BitTorrent

Comcast to set monthly bandwidth limits

Paul Mah — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:33:11 -0400

Beginning October 1, Comcast, the largest provider of cable broadband in the U.S., will impose a monthly limit of 250 gigabytes of bandwidth on residential users. Customers who exceed the 250 G-byte limit will be warned to curtail their use. A one year service suspension will result should the limit be exceeded again in the next six months. This is a departure from the current situation where Comcast will contact high-bandwidth users should they cross an internal threshold. The current cap comes on the heels of the FCC ruling that Comcast violated net neutrality principles with their attempts to throttle BitTorrent traffic.

To find out more about this new move by Comcast:
- check out this PC World article

FCC set to vote against Comcast

Paul Mah — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:01:34 -0400

If reports are to be believed, the majority of FCC commissioners will vote in favor of punishing Comcast for secretly impeding BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing on its network. Scheduled to take place at the FCC on Friday, the entire case stemmed from a request (pdf) submitted by the Free Press in November 2007. On the other hand, Comcast and their supporters do not agree that the FCC has the authority to impose any penalty. (You can read up on more arguments to the effect here) Personally, while I am all for unrestricted Internet access, I question if any Internet Service Provider (ISP) can maintain viability in the face of unrestricted network utilization. Will punishments force ISPs to eventually revert back to metered Internet, or simply spur greater competitiveness? Only time will tell.

For more on this debacle:
- check out this BetaNews article

Google to develop software to detect ISP throttling

Paul Mah — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:41:58 -0400

Always vocal about its stance in favor of net neutrality, Google has finally thrown down the gauntlet and declared that it is working on software tools that will enable users to detect whether their broadband connections are being manipulated by their ISPs. This was revealed by the Senior Policy Director for Google, Richard Whitt, who said this during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University.

According to Whitt, the idea is that customers at least be able to find out if they are being throttled, and then let their unhappiness be known to their ISPs. Not everyone agrees though. In a detailed post, Technology Consultant George Ou outlined how a single BitTorrent user can ruin the broadband experience in a typical household.

For more on ISP throttling detection:
- check out this HotHardware article

Comcast testing new methods of throttling bandwidth

Paul Mah — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:00:09 -0400

In the wake of the furor over the way Comcast uses TCP reset flags to throttle BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic, the company is testing out a trio of protocol agnostic methods for controlling network congestion. The tests are being conducted in Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as a third one slated for Colorado Springs later this year. Different types of hardware and configurations will be utilized at every location, with Comcast tightlipped about the exact hardware or rules used to manage the flow of traffic.

Whatever it is, as Comcast has promised to drop its current practice of discriminating against P2P traffic by this year, it certainly will finalize on one method and get it rolled-out nation-wide before then.

For more Comcast:
- check out this The Register article

DOS attack against Revision3’s services traced to MediaDefender

Paul Mah — Fri, 30 May 2008 07:17:50 -0400

Revision3, an online media company, has alleged that an outage experienced over Memorial Day weekend was traced to a Denial of Service (DOS) attack initiated by servers owned by anti-piracy group MediaDefender. In a detailed blog, Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback detailed their network sleuthing, which traced the offending DOS network packets back to MediaDefender. The shocker was when both the CEO and the Vice President of Operations at MediaDefender admitted that they have been injecting a broad array of torrents--without authorization--into Revision3's BitTorrent tracking server.

This all was made possible by a misconfiguration at Revision3. Revision3 unwittingly closed the backdoor just prior to the weekend which, Louderback hypothesized, caused MediaDefender's servers to throw "an epic tantrum", slinging upward of 8,000 SYN packets a second at Revision3. Revision3 uses BitTorrent to host its own legal content. The FBI are looking into the matter now, but it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

For more about the alleged DOS attack:
- check out this InformationWeek article

TorrentSpy gets shut down in the U.S.

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 06:59:53 -0400

Seeing how no readers of DailyTechRag would ever download copyrighted media from the Internet with the aid of BitTorrent files, this is likely the first you've heard of TorrentSpy, a popular Torrent search engine. If you really haven't heard of TorrentSpy before, I'm afraid it's too late: the site has officially blocked access to users whose IP addresses originate in the United States. This comes as no surprise, as the Dutch company that runs the site has been involved in a bitter legal battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) during recent months. Despite this fact, TorrentSpy claims that the shutdown is unrelated to the site's legal woes. "TorrentSpy's decision to stop accepting U.S. visitors was not compelled by any court," the company said in a statement. "Rather, it arises out of an uncertain legal climate in the United States regarding user privacy and the apparent tension between U.S. and European Union Internet privacy laws."

Exactly what "user privacy" issues are the folks at TorrentSpy concerned about? Ars Technica reports that a U.S. district judge has just ruled to uphold an earlier ruling that will require "server logging so the Motion Picture Association of America can obtain the IP addresses of those connecting to BitTorrent files via the service." That's a big win for the studios--if only TorrentSpy hadn't just blocked American traffic from site, thereby making the server logs totally irrelevant to the MPAA. According to TorrentSpy, the site will remain open for users outside of the U.S., though the company's future still remains unclear.

For more on TorrentSpy's shutdown:
- see this ZDnet article
- and this Ars Technica article