Comcast Still Dancing Around Its Content Jamming Operations; What's Wrong With Admitting It?
from the shhhh,-it's-a-secret-that-everyone-knows dept
With the news coming out that Comcast's broadband jamming operations actually interfere with other apps as well, Comcast is now trying to respond to the complaints in every way other than telling people what it is that they're doing, which at this point really does appear to be the only sensible response. Comcast went to Reuters (since it was AP who confirmed the original story) and repeated the carefully worded claim that Comcast is not blocking any kind of traffic. Of course, people aren't saying that it's completely blocking any traffic -- just that it's quietly pulling some background tricks to slow down certain types of traffic without letting its customers know. That's the key part, and it's the same complaint that people have had for years with Comcast concerning its fuzzy bandwidth caps. The company advertises unlimited service, but if it's not unlimited, why not come out and explain what the limitations are? It seems only fair.Perhaps an answer comes from Tim Lee, who was invited to a conference call today with Comcast to help "clear up" the misperceptions Comcast feels are being spread in the media about its actions. The only problem is that Comcast doesn't clear up anything. It basically admits to the traffic shaping but says it can't tell people that it's doing that, as it could help them get around the shaping. Well, sorry, too late for that. Besides, what's wrong with simply telling people what the limitations are and then going after the violators for terms of service breaches? In being so secretive and misleading about it, all it's doing is causing many more people to get upset with Comcast and think that they're being targeted (even if they're not). It's a ridiculous PR situation for Comcast to be in -- and it could be solved easily enough if Comcast stopped beating around the bush, stopped giving gobbledy-gook doublespeak responses that don't actually answer the questions people are asking and simply told people what they're doing and why. It really is that simple. If the company has a legitimate reason for doing what it's doing (and some people say there is) then why not explain that?
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Filed Under: bittorrent, cable, network neutrality, traffic shaping, transparency
Companies: comcast
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Well
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This looks like a poor attempt at customer retenti
If it was listed in the Terms of Service what I could and could not do I'd probably avoid doing things to get my service terminated...or switch ISP's. THAT is probably what they're more worried about. If they were to say that certain protocols weren't allowed I'd be on AT&T's 6mbps/384kbps DSL faster than anything. I've never used my full d/l on Comcast except for bandwidth tests and the u/l is the same. It's just too bad the most Comcast users will just notice that their torrents aren't seeding correctly and just become swarm killing leechers....
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Re: This looks like a poor attempt at customer ret
And its true. They don't the just care how much you use.
On a side note, all they do is kill a port after that port has moved "too much" data, and it isn't port number 40. All you have to do is switch ports. If they kill one a day, and you have a range of 10,000 or so, you should be good for a couple years.
And if you don't even
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you are misinformed, sir
The fact of the matter is they randomly filter about 50% of bitorrent upload connections. And I mean 50% every 5-10 seconds they reset on you, effectively killing any seeding. I have the wireshark logs, those are mine that were provided for the research. For our 1KB/s person, its kinda hard to download once you're seeding, for the comments above as well. I'll be glad to switch instantly when any non dialup provider other than yahoo (who is just as corrupt and garbage filled) is available in my area (thanks comcast monopoly).
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Re: Re: This looks like a poor attempt at customer
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The most important point
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Re: The most important point
making mad decisions = making bad decisions
increases profit for me = increased profit to me
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I was glad the day...
To top it off, I even saved a little money because FiOS has been on 100%, so I was able to drop the backup dial-up account. I'm not all that fond of Verizon, but FiOS has been a good product. Then again, just about anything would look good compared to Comcast, including dial-up.
--
Texas Concealed Handgun License Courses
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Re: Comcast Still Dancing Around Its Content Jammi
Comcast doesn't know how to manage a push-pull network and therefore is struggling to manage the bandwidth (and associated costs). Their attempts to date are baby-steps technologically, so they don't tell you what they are blocking, because they only know how they are blocking. Therefore releasing "what they know" is going to release to the masses how to get around it.
I'm not saying it's proper thinking by Comcast in this case, as has been demonstrated recently ... the folks running on the network are more sophisticated then the folks running the network. This is a bandwidth cost issue with a bad technological solution by Comcast. They should drop this failed attempt and get on with a proper bandwidth management through open mitigation of per customer bandwidth limits at the extreme and proper budgeted buildout of the network bandwidth. All paying customers should be able to view their daily usage stats, especially in the case of "soft" caps and any mitigation of high-bandwidth protocols.
Driven by the greed of high speed data/VoIP $$-per-month from customers not being able to offset the bandwidth costs (and the cable-side costs associated with programming) Comcast has blundered into a bad technology choice.
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bit torrent
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Re: bit torrent
- A protocol is not legal/illegal, the content transported by it is potentially illegal.
- Comcast is making no determination based on content in this case.
The rub here is the torrent protocol is being spoofed/man-in-the-middle-manipulated for what purpose? Is it content or is it bandwidth?
Maybe the truth lies in the facts associated with what compromises Comcast's cost for bandwidth, both numbers and protocol?
What costs are associated with content for Comcast? None to Comcast beyond the bandwidth to transport them to/from. That's why no one is debating legality/illegality. It's a subtext ... and interesting one, but a subtext.
You have a good point, it's just not really on Comcast's radar and hence not a working point of discussion right now.
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Re: Re: bit torrent
I do think that this idea of impersonation is a little overblown. to send a rst packet is a common way to throttle bandwidth. they could also change the tcp window size, but then someone would probably claim they are invading privacy by altering the packet.
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Re: bit torrent
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Notes
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Re: Notes
on a side note, if you want to look into citrix for your company, it's pretty cheap these days, and works great for me to run all kinds of apps that would otherwise not work over the internet.
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Re: Re: Notes
Are you reading this article? They won't fix the problem because they won't acknowledge the fact that it exists. And your pretty much saying it's OK to block something because there is something else.
As for Citrix, remember that your not just paying the few hundred dollars per license for citrix windows and terminal services, your also paying for the server and an IT guy to support it. (we have citrix here and it is a good program when it works)
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Glad I don't have Time Warner or Comcast, I just worry my ISP isn't far behind.
And the funny part is - well, I don't really use file sharing much, it's just the idea of the whole thing
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In terms of customer service, the bar isn't all that high. They all screw you, its just some of them try to flatter you before they do so. Most just ram it in.
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Hmmm.
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BitTorrent != Illegal
Overall, it's bad policy and bad PR to play this game. If I was a technically savvy user with ComCast, I'd bail out and send them a letter stating exactly why.
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Since cable is a shared pipe, I wonder if Comcast is really interested in keeping customers that use BitTorrent-type programs? Might be more trouble than its worth for them.
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What's wrong with admitting that you ask?
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Maybe thats why they didn't want to admit it?
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Re:
If that's true, that's incredibly weak. Denying you did something so you can't get sued... even though you are doing it? Um. Do you see why that's a dumb strategy? If you screwed up (as Comcast did) admit it, admit you made a mistake and move on. You're going to get sued one way or the other. if the people suing you can then prove that you continued to LIE about it after you'd been found out, doesn't that look worse?
Yeah, thought so.
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As for being weak, I am sure lawyers would have a different opinion of what you should or should not say.
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Potential legal troubles?
Even IF they are only limiting this blockage to the people in states that do not have these laws, it has been determined that the RST (reset) signal goes both ways, to the person on the Comcast network, as well as the peer/seeder they are attached to, stopping communication both ways. There is no way to guarantee that those people are not in states that have laws against this type of behavior.
EtG
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