EFF claims that Comcast is still meddling with data
By Darren Murph 
posted Dec 2nd 2007 1:36AM
posted Dec 2nd 2007 1:36AM
According to a report released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Comcast has yet to relinquish its data discriminating habits, and users attempting to share content via P2P could still face slowdowns and unexpected delays. Of course, Comcast's Charlie Douglas proclaimed that the firm "does not, has not, and will not block any web site or online application, including peer-to-peer services," but followed up by stating that it did engage in "reasonable network management to serve all of its customers with a good internet experience." The EFF, however, saw things differently. During its own tests, it was reportedly able to confirm conclusions drawn earlier this year by the AP, and it also exclaimed that Comcast was "essentially deploying against its own customers techniques more typically used by malicious hackers." Pretty strong words, to say the least, but we're curious to know if the continued Comcast bashing is indeed legitimate. So, dear readers / Comcast users, are you still (or have you ever, for that matter) experiencing sketchy P2P performance, or is this all just one overblown mess?
No wonder I can't backup reliably via internet!
Lost connections mean re-uploads and re-downloads which mean lost time and energy translating to lost money.
yea, my bittorent never really works that well. Even on ones that are pretty well seeded. I think comcast really is messing with it.
Yup, comcast sucks big time. It takes a week to download top gear, that's not right.
Comcast is messing with seeding. This can have the effect of causing slow downloads too.
I typically get my torrents from a private tracker so seed to peer ratio is very favorable to downloaders. Downloads proceed very fast for me most of the time. The problem becomes obvious when you try to seed back the file you downloaded. Comcast is disconnecting all upload sessions within 30 seconds. I've heard for some people it's a lot quicker. This has the effect of causing peers to avoid you because they keep getting disconnected. I'd say seeding was about 50 times faster before comcast started sending the falsified disconnect packets.
On a side note, I called Comcast yesterday to complain. Got transferred to a supervisor who repeated the official statement "we're not blocking any applications". No duh. Of course you're not blocking any applications. Nobody is accusing you of blocking. What you are doing is interfering with the communications to the point where it's almost too slow to use. I told them I was going to cancel my service if they don't stop the interference. We'll see what happens. I don't think they can keep this up and keep their customers at the same time. If Comcast doesn't stop meddling with bit torrent, they will loose business over this.
I've had a horrible time connecting to P2P networks on my 8mb comcast service. It's reasonably quick for most work, but they are definitely doing something funky with Peer to Peer stuff.
That's exactly my experience with comcast. Most of the times I use p2p software, our web connection comes down to a crawl. Also, several months back, they disconnected us, when I called them, I was told that I was downloading too much. When I asked how much was too much, the guy told me he can not give me a number for too much, but the amount I downloaded was too much.
Comcast really sucks, is there any good alternative?
I had the same problem with TimeWarner RoadRunner. Of course I was running my P2P 24/7 as usual, but I think they were most unhappy about me using constant full upload bandwidth. They put me on some sort of a blacklist. I tried asking them questions about limits and such, but never got any firm answers. Only through research did I find out that my using full upload bandwidth seems to affect other users since it must overload TW's servers.
Recently TW is offering new tiers that boost upload and download limits and I suppose that's what they would like me to pay for. I'm not gonna pay for more bandwidth since I don't really need it. I just liked to use the full bandwidth since that was what they said I can use. I've since stopped downloading more movies than I can watch since I don't want to be annoyed by having my connection shut down without notice. I only use about half of my upload bandwidth now and nothing has been said for months.
I'm paying a heck of a lot for my TimeWarner connection with HDTV, three boxes and premium movie channels. Have been for years. And they had the gall to sever my connection without advance notice.
I'm waiting for Verizon FiOS to come to my neighborhood so I can drop TimeWarner in a New York minute. Those chumps. If they tell me I got a certain amount of bandwidth, then let me use it or tell me otherwise.
I have a Comcast 8mb line. I download about 20-40 GB of stuff a month. I don't use P2P but I was never told I downloaded too much. One month I downloaded 76GB of data with no problem. I average approx 1.3 megabytes (not bits) per second.
Verizon can't run the optical cable fast enough. There are plenty of comcast customers that are waiting for FiOS and I'm one of them
yeah its still being slow and torrents never work
I've noticed my (Hacked wifi from across the street) Ahem, "comcast" has done better in the past 2 days in p2p.
same here, at home with comcast torrents just.... die. and at college, the network owns torrents too. lose-lose.
a good alternative? verizon just put in fios in my neighborhood at least, but so expensive!
"Long time listener, first time listener."
Torrent had been working great for me for the past six months since I switched to Comcast from Speakeasy DSL (for better speeds), and then in just the past week its taken a turn to the ludicrous, requiring nearly 10 minutes to latch onto any seeds, and then getting cut off at random times. I was eventually able to download the latest Unbuntu image, but it took /forever/.
i kinda got what you got. just first few weeks things were going well than all the sudden goto a crawl on everything.
I get good download speeds on my torrents, but as soon as its done it will seed for 20 seconds (avg) then cut off. Comcast is throttling and they suck for that.
The same thing happens to me! I'll be downloading great, and then twenty seconds after it finishes my seeding just STOPS, dead in its tracks because I've hit the X in the top right. It sure is weird.
@MEAT!
It's people like you that make public torrents slow. If people give as much as they take, everybody benefits. Consider giving something back.
p2p VERY slow IF it ever connects, surfing is fine
Comcast throttles. I couldn't access Google for a few moments. I can't even seed updates, they just timeout. I don't mind companies trying to do their job, but don't invade my privacy.
All of these complaints thus far seem like people have screwed up settings, not that comcast is screwing them. I can't say for sure, I've never had comcast, but the complaints sound a lot like the ones I had back before playing around with my settings. I couldn't be happier with my torrenting since.
I know my setup is correct because I can torrent just fine while I'm on my school's network, but as soon as I get back to my apartment, torrenting, just plain does not work. Comcast has the worst service, but they are the only cable option where I am.
i've never messed with my settings, and when i was uploading 1 file it put my WoW ping at 3000+
Yeah, after reading 60+ comments I'm sticking with my original statement. If your uploading at the max then your DL speeds will suck. Your internet activity will crawl to a stop. Go hit the torrent forums. If comcast is the problem then we need to actually know this. But a bunch of people that seemingly don't know what they're doing won't help anything. Set your upload to no more than 70% of your available bandwidth. Frankly, 50% is high. I know the BT community pushes you to upload as much as possible, but get over it. Save the seeding for the people with real connections. 20 of you with 30 kbps up is still nowhere near one guy with 20 mbps up.
Mike, you sound like one of these people, and I have no idea how you get high ranked, other than it's what people want to hear. If you're using the same upload limit at school and home then you are almost certainly trying to upload way too much at home. There is no residential service that would have as much up bandwidth as your school.
All of you that are complaining, go set your upload limit to 15 kbps and then come back and let us know if your dls still suck.
I'm guessing brent just enabled encryption so comcast doesn't notice his torrents, hah.
Well, Brent, while it sounds like you could have a point (pseudo science), you are technically wrong. IP traffic slows down at 70%-80% link saturation, but you're forgetting this is TCP traffic. TCP is self throttling, and since TCP in turn drives IP traffic (TCP run over IP), you won't hit the 'cliff' of falling performance.
To better understand the Comcast 'attack' (yes, in the security community, this is an 'attack'), please read http://kerneltrap.org/node/3072. Comcast is ACTIVELY interfering with a connection between A and B by sending a TCP reset packet to A, posing as B. 'A' basically follows the standard TCP protocol and resets the connection, which eventually kills the bittorrent speeds. I'm not even sure if this is legal since they are posing as someone else and are actively breaking established standards by the standards committees.
I'd be pretty pissed about this if I was a Comcast customer. Comcast advertises a certain rate, the customer pays for that data rate. What application the customer uses to take advantage of the data rate advertised/paid is really immaterial. There are plenty of traffic shaping techniques employed. In fact every connection IS traffic shaped just so that your 3MBps Comcast connection doesn't suddenly turn wild into neighborhood devouring a 100Mbps connection (or whatever the aggregate link speed for your entire neighborhood may be). That last one once happened to me for a few minutes in the middle of a linux ISO download. I called my ISP and they said one of their servers was down (most likely the traffic shaper/aggregator)
@Wwhat I don't have comcast. I have charter. They may not have noticed my torrents but the MPAA did. I got a notice from charter. Since then I learned the ways to not be so visible. But that wasn't what got me better speeds. Better speeds came when I slowed my upload.
@siddharth I have no idea the science behind it, I draw only on my experience and others in a lot of different forums. For that matter utorrent will put a cap in speed optimizer. Even that was too high for my connection. Lowering it another 10k opened things up and I regularly download above 300kbps.
The behavior a lot of people are describing sounds a lot like what I had when I set upload to unlimited. I don't deny what you're saying, nor the EFF, but we need to know just how widespread the use is, and I think that's being skewed by people that just tried to be logical thinking allowing higher uploads would get them better downloads. But in practice it just doesn't seem to work.
Brent,
You obviously have no idea what's going on here. People aren't experiencing upload saturation. That's almost the opposite of what's happening. The problem is, people can't upload at any kind of decent rate because of the reset packets (as explained by siddharth s above) being forged by Comcast.
JTM I understand what the complaint is. But the guys saying they upload at 35k and are only downloading at 20k are NOT having problems with reset packets. You yourself in other places in this thread have said some of the people claiming comcast is screwing with them are wrong. Hell, most of the complaints here are about download speeds, which it would seem shouldn't be affected at all. I'm not saying all of the people commenting here are wrong. I'm saying we'll never know how big a problem this is if we rely on people who are wrong. People are in such a hurry to nail comcast to a cross they aren't really looking for the cause of their problems.
Fair enough. Your initial comment sounded like you were blaming all problems on user error. That is just not the case. While the download problems people are having are not all due to comcast's forged reset packets, I think the majority of them are.
However, when people complain that their web browsing starts going slow while they're bit-torrenting, they should probably look elsewhere for the problem since it does not seem related to the spoofed reset packets comcast has been generating.
I hate to be as straightforward as this, but Brent.... you are wrong. I have been a Network Administrator for several large corporations over the past 3 years, and I currently still am. Comcast is the root of 90% of the problems listed, if not more.
I have used Cox cable, Suddenlink, Verison, Roger, and currently Comcast (and a few lesser knowns) all with the same torrent "settings" you keep referring to. The difference is Comcast actively interferes with both download and upload transmissions by flagged resets frames and other network congestion "Solutions" according to Comcast...
Like I said... they throttle the download on torrents as well, and to this comment "But the guys saying they upload at 35k and are only downloading at 20k are NOT having problems with reset packets." that might not necessarily be true.
Regardless, simply applying encryption... or setting your client in obfuscation mode will not resolve the problem either (not to say it won't work for some). I have tested all of these simple fixes to no avail.
I have not been defeated by Comcrap though... I have easily circumvented their security and have explained to many how to do so. I just hope they (Comcackle) are taken down swiftly, and justly.
I m still getting hardly any seeding speeds on my torrents, sandvine sucks!
Same here, unfortunately.
Absolutely! P2P on Comcast has been a problem for years. Downloads start of at a mediocre clip and them slow to a crawl and eventually timeout.
I get an average of 24Kb/s down and 35Kb/s up...that doesn't seem right to me...
I regularly get download speeds of 380 Kb/s on my 3 Mb Verizon Dsl. Over the past 2-3 months, I have downloaded about 55 Gb of torrents and Verizon still hasn't cut me off. Right now I am just waiting for them to install Fios in my area.
Guess they will never learn.
I thought it was just seeding (uploading) that was being filtered? That should mean downloading would still work, just that without uploading, your download speed would suffer (since that is the nature of BT). Either way, while I do blame Comcast for what they are doing, I think that anyone that doesn't know to check that little "Require encryption" box in their torrent app, doesn't really need to be downloading anything anyway. I'd be more annoyed, but I don't have comcast anyway, and I get my linux distros from lightning fast uni FTP's.
Uploading once the torrent is finished downloading is filtered. I'm on Comcast and I have that "require encryption" box checked and I still get hit by whatever they are doing.
Basically here's what happens: File downloads and while it's downloading it will upload just fine. Once the download finishes if I leave it going it will continue to upload fine. If I close out of my torrent program, Azureus, and start it up again later the file that was uploading fine earlier will never start uploading again.
everything I've read about what Comcast is doing seems to say checking "required encryption" makes no difference. Anyway, I have Comcast in Atlanta and I too have noticed a slow down. The other day I did an experiment while downloading a torrent. On my straight Comcast connection a torrent I was downloading was topping out around 50 Kb/s so I stopped it down and opened up my Relakks VPN account and restarted the torrent. The download speed almost instantly jumped up to 128Kb/2+.
Yes, they are still doing it.
I have had nothing but bad experiences with Comcast. My speeds are never fast no matter how I throttle Bittorrent everything comes to a crawl when I have uTorrent running. I think that comcast is completely screwing me over just like their other customers. If there was ANY viable alternative I would ditch them in a heartbeat
Lessee...
700 MB File...
973 Seeders...
87 Leechers...
...
19 Days left.
This is exactly the problem im seeing all the time. The best thing about it is, when bittorrent is on, everything gets super ghetto slow on the internet. I can hardly load any websites... it totally kills my vonage and xbox live... it takes me over a minute to go to www.google.com sometimes. Teh moment i exit out of bittorrent, everything returns to normal. Its pretty freaking obvious they mess with torrents. I used to have time warner road runner, but comcast bought the houston market out so i guess now im screwerdz.
Kastonie,
What you describe doesn't sound related to the disconnect packets that Comcast has been spoofing. That sounds more like you need to reduce the maximum number of connections in your bit torrent program. For example, set "Max Global Connections" to 100 or even 50.
Also, if you're using Azureus, you can try the Auto-Speed feature. It can automatically reduce your upload speed before it starts effecting other internet traffic.
I use Auto-Speed. I have the same problem.
That's exactly what I mean...
My comcast is suposta "burst" at 12Mb and average at 6Mb. Speakeasy shows me at 6.5Mb right now. There is no reason my torrents shouldn't get at least 500Kb/s down. Upload seems a bit sluggish to when my upload on speakeasy is 2.5Mb.
To bad there isn't Verizon option in my town. Comcast and at&t have the monopoly here. Fios would be awesome too...
Yep; same issue with Comcast here. Torrenting just isn't what it used to be... No viable service alternatives available...
If you read the EFF pdf release, you'd see that they're popping in reset commands into BOTH the upload and download streams, screwing people out of (over-priced)services that they PAY for. The moment that Verizon gets they're FIOS service in my neighborhood, I'm getting it. Comcast's practices are BS. My neighbor is getting 720 Kbps. download on his 1.2 Mbps DSL. On Comcasts 8 Mbps "Lightning Fast Service", I get a lousy 80 Kbps. All my settings are correct. I switch to his network (with consent) and I rocket up to over 1 Mbps. Can't wait till someone successfully sues Comcast for breach of contract or ANYTHING that would slap them down and make them stop this vulgar practice.
(steps off soapbox) NEXT. (ushers next commenter to the box)
EFF is trying to do just that. I hope Comcast get nailed to the ground for this atrocity.
A lot of the problems with BitTorrent on Comcast can be fixed by enabling protocol header encryption, a built-in feature of most modern BitTorrent clients.
I think you're on to something here.
One article I read said to enable encryption but to also allow unencrypted connections. When I did this, nothing changed. My uploads were still cut off after 30 seconds.
Later, I went back and disabled unencrypted connections. It seems like it's working now. I don't see any uploads being disconnected. (keeps fingers crossed)
Give it a try people, let us know if it works for you.
Monday 10th, afternoon, let's call Comcast with our complaints. One afternoon, so many complaints, may help the men use a few extra brain cells.
Does anyone think that the Powerboost(TM) service might to be at blame here, just a side affect of the momentary speed boost then it scaling back down. I don't think any other cable company has that type of feature just Comcast.
No, powerboost has been around for a long time. This torrent problem has been only within the last few weeks, maybe a month, at least as far as I can tell.
I am in San Francisco and I have comcast. I experience problems with p2p. Mostly in upstream. The upstream is pretty slow... no faster than 75KBps up. But the weird thing is that if I let Azureus use more than 25KBps upstream the downstream of the whole connection slows to worse than dial up speed. Sometimes pages even time out before they can load. This has to be some sort of packet shaping to punish P2P. I do not experience this slow down when uploading photos and stuff to my FTP server. I am sick and tired of our crappy ISP's. In the bay area we have 2 choices. AT&T DSL or Comcast Cable. We have astound and several small ones but they are not cheaper and do not offer better services. All I want is Verizon FIOS. Verizon are you listening!?
Haven't ever been on Concast for internet but I've had this happen before with Time Warner's Roadrunner service. It's funny that the DSL services I've used haven't ever done such nonsense.
I use Limewire (but not that much, I don't consider myself a heavy user) and it seems ok.
I will say I think they do throttle (and I've said it on slashdot so I feel like a broken record).
I downloaded Mozy backup client (it sends backups of your files to their server for safekeeping. I'm using it for photographs, nothing important) and Comcast blocked it after I got 10mbs uploaded.
They never admitted it. I called and emailed and they kept giving me bull about "download speeds." However, when I would connect to a DSL connection, the transfer would continue. Odd I think.
I'll have to test it out a little more on my end, but I might be in a different boat w/ Comcast because the house I live in is also a business account w/ Comcast. If they are engaging in data discrimination on home users, I wonder if the business users are able to get around this and not have their packets tampered with.
My torrent speeds have been pretty good as of late, which is why I wonder if this is the case. I can hop on a fairly active torrent and get 200+kb/s download speeds depending on what my settings are at that point in time and how many seeds are out there without seeing nosedives in speeds or anything.
YES! If I run anything vaguely resembling P2P software or download a torrent Comcast sticks their nose in and slows the connection to a crawl. If I leave anything running for more than a day, they just shut me off completely. So what does 'unlimited' mean anyway?
Also people I work with who also used Comcast have switched back to slightly slower DSL. After they got used to the thought that some things might run a little slower, they very much appreciated the consistent speed of their P2P's and torrents.
Yes they definitely are.
It is also no longer just a seeding problem. Downloads are extremely slow too. 25/kbs is about max.
They are not just delaying or dropping packets they are forging packets and electronically impersonating their customers and the party their customer is attempting to communicate with.
In my case the other side effect is that when you have an active torrent all traffic on the connection is disrupted to the point that it is sub 56k modem speeds. Turn off the torrent I'm back at 8mb+ down. Turn it on and I get about 50/kbs.
I have also noticed that I RST packets in other non bittorrent applications. Cost me a couple of weeks trying to figure out why my connections were dropping.
They have no right to call comcast HSI an internet connection when they do not adhere to the standards the internet is based on. It is false advertising. They need to call it High Speed Web or something. It is like selling a turkey dinner without any turkey. The internet is based on connections(sockets). It is not an internet connection when they arbitrarily reset connections.
They should also lose their common carrier status. Common carrier status indemnifies the common carrier from transmitting illegal material. They get this by not monitoring the traffic on their network. They are now monitoring the traffic on their network in order to selectively block bittorrent traffic.
I'm voting with my wallet. DSL can not be installed quick enough. I wish I could get fios.
While I dislike Comcast for other reasons (like taking channels away from our cable plan all the time and never reducing the cost), I haven't noticed any change in P2P speeds; the programs are always working at whatever speed I set the cap to (within the upload bandwidth they tell me is available on my connection).
yes i have experienced bandwidth throttling. I can download a normal file online at about 1200 kB/s (cnet, Nzone) but with torrents I get a max of about 120 kB/s , it is usually around 60-70 kB/s dang comcast!!!!
I dont use p2p torrents, but I used a VOIP solution that would reset my VPN and reset my connection every time I picked up the phone. I replaced my VOIP adapter, comcast modem, and had comcast check the line- all were good. When I called to complain, Comcast said I should try their VOIP service. I read on the net they effect competitor's VOIP solutions- isnt that illegal?
I ended up dropping vonage after 5 years because it was unusable the last few months- right after comcast's solution hit this area.
I just noticed that they also dropped 2 channels!!!! WTF!!!! I pay for my analog cable and i expect to get what I pay for!!!! Not some blue screen telling me I need to go digital!!
They don't care or listen to you when you complain. Even when you escalate, they give you the same bull.
They will care when I switch to DSL.
> They will care when I switch to DSL.
It would be nice to think so.
But realistically, they will be HAPPY to lose the 1-2% of users who consume 20% of their bandwidth. That's exactly why they're doing this.
Those 1-2% of users are forcing them to spend money on adding capacity, which drives down their profits.
95%-99% of users are like my Mom -- they won't cancel since all they do is read e-mail and surf the web an hour a day. They love those users.
Well what are we to believe here when this page is owned and pasted with AT&T and Verizon ads?
yes i am having issues with torrents, big time. if i try to download a torrent and do other things on the internet, my connection doesnt just slow down, the whole house loses the internet until i shut off utorrent and reset the modem/router. but, if i set a torrent to download overnight (when no one is using the internet), it zooms, and the connection remains stable. strange stuff.
I live in minneapolis, and p2p has been pretty crummy. I used to lose my connection all together, but its gotten a bit better recently
Dear Comcast: Please find a way to stop throttling P2P over my connection or I will find a way to close my Comcast account.
Join in ...
http://www.comcastsupport.com/com/email.asp
I had the same thing happen. Torrents would just not work. Then I discovered the wonderful world of encryption. Now they work fine.
Yeah that worked for a while for me as well. But after a while they must have caught on because my upload speeds on p2p are still crap. Download isn't bad but seeding is just PAINFUL. No where near the speed that I am paying for.
I have comcast i i regularly get speeds of 600kb/s to 1MB. Using Utorrent or Miro (Tv Show Dl'ds).
My upload speeds always are around 35kb/s....and i can always seed back 100%. I dont think comcast is throtling my area.
i live in philly, if that matters. i don't know if it's comcast or transmission but it takes forever to connect to the peers. but the dl speed is fine once it finds a couple.
My p2p downloads (on bitmetv.org, a well seeded torrent site) always start out at about 80% of my speed capacity. Within about a minute, it slows down to under 30% and stays there. I'm pretty sure Comcast is messing with it because it always goes down to almost exactly the same speed (within 20k or so). Additionally, I'm pretty sure there are additional measures to keep me from being connectible, even though I have my NAT/Firewall/Port settings all set correctly.
Comcast isn't doing anything to my connection. Does this only affect certain areas? Are they going to get my area next?
Where I live, Comcast hasn't started using Sandvine yet. Torrents are just fine for me and everyone else I know on Comcast around here.
But I still don't agree with what Comcast is doing. Almost completely blocking BitTorrent connections doesn't seem reasonable to me, especially when Comcast claims that the packets are just being "delayed."
I don't use torrents so I could care less if Comcast messed with data from P2P clients.
In ATL, when I am at home, I do some torrenting, but not much, I am with you. I like my comcast.
Really? How about when they start slowing down other services? And, you might not even know you are using P2P when you are. It is the backbone of many applications, such as Skype and other IM clients.
They are definitely shaping my Usenet (newsgroups) downloads. Up until about 3 weeks ago I could max out at 10MB/s. Now, it is a razor steady 1MB/s. It's not that the connection is flaky or goes up and down, it is a *flatline* 1 MB/s. They are definitely throttling usenet downloads here (Bay Area).
Um, I think you're a bit confused. Comcast does not offer any 10MB download services. It is impossible to download at 10MB. Perhaps you're confused with Comcast's PowerBoost "feature" that spikes downloads for about a minute when they start. Comcast's premium service is 8Mbit, which translates to about 1MB/sec download, give or take some overhead. If you ever did download at 10MB it's probably when cable internet was just setup and uncapped in your area. Typically these moments do not last long. This happens, as you can see from the history on Broadband Reports' speed tester tools, but 1MB/sec download is normal for their premium plan.
Here in my little suburb of Orlando, FL, I can say that it doesn't appear they're throttling anything. I don't use P2P aps (ie Limewire) for anything, but I do torrent quite a bit. I can have a torrent or two running, my roommate can be playing WoW and I can be playing on Live! with no lag.
Not to say that they aren't doing it elsewhere, but I've been fairly happy with my Comcast service here so far. Of course, I suppose it's only a matter of time until enough people in the area start torrenting that they start throttling here too, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.
I left comcast because they started overcharging me (raising my bill by about 20%) and because they were condescending when i called them about it--i also noticed weird problems with my lingo service when i was running comcast--i called lingo customer service and they said they couldn't see my lingo device, parked beneath my comcast modem--those problems were intermittent but i suspected intentional interference from comcast.
when i switched to at&t dsl i noticed weird problems from them--they lowballed me on the price and then initially failed to send me the $50 cash back and the $49 discount they promised me as i signed up (i complained to them and they promised to fix it--we'll see). they modulate the speed of my connection--although i am paying for their second best dsl (3mbs down), late at night they throttle my connection down to about 184 kbs (down) or even less. to get it back up to speed i have to restart my modem. seems like these isp's are really pirates--hope they get their comeuppance.
I was downloading Law and Order and Comcast sent me an email explaining what I had been downloading and that if I didn't stop, my service would be terminated. Not cool
You gotta be kidding. A simple TV program. At least I got threatened over a recently released movie. I had to go to some site and agree I wouldn't share any more movies. I don't bother downloading any American movies on P2P, only Asian movies and shows for now. I use my premium newsservers for American movies since it's more efficient anyway. Newsservers, so far, are the last bastion for free downloading to one's heart's content. Good grief.
These ISPs are becoming regular c*cksuckers. Peering into your downloads and whatnot. Big brother is really watching.
my whole network gets knocked entirely off line when i open a bit torrent client, on any computer, using any application. then i have spotty connectivity until about 30 minutes after i close the bit torrent.
I've had issues with Comcast and connecting to the Playstation store, internet and servers even when I lug everything downstairs and hook it up directly to the cable modem. They shut the connection down which makes me have to turn the cable modem off, wait a minute and then turn it back on and then wait for 5 minutes for it to reset it self.
Comcast blocks my bittorrent traffic, newsgroup downloads work fine fortunately.
Yes. My roommate and I are big anime fans. Every week we download about 1GB of anime each, and you can feel a definite drop in performance whenever bittorrent is active. I'm talking about downloading a 170MB episode of Bleach, and not being able to check your e-mail in the process. It irks me that Comcast would do such a thing, and we're even contemplating moving over to AT&T, although I'm not sure how much better that would be.
not only just p2p for me, but i cant even access my school stuff because i get RESET msgs from the server, yeah freaking right, way to go comcast
When we write english papers, our teacher has us get 2 peer critques. i was trying to transfer the word documents over aim to my friend but i was unable to, didn't even make it past 1%. so i just gave up and went through email.
People, if you are *SERIOUS* about this and not just using Engadget as a public bitchfest forum, then you need to CANCEL your Comcast account immediately, and get something else. If there's another provider in your area, and you don't leave Comcast, then quit whining about how you're not getting what you pay for. You've got options, and you should speak with the only thing Comcast understands: Your wallet. When they ask why you're leaving, tell them it is because they keep screwing with your traffic.
Comcast lost me PERMANENTLY more than two years ago because their top tier support peopole would not listen to my bulletproof information (with full network captures) on how badly their DHCP servers were screwed up in my area. As a trained network technician, I can say with no uncertainty that when you get a NACK from 15 DHCP servers on other network segments before the proper server on your own segmet sends an ACK (at random), um, hey there, Skippy, you've got SERIOUS infrastructure issues.
If i could get something else then i would but i live in a apartment, and in a comcast only area..
optimized my bit tor client and still get craptastic download speed
Folks, those who want to shaft comcast, there are two method.
1) Sue them. If I were a Comcast customer, I'd get in touch with EFF. Their practices are an 'attack' when viewed from a network security engineers view.
2) Enable AND _FORCE_ header encryption. Details: http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-bypass-comcast-bittorrent-throttling-071021/
I had VOIP working for over a year with no issues, then Comcast introduced their VOIP offering in my area. My VOIP connection never worked correctly from that day forward. I tried two companies and even went to another Comcast users home to rule out my setup. I would lose the conversation in one direction for 10 to 30 seconds, which always resulted in the other person hanging up as they only heard silence. My cable rates went up again this month despite them dropping a channel.
Comcast sucks eggs. I caught them in so many lies. I had them in Arizona, i.e. Cox.They denied polling my modem to check for filesharing, they would send a burst of data that was large enough to shut down my modem every night. I set up a linux server that , upon the large transfer from them , sent about a gig of data back at their dns server. they quit that in a hurry. for about a month lol. Glad i live in Alaska now where Comcast is NOT. GCI way better.
whoa. i've been using comcast for a year now and i've never had any sort of speed problem. i'm in WA, i wonder if this is also a regional thing?
Torrent uploads average 0.3KB/s while downloads average 30KB/s-130Kb/s no doubt signficantly reduced because of the upload ratio