get 100Mb in the CO for about $300/mo, and 1000Mb in the CO for about $1000. So you are WAAAAYYY off dude.
To help clarify this, yes, you can buy a port in a CO for a buck a meg or something, though you're not including the cross-connect ($100-$500/month depending on the location and your negotiating skill). I've gotten OC12 and GigE connections from big content providers and from ISP's for free - when you have a couple hundred thousand subs you can do that. But the cost of guaranteed-perfomance, resellable, tier-1 *transit* bandwidth has stabilized after cratering around 2001, and remains in the $50-$150 area if you're in a good carrier hotel and don't get stuck with loop charges. If you try to resell that buck-a-meg pipe to a couple hundred thousand customers, and run it at 80-85% using 95th-percentile sampling, you're going to have some customer-retention problems.
Now, I've only done peering and backbone design for three national-scale ISP's, so I might not have your level of expertise, but those are the numbers the little companies like MCI, Verizon, and Level3 are charging - the big ones you work with might be very different. - Genma, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13well obviously, but it will provide an amount of ambiguity to your traffic that they won't be able to directly associate with bt. really makes me sick that we should even have to do this at all. think about how perverse the service provider industry has become, for them to be able to say you are "stealing" bandwidth from others, or somehow putting a negative impact on their network by using the services they advertised. what right do they have to say it's wrong to run my connection at full throttle? we pay them obscene amounts of money with the guarantee of a certain amount of service. I'll be damned if they object to making full use of it. the "content" of my data is irrelevant whether it be copyrighted porn or movies or music, just another cop-out designed by them. either advertise realistic limits or stfu.
do you think they would tell a business they are using too much of their allocated bandwidth? think about the distinction they make between commercial and private use. by their definition they are saying home users are too stupid to know what they are paying for, so they can fleece their sheep at will. once we build up a nice thick coat, they'll sheer it off and wait for another. the networking people here would know about the CIR that businesses get, home users don't have that luxury because they feel end users deserve no guarantees. just shut up and pay what they want right? the funny thing is we all know that when they started out, they never thought they would have to make good on their advertising. now bt is here and they're *****, so here come the excuses. - coyforce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Come on guys this truly sucks. We all know that BT is legal and a great way to share huge amounts of information (I am DL the 3.61 GB supergamer linux ISO right now), but probably true that 99% of it is illegal materials being transferred. The ISP's don't care what you download. They don't get sued when we break the law, they just get ordered to hand over their logs. They do care about money. If we spend all day letting our torrents run over their servers, we utilize much of their total bandwidth and they can't provide to more users. It's a simple equation. The facts are that US ISP's are charging so much for so little (compared to asia), and furthermore resenting the fact that you are using what you pay for. It makes me want to set up huge DL's to go directly to /dev/null just so I get the bandwidth I pay for.
- jamsea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Dude I followed the instructions and my download went from 24 kbs to 135!!!!!! My ISP was on the list so this would explain it.
- cokebottletuque, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13"Yeah, encrypt the traffic. How dare the ISPs infringe your right to infringe!"
because clearly every thing i download is illegal //sarcasm - vuke69, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11b0rg - Good post, you have solid points. I have no choice but to give you a digg, add you as a friend, and bow in defeat.
- kankerfist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Surprise! klyith describes a private market solution to limiting the RIAA's influence and gets dugg down! After all, the private market is only humanity's most powerful force. Let's try and combine some brain cells and see if he might actually be on to something here...
- WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Earthlink was not on the list.
I've even told the tech support people at Earthlink that I am into file sharing and downlaoding movies.
I think they do it too!
Cool people.
Then, there is always the strategy of getting one of those souped up motorola cable modems with the new firmware, that is uncapped. (There was digg story, a few months ago).
I may still get one.
But I get plenty of speed, up and down, at certain times.
http://www.cable-modems.org/articles/uncapping/ - jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6My old ISP Adelphia blocked incoming connections on port 21 and I just switched.... Now I live somewhere else on Timewarner's 8mbit down server... excellent!
- kindrobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6I personally do not care if there's illegal content being shared via bittorrent because it's irrelevant in this case. The absolute FACT remains that the only material distributed through the use of my tracker(s) is 100% legal. Period. And I pay for the connection class to do so. I'm not alone. Blocking our audiences just because of the protocol they use is ridiculous. This isn't kindergarten. We shouldn't all be paying just because someone else won't play by the rules.
But even so, if they advertise a service, they should provide it or make the
exceptions clear. Especially if that exception is the most popular protocol
on the network you provide access to.
I was around when these discussions were about unlimited modem access.
ISPs whined about how they were unable to keep up and started charging
hi volume users higher rates and limiting the hours they could be on per month.
Guess what happened? The ones who did not do this survived. The others changed policy or were buried. (aol certainly did some heel-dragging for a while)
That's the wonderful thing about competition. Keep up or give up.
Disagree if you want, they did back in the 90s.
I love my ISP, but would gladly leave for a new one if they started
blocking servers and certain ports (beyond PURE security concerns).
Also, you get what you pay for in the ISP world. Chances are if you pay
19.95!!! a month for some outlandish bandwidth claims, your ISP will
be on the evil list. Leave them and pay a bit more. If it's important, budget
it. If it's not, spend the extra money on some CDs and DVDs. Or get a
netflix account, itunes and satellite TV. No matter what you choose, you're
gonna pay someone.
Best of luck. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7@kankerfist
I sometimes think people mod down stuff they don't like rather than bad comments
Sorry, that's not very clear, not really sure how to describe what I mean here...sort of, 'it's true, but I don't like it'
For example modding down a comment that says 'downloading copyrighted material is illegal' - shinynew, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6maybe you should put in your advertising if you use all the bandwith i give you i will cut your interent. And if you have time to kill someone's interent on your "precious" sunday then you have time to tell him why. Dont be a dick just cause someone wants to use all of the interent that they thought they were paying for. Also you could do things other than just cut him off thats cold.
- spacebar14, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10So what are they gonna do turn off your connection all together?
I work for an ISP (my local one) and they tell me they use packet sniffers to throttle that kind of stuff. So if I encrypt it, I'm thinking it'll fool them eh? - emostar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Sorry, but you are wrong. Bittorrent is a protocol, not a low level IP header. The only thing they can see is source, dest, and the encrypted data. There is no "bittorent signature" since the bittorrent data is a protocol. If you don't believe me, load up your friendly Ethereal and look at all those low level headers that have NOTHING to do with bittorrent.
- Ekstra, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11ISP's don't want to throttle all of your traffic, they just want to throttle a particular application. If they do throttle all of the IP traffic, then they are certainly not providing you with the service you paid for.
Also, traffic shapers can be pricey and are usually placed where traffic has been aggregated, not on individual DSL or cable connections. This means that any generic rules they apply to try and throttle bittorrent or you specifically will affect more than one user. If you make it harder to find the torrent traffic, the ISP has to do a lot more work to throttle individual applications without affecting more of their user base.
The ISP's are clearly trying a technical solution, which many people won't notice or complain about, instead of resorting to the distasteful step of putting a clause in the terms of service that don't allow p2p downloading. Hopefully that would cause a quick loss of customers and the hue and cry of public (and Diggnation) anger.
If the bandwidth wars have truly begun, then hopefully the programmers of the torrent clients are already working on staying ahead of THE MAN. Even if torrent encryption works now, predict how the ISP's will respond and have a solution for when the traffic shapers figure out how to throttle encrypted torrents as well. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5dugg! this allowed me to get around my university's anti-bittorrent stuff
- jer2eydevil88, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5AOL isn't a real Broadband supplier they just piggyback.... They really let that boat sail without even thinking... haha just think we might be using AOL high speed today if they had just added $10 and bundled it into that $25 a month dial up package...
- Googled, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Bulldog is one ISP which does not feel the need to traffic shape its data flow. The company's Gavin Young says this is because there are different types of ISPs."
Nice. My ISP isn't going to be limited BT. :D - kindrobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4.. not for long with that attitude toward your customers. Honestly. Your competition will just offer a better deal.
If I knew my ISP had someone that anal, micromanaging my connection I'd be gone
so fast my credit card number would be on file at the new ISP before I could unplug
the cable from my router.
I've never understood the hiring practices of some smaller ISPs. They get these guys that are IT GODS but have the social and judgement skills of a kid that's been tied up in a basement for half his life. You do not keep customers by advertising a service
and then making them feel like they're criminals when they use it.
My best advice for a smaller ISP is to do the opposite. Charge slightly more, make sure your hardware and services can keep up with modern useage patterns, hire customer and technical support that have social skills in addition to technical ones,
limit your user base and then advertise the HECK out of the differences between you and your major ISP competition. Your user base will be smaller, but they will be paying more, thanking you for it and most importantly being LOYAL. You'll be turning them away these days.
And if you think hardware upgrades justify "bit by bit" billing, you're living in admin dreamland. I'm not trying to be insulting here. You honestly should re-think
your position on this. Because someone bigger than you will just see your
weakness and beat you by offering a better deal. You can be absolutely sure
of that.
On the concept of users paying more for better, less restricted access, I agree
with you to a point. Like I said before, you get what you pay for.
If you work for a university or college, that's different and please accept my apologies.
In that case, for the most part, you can shape traffic and micro-manage your users
at will with little to no backlash. Sometimes it's what your boss has told you to do and you have no choice in the matter. But still be careful there. The "kid" you're throttling might have a daddy that paid for the IT building. And you might just sniff the wrong packet one day. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6http://www.avinashv.net/2005/10/08/anonymous-bittorrent/
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Jun-2005/msg00075.html
be happy :-) - Klyith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4There is an upper limit to how many people the RIAA can sue: lawyers aren't cheap, and they get less in settlements than they cost in legal work. Really within the law the only thing they can do is "scare tactics".
And no, there isn't any really effective way of being anonymous on BT. Think about it: your peers have to know who you are in order to send information to you. You could use an anonymous proxy, but your bandwidth is reduced to sub-modem speed. Or you could take a laptop out and "steal" net access from some open AP. Thus leaving some other poor shmuck to defend themself from the possible legal attack. That's a pretty nasty thing to do from a moral standpoint though. I think if you're going to dl copyright material you should be willing to at least face the possibility of being caught. They only want $2000 anyways, it's not the end of the world if they do get you. - b0rg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It depends on the device. With a big enough stream, netflow is the tool of choice for traffic engineering. There are also a number of applications which pull SNMP data directly from the upstream router.
For ISP's, the decision has little or nothing to do with copyrights, it's all about costs. Average customer uses about 25kb/s of traffic. At the far end of the bell curve, you have customers who saturate their connection 24x7. With wholesale bandwidth costing $50-$130 per mb/s, you lose big money if you're selling 5mb connections at consumer prices. So your choices are, (1) raise prices, driving away casual customers, (2) Allow massive oversubscription which kills interactive apps - voip, gaming, web browsing, real-time video, or (3) implement some form of traffic throttling.
Most ISP's use edge equipment which doesn't have heavy-duty traffic analysis support, so they have to rely on something basic like total bytes, and then throttle the user when they get to a certain total. There's always been a reluctance to peek into the user's data, even on an aggregate basis (though I did use apps to break down traffic types to figure out things like where I needed faster peering) - deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm not sure BT encryption really helps that much. If this defeats traffic shappers the ISP will move towards shapping their top talkers on a user-by-user basis. You may find one day your entire connection is sitting at the bottom of the shapping priority list. It's not too hard to spot P2P users by looking at traffic graphs alone.
- smellinator, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3vuke69: wow. Never saw that on the internet before (especially not on Slashdot!) I'm referring to: "Good post, you have solid points. I have no choice but to give you a digg, add you as a friend, and bow in defeat."
You're to be commended for your sportsmanship! - Voodooengine, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6We get ***** compared to other nations. I just hope Google buys all the Fiber Optic in the U.S. and starts there own ISP.
GO GOOGLE + SKYPE! - rosswf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I hope this encrytion helps me. I am in the UK and have Tiscali 2Mb Unlimited ADSL, and recently i have been put on the "Heavy Users" list. What happeneed is i got one email for a warning saying during peak hours (6pm-11pm) i am meant to limit my usage. So i set limits on all my downloads not to go above 1Mb during the peak hours.
2 days later, got another email, the same one but this time second warning.so i didnt download for a while, then a week later downloaded a games or movie, and got a final letter saying im on a heavy users list.
Sent two complaint emails, never got a reply. So now, i though F**K it! Took off all my limits and just downloaded at my will. Not heard from them since!
I hope this helps as i cannot be bothered changing ISP, and i cannot give up BitTorrents:P - cheerio, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3In order for them to be able to sue you they have to prove that you have the file intended. The way the bittorent network works is you download from MANY peers. Most of the time many RAR compressed archive files. So If they werent able to download the entire file from you alone in 100% they wouldnt have that big of a case. But i dont know why users insist on sharing their ideas. As soon as this starts taking up all their bandwidth again, they will block it again. I believe this is called layer 7 traffic shaping. They setup priority rules for FTP, HTTP, etc, and the rest get to fight for bandwidth. Port changing, encryption wont change that, unless you can make bittorent traffic fit into that HTTP traffic rule. : )
- GreenAlien, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Why has Klyith received -59 and -28 diggs on his posts? It wasnt spam, he wasnt using distasteful language. His post was on topic. So why? Because some of you DISAGREE with him? That's no excuse to bury him. Some people obviously can't use the digg system properly so personally I've lowered my threshold right down. I can disagree with him myself instead of others doing it on my behalf thanks very much.
- GreenAlien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The internet, the web, email, FTP, newsgroups are all excellent mediums, but because they can be used for illegal stuff too doesnt mean we should tar all use with the same brush. Ditto for bittorrent. Bittorrent has become a dirty word and that's plain wrong.
- durrty, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm on comcast as well and have never had an issue as far as bittorrent goes. Although I do run uTorrent with encrypted headers, but thats because at my University they block all bit torrent traffic period, i get 0kb/s if I don't have it on.
You notice there is a lot of smaller (comparetivly) ISPs on there, and that shows what its really about. They don't care what your using the bandwidth for, they don't get in trouble if your downloading music, all they care about is the amount of bandwidth use, thats what they have to pay for. - Matt2k, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5> Now, I've only done peering and backbone design for three national-scale ISP's, so I might not have your level of expertise [...]
Best post on digg. Ever. - aggies11, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The parent has a point (somewhere amidst the crap).
Encryption is good to prevent packet inspection, which is used to identify throttling.
However, if the only thing using high bandwidth encrypted connections, is bit-torrent, then ISP can simply start to throttle "high bandwidth encrypted connections".
They don't know exactly what you are doing, but unless alot of other bandwidth starts to encrypt itself also on the internet, the fact that BT traffic is encrypted can alone be used to identify it.
Consider an analogy of wearing a mask. You can wear a mask to hide your identity. But if you are the only person wearing a mass in a crowd, you still stand out. So instead of trying to find you by using your face, I just have to find the person wearing a mask.
Throttling makes sense economically, so as long as they CAN do it, they will. :(
You can't just encrypt BT traffic, you have to be able to effectively HIDE it.
Aggies - Ekstra, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Mrbob is an aggressive guy, which is why he is probably still in business despite being a 'small' ISP. Yes, its possible and maybe even necessary for small companies to cherry-pick users with standard traffic profiles and then monitor them like a crazed traffic Nazi.
Most *large* populations of customers do have enough standard users to support the occasional super user. The vast majority of people on the internet today use it for email and some web browsing. Don't kid yourself in thinking that the large ISP's don't make money despite not having your ultra aggressive traffic monitoring policy. The information in this article and this comments thread is still valid and useful for huge numbers of Digg users, so there is no reason to be quite so aggressive with the "FOOL" comments.
On another note, the standard user profile will continue to change just as rapidly as it has in the past. Five years from now, a good sized chunk of the general population will (legally) receive their television, movie, telephone calls and music via the internet. If you require a bunch of web browsing and emailing grandparents to make your thin margins, you might as well consider Disney ABC's recent announcement to start offering their most popular TV shows online as a warning shot across your bow.
A quick search tells me that a standard Desperate Housewives show is around 350Mb and Nielsen ranks it as having around 26 million loyal viewers. Starting now, there will be a steadily increasing percentage of internet users who will download 350Mb - 1Gb per day just for some video entertainment in the evening. If you don't have a way to make money as tomorrow's average user morphs into today's super user, you might as well sell out now while you still have customers. - WaterDragon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://www.tcniso.net/index.php
- Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I recommend that *everybody* switch to encrypting their data like this, for a very simple reason: To prevent ISPs from doing this sort of thing in the future. The only reason an ISP is going to start using traffic shaping to limit or block BT traffic is if the hardware can identify the traffic and show that it's a large portion of their traffic. If everybody's encrypting, then the hardware is not going to show as much traffic being used for BT. So the ISP will look elsewhere to reduce their load, or maybe, just maybe, they'll pony up for the hardware and bandwidth upgrades that they should be getting anyway. After all, that's what you're paying them for.
- splammo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3look at all the people posting comments about how this helped them. apparently people like the article because it was dugg enough to make it to the front page. isnt that the whole point of digg?
- meig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Wow. For the first time ever I am happy to be a Charter customer.
- marksy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3crazy... isnt this digg about preventing ISP's from limiting BT traffic, rather than whether downloading ambiguous torrent files is legal or not...
- Bluezdood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I have a hard time believing Comcast doesn't throttle even though they weren't on the list. I've had my connection simply just drop until I reset my modem.
- amoeba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Bittorrent is peachy in Japan.
It hasn't really cottoned on to the general public.
Most people are using the 'Winny' P2P app ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinNY ) that's been in the news recently after a virus caused personal data leakage.
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060411p2a00m0na008000c.html
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20060321p2a00m0na029000c.html
The undeniable fact that BitTorrent has so many practical (and legal) uses should prevent ISPs using such blanket tactics as blocking all BT traffic.
I use BT all the time for downloading Linux distributions. I'd hate to see legitimate use suffer through the use of such draconian tactics not to mention the yet unseen benefits of P2P in internet driven media distribution. - punkguitarist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I had no idea that such a large number of internet providers were limiting bittorrent traffic. This includes me, so i'll see if i get any faster download speeds after this.
- b0rg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They work on the principle that faced with a massively expensive court battle against an experienced adversary with a track record of success demanding huge penalties plus legal fees, or coughing up a couple grand, most people will opt for the latter.
Not to say it's right, that's just how it works. These guys (http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/) are lawyers and have a page worth reading, if only to gain a good insight into how the legal system works (or doesn't). - b0rg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Genma: "do you think they would tell a business they are using too much of their allocated bandwidth?"
Depends on the deal you work out. For a given connection - 100mb/s for example, you might be offered one price for unlimited use, or a lower price for an "average" usage that is lower, with occasional peaks. So I can afford that 100mb/s line for my office, and we won't get swamped by the occasional abuser (usually me) downloading some huge file.
The deals between ISP's are even more specific, as to traffic ratios, peak hours, and whether or not you may resell it to others. Cogent and Level3 got into a brawl over it a few months back that annoyed customers on both sides.
Anywhere I have seen some company offering an "all you can use!" bandwidth deal, there's always been a big caveat - usually in the form of a badly congested provider which is their sole egress to the net at large. - blacklilyninja, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I have nothing nice to say about the DMCA. I have nothing nice to say about the RIAA. I have nice things to say about Bit Torrent. I have wonderful things to say about living in Canada. Limiting torrent BW from ISP's was only possible by capping overall BW I thought. Encrypting...well let the debate continue wether its actually useful or not.
- andrewp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2(Repost)
Klyith: Now you've just changed the topic by adding unneccessary stigma as to why encryption was added: not to hide the content of the file but to subvert the ISP as to which protocol you are using. Obviously anyone who requests the file can retrieve it encrypted or not, but at least the transfer will succeed despite a greedy ISP! - JohnboiWaltune, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3With AT&T turning everything over to the NSA, and our government's recent interest in snooping arbritrarily on U.S. citizens without a proper warrant, and trying to strongarm search engine companies into turning over their data, I think it's time that everyone encrypts ALL their internet traffic. In fact, I bet soon there will be a product that sits in front of the Windows TCP/IP stack and encrypts/decrypts everything coming over the wire. Build it into ethernet controllers as well.
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