Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not
Update: Visit Save The Internet and let your voice be heard!
Sunday afternoon I finished setting up a dedicated rtorrent server for seeding Ubuntu .iso images. I do my best to hand out all the CDs I can, but I also figured I could make use of the bandwidth I have to do the same. Once I got on that idea I realized I had access to two Comcast connections (family) where I could drop in two more of these “rtorrent appliances”. So, I got to work setting a second one up and dropped it on the network at my Dad’s house.
Wasn’t I surprised to find that my seeds weren’t taking off. After some quick Google searching I found that Comcast is cutting torrent connections nearly across the board. All across the internet people are complaining about Comcast not letting them seed anymore–and many of these for completely legal material!
I know bittorrent is associated with a lot of pirating. Hell, so was ftp and whatever other protocol you want to drop in here. This doesn’t mean that it is *only* used for pirating. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t legit reasons to use the efficient protocol. Apparently Comcast doesn’t see it this way.
The way I see it this is the first step toward a Tiered Internet, whether or not any such thing is approved in Legislation or by the consumers. Comcast doesn’t care. They are simply cutting off access to part of the Internet, plain and simple.
I would not be surprised at all to soon hear that Comcast will allow bittorrent traffic, for an additional fee. If you *really* want to use that protocol you can pay us more, but otherwise we don’t deem it as part of “normal internet usage”. Once that starts what is to stop the avalanche that will happen next?
“You want access to YouTube? It really uses a lot of bandwidth and we weren’t expecting most people to use more than casual browsing and email. That’ll be $5/mo additional.”
If Comcast is able to start cutting off access to internet protocols they are already to the Tiered Internet that will only become grounds for corruption and extortion. Who will be next?
The telecoms like the idea of a Tiered Internet because they can then extort both sides of the product. Since they are the middle-man they can charge more to the consumers for access to “the whole internet” and charge more to large domains and take pay-outs from big online powerhouses to provide “better or preferred” access to them.
What do I mean by that? We all know Google pwns the internet. We start getting into the Tiered Internet setup and Microsoft gives a big payout to Comcast, requiring them to limit access to Google, while preferring access to Windows Live Search (or whatever the hell its called). They’ll make up some reason why its more efficient for bandwidth or some BS and you’ll have to pay more to get to Google. They would be in the perfect position to rake in huge piles of money from both ends, with nothing to stop them.
The internet needs to stay open. The *whole* internet. Not the convenient internet. Not the bandwidth friendly internet. Not the bribed-into-becoming-the-new internet. The whole internet. All protocols. All sites. All networks.
If Comcast is allowed to continue cutting off even one protocol we’ve already lost. Voice your opinion. Contact your local office. Complain. Make some noise. Switch providers.
Until then I’ll be getting these two Comcast connections switched to a competitor. It may be a slower internet (in my area) on DSL, but at least its the whole internet.
Update: Visit Save The Internet and let your voice be heard!
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rusty wrote:
In all honesty, if Comcast had been smart, they would have set up their filters to throttle download speeds, and left seeding alone.
This would do two things. First if you prevent seeding and throttle downloads as they’ve been reported to be doing, people who are using bittorrent to download the content they object to will start looking at other protocols to use to get the same content. http and https come to mind. The problem with those protocols is that they are all ‘one way.’ This means that even more of their gateway bandwidth is going to be used exclusively for the content that could be all handled within the network.
The second thing it would do is start filling up the outbound pipes of the users who are downloading the content, which is significantly smaller than the inbound pipe. That 8 meg down, doesn’t get much use if the 384K up is filled.
As it stands, I suspect that we shall see two things happening.
I think more people will be complaining about how they can’t get anything done through their gateways, because those gateways will have even more traffic than they did before.
I also expect that there will be quite a few people jumping ship. I’m planning on dropping cable Internet for Comcast at the end of the month, and switching to dslextreme. For the same upstream bandwidth and about half the downstream bandwidth, it will cost me half as much. OK, about the same once I include the phone line charges.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 3:25 am | Permalink | Revise
University Update - Comcast - Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not wrote:
[…] Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not » This Summary is from an article posted at Ubuntu Tutorials : Dapper - Edgy - Feisty - Gutsy on […]
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 3:57 am | Permalink | Revise
Ryan Andrew Morehart wrote:
Don’t get AT&T DSL… they do kill your entire internet connection every few minutes while bittorrent is running.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 4:04 am | Permalink | Revise
Bruce Cowan wrote:
In fact, ISPs in Britain are saying they’ll have to increase prices thanks to the BBC’s iPlayer (stupid name by the way). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6944176.stm
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 5:10 am | Permalink | Revise
Zach Massia wrote:
Here in Canada Rogers is doing the same thing. My mom just switched from Sympatico over to the Rogers Extreme (Their fastest connection, said to be for downloading large files easily) And I can’t get more then 2-5kb/s on it. Sure it’s lightning fast for an HTTP download (~1mb/s) but most large files are on bittorrent, not HTTP..
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 6:38 am | Permalink | Revise
Devin Baldwin wrote:
Isn’t this illegal?
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 6:58 am | Permalink | Revise
Loye Young wrote:
One of the reasons I enjoy your blog is that you have a knack for identifying important issues. Once again, you have put your finger on a problem that is going to grow in significance going forward. The problem is actually bigger and more difficult to solve than might be assumed.
The reason that the ISPs are limiting seeding is NOT that they are trying to protech copyright. The real reason is that the internet infrastructure is built around asynchronous bandwidth and they are running out of upload bandwidth.
The physical media that transports bandwidth has a fixed total capacity for all transfers, up and down. Until recently the overwhelming demand on the Internet was for download capacity, so the engineers built into the switching gear (and the prices) asynchronous bandwidths to deliver lopsided down-vs-up ratios.
Enter YouTube, BitTorrent, and other peer-to-peer data sharing. Increasingly, the Internet is becoming a two-way street, with uploads becoming a bigger percentage of total traffic.
Unfortunately, the infrastructure wasn’t built for synchronous bandwidth, so the ISPs are scrambling for low-cost methods to limit upload speed. The ISPs are limiting torrents because torrents are heavy users of upload bandwidth. They figure that consumers will complain about torrent limits much less than they will complain about the higher prices that would be necessary to deliver synchronous bandwidths.
I don’t have a good solution for the problem, because in the end, it’s going to require that the infrastructure be re-worked, and that will likely cost money (at least under current technology). In the end, the solution may rest with consumers paying for relatively more upload bandwidth and relatively less download bandwidth.
Happy Trails,
Loye Young
Isaac & Young Computer Company
Laredo, Texas
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 7:46 am | Permalink | Revise
Clint Savage wrote:
I just posted this to every one of my mailing lists. I’ll be posting it to the fedora lists too, they’ll be affected as well.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the way that companies like Comcast
and Dell work is by us making a stink. Recently, a post caught my
attention and I want to do my part to stop the tiered internet before
it starts.
My friend Christer Edwards posted an article about how he is getting
the shaft when it comes to torrent traffic. He’s just sharing his
torrents for Ubuntu. I disagree with Comcast charging him for his
bittorent traffic as if its not appropriate. There are a lot of
reasons we need to keep them from doing this, but I think Christer’s
article says it best.
Enjoy the read:
http://digg.com/tech_news/Comcast_Is_Starting_The_Tiered_Internet_Whether_We_Like_It_or_Not
Cheers,
Clint
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 7:57 am | Permalink | Revise
Tristan Rhodes wrote:
Christer,
Thanks for pointing out this issue with Comcast. I have personally been very happy with my Comcast connection, but if they are blocking bittorrent and start heading to a “tiered” internet model then I will change my ISP.
Keep up the good posting.
Tristan
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 7:57 am | Permalink | Revise
Lonnie Olson wrote:
Just because Comcast is throttling bittorrent traffic doesn’t mean they are moving to a tiered internet system. This is just a sensationalist jump to a conclusion. And quite a jump it is.
I do agree that throttling bittorrent traffic is a problem, but this kind of sensationalism is irresponsible.
A tiered internet is unlikely to happen. No matter what people are saying these days, customers have options, and as long as they have options there will always be ISPs that listen to customer complaints.
The early days of dialup are a specific example. Originally dialup was charged by the hour. Customers complained, new ISPs started giving unlimited options, and the rest is history.
————
About your jab at DSL… I will always choose DSL over Cable whenever possible for two reasons.
1. I have a choice of ISP with DSL, Cable does not.
2. Upload speeds are better.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 8:29 am | Permalink | Revise
Slashtard: News for the Special » Hopefully My New ISP Soon wrote:
[…] the recent discovery of Comcast throttling bittorrent or even cutting bittorrent connections and as Christer Edwards put it “this is the first step toward a Tiered Internet, whether or not any such thing is […]
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 8:59 am | Permalink | Revise
Matt Jones wrote:
This happens a lot in the uk, most isp’s implement a ‘fair use’provision, including my isp, which unfortunatly I signed up with before I even knew what net neutrality was. I will be moving in september though.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 9:05 am | Permalink | Revise
Utah Tech Jobs : Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not wrote:
[…] read more | digg story […]
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 9:27 am | Permalink | Revise
Jaja wrote:
Comcast has always been unfriendly towards power users and geeks. What’s new? If you want your MTV, switch. Not convenient? Sorry. Life’s not fair.
Some people see a conspiracy in every shadow.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 10:54 am | Permalink | Revise
Alt-J » Blog Archive wrote:
[…] came across this post today (Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not) and must admit that I have never had much trust for any ISP I’ve used (except for when I […]
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 11:23 am | Permalink | Revise
Gary Thornock's Weblog » Comcast and the Tiered Internet wrote:
[…] ran into a nasty surprise this time, though, and he's written a fairly unhappy post about it. Apparently Comcast, his ISP, is doing some fairly extensive cutting of BitTorrent connections, […]
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 2:46 pm | Permalink | Revise
Feremc Attila wrote:
Unfortunately, the same thing happens in Romania (east europe). Our local isp market is mostly divided between 3 major players, two with cable and fiber optics and the third with adsl. All of them started implementing torrent filters and such. Complaints and lawsuits followed soon by customers, but to no result. The smaller isp’s are getting a good increase in market share, since they implement no such restrictions
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 4:10 pm | Permalink | Revise
insane wrote:
IMO, Comcast has every reason to ban/block you. Has anyone ever read the TOS?
http://www.comcast.net/terms/subscriber.jsp
“Prohibited Uses of HSI. You agree not to use HSI for operation as an Internet service provider, a server site for ftp, telnet, rlogin, e-mail hosting, “Web hosting” or other similar applications, for any business enterprise, or as an end-point on a non-Comcast local area network or wide area network.”
Bitorrent, illegal or not you have turned you box into a server. Maybe they didnt enforce it before, so what, you agreed to the TOS and not they are cracking down. Stop whining.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 7:54 pm | Permalink | Revise
Solo wrote:
For the longest time “users” of the Internet trusted their ISPs to respect their traffic. No snooping, no throttling, no intervention, just moving packets from point A to point B, efficinetly and in the fastest way possible.
It’s been shown that ISPs can’t be trusted in that way. Spying for our nice governments, censorship, “tiering”, etc…
The solution is certainly to move to point to point encryption, either protocol specific (bittorrent supports that I think) or through ssh/vpn tunnel.
I believe we have way too much exposure to our ISPs. Time to protect ourselves.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 10:28 pm | Permalink | Revise
Josh wrote:
In the Comcast TOS on their web site, it states that no comcast connection can be used to host or provide services to the public. Maybe that’s why they’re blocking seeding.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 10:50 pm | Permalink | Revise
thisIsAmerica wrote:
Sorry, but hey, this is America. No free lunch. Ever. Thanks.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 10:54 pm | Permalink | Revise
Robbi M wrote:
Guess what folks this may have to do with the fact that Comcast sneakily altered their policy to make it so that you can’t sue them. They gave everybody an unspecified time to go to an obscure website and sign out of the arbitration if you happened to realized what they were doing. I just happened to on July 28 but it ended August 6 I believe. This time may correspond with them beginning to screw everyone… good night and good luck to you all.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 11:04 pm | Permalink | Revise
Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not « Shadowdog36’s Weblog wrote:
[…] read more | digg story […]
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 11:12 pm | Permalink | Revise
Steve Topletz wrote:
Bypass torrent filtering by getting a VPN account. Your ISP never gets the chance to filter any of your traffic. You can get them from XeroBank.com, Stunnel, and Metropipe.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 11:33 pm | Permalink | Revise
Brad Johnson wrote:
This isn’t Tiered Internet. Not even close. This is simply an ISP blocking a protocol they don’t support for at least residential plans. MANY ISPs restrict (at least on paper) the use of servers on residential plans for similar reasons. The fact that customers get away with it, doesn’t make it an unalienable right.
Hell, some Pizza joints don’t have Canadian Bacon. It isn’t a conspiracy. I just get Pizza elsewhere.
Posted on 21-Aug-07 at 11:36 pm | Permalink | Revise
bigb wrote:
This is bullshit, if they can cut off the bittorrent protocol then they can cut off any protocol they want. There any many legit torrents out there and even companies use the bittorrent protocol to transfer files. I say we sue.
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 12:17 am | Permalink | Revise
jabelli wrote:
Yes, but in this case, the “pizza joint” has a contract with the city that nobody else can sell pizza there. Also they advertised that they had the Canadian Bacon (”unlimited Internet”) but then it’s mysteriously out of stock when you try to order some (”You’re using too much of your unlimited Internet”).
Kind of like how my parents’ ISP redefined “unlimited” to mean “you can dial in whenever you want.” Like other ISPs assigned timeslots to their customers….
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 12:24 am | Permalink | Revise
Will wrote:
The war has started…
Comcast is not alone…
Time Warner Cable (Road Runner) is now doing the same damn thing.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18468495-TWC-TW-Officially-Announces-Packet-Shaping-for-All-RR-Users
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 1:22 am | Permalink | Revise
TS wrote:
Thanks for a good article.
You should see what companies are doing with satellite access in Africa (and probably elsewhere). These are pretty cheap (maybe 100$/mo), small satellite VSATs (tx/rx). They typically limit you to ONLY http and mail. only. no ftp, no torrents, no nothing. just ports 80,25,110.
In short, they suck!
Most people only find out after they just paid $1500 for the equipment, (not I), and it’s not like there’s alot of consumer-protection here.
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 1:23 am | Permalink | Revise
Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not | mediapolemic.com wrote:
[…] is just a ploy to show that the tiered internet can work. Let’s make sure it doesn’t!read more | digg […]
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 3:21 am | Permalink | Revise
Kualla wrote:
“Bitorrent, illegal or not you have turned you box into a server. Maybe they didnt enforce it before, so what, you agreed to the TOS and not they are cracking down. Stop whining.”
Uploading a file attachment to an email server would fit that as well then. A friend sending you a text message in a chat room saying /yourname send fileXYZ and then the file arriving in your email, that is serving someone, but really its just simply sending data thru your ISP that someone wants.
ISP’s need to wake up and understand that the internet(web2.0) is no longer just html,email, and text chat rooms.
Technology has evolved, hardware prices have dropped; no reason other than corporate greed for service to stop growing.
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 3:37 am | Permalink | Revise
Dan wrote:
This is a silly move by these companies, as the market will balance out:
Comcast blocks torrents
Torrents make up 60% of some users purpose for the internet
Comcast wonders why they are losing sales.
Comcast realises their mistake and resumes torrent traffic.
Swings and roundabouts, if comcast are only blocking torrent uploads, the torrent sites will soon catch on:
http://blogs.allofmp3.com/music_news/2006/12/14/piratebay-blocks-an-isp-which-had-blocked-allofmp3/
I see it as just a bit of “testing the water” by these big giants. They will soon realise they are in hot water.
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 3:41 am | Permalink | Revise
HELP SAVE THE INTERNET! - the official phillytim weblog wrote:
[…] also urge you to read this article and visit this site to make your voice heard in a petition that is going to the government’s […]
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 5:00 am | Permalink | Revise
Casey wrote:
Do you like spam? Many ISPs block port 25 so that spammers and viruses don’t send millions of spam messages every day. The ones that do this require you to use their SMTP servers. Do you have a problem with this? This is one service/port that is blocked in a lot of places. No, I didn’t think you minded that one. But that is because blocking this port is self serving to you and everyone.
When is comes right down to it, torrents and P2P consume a lot of bandwidth on the Internet and ISP’s networks. Every ISP oversells their bandwidth. When many novice users are able to consume massive amounts of bandwidth over a long period of time, this can drastically change how much an ISP can oversell. The less ISPs can over sell, the more expensive it is to run the network/business model.
You are using a cable service and upload bandwidth is always a premium. From the dawn of cable television everything has been customer centric. That is why it is hard for cable companies to hand out upload bandwidth. And here you are trying to max out your 500K upload for days or weeks. How does this help you or your father? TCP is a bidirectional communication. Saturating the upload of any Internet connection will slow down the download too.
Comcast is trying to preserve their business model and profit margin. Imagine that, they are a for profit company. I don’t work for Comcast! My damn cable modem won’t stay on their network. But I did use to be a network engineer for a small wireless ISP.
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 6:34 am | Permalink | Revise
Bioshock Demo Up - Page 25 - Fires of Heaven Guild Message Board wrote:
[…] of days including this game this morning. Sorry this took me so long to post butt.. LINK: Comcast Is Starting The Tiered Internet.. Whether We Like It or Not : Ubuntu Tutorials : Dapper - Ed… […]
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 7:13 am | Permalink | Revise
dave wrote:
You do realize that you were abusing these two internet connections by setting up seeds for such popular isos on them? Think about it:
You’re paying for residential internet from a cable company. That means it’s shared bandwidth with the rest of all the people in your neighborhood. That means that when you soak the upload channel with torrent traffic (legit or not) you’re ruining the connection of everyone in your neighborhood (and your father’s neighborhood).
Residential connections aren’t guaranteed bandwidth. They’re shared. Use of bandwidth like this is the reason that companies like Comcast are filtering bittorrent. It’s not that what you’re doing is illegal because of the content you’re seeding, it’s that it’s antisocial. Further, your cable agreements likely state that you’re not allowed to run servers from your connection, something that a torrent seed definitely is.
In other words, much as I hate to admit it, I side with Comcast here. They’re just enforcing their terms of use, and making the internet useable for those around you. You’re trying to serve your community upload bandwidth to the rest of the world for spreading ubuntu CDs.
Posted on 22-Aug-07 at 8:16 am | Permalink | Revise