“The secret throttling of bandwidth is restraint of freedom of speech; many use Bit torrent to disseminate minority political speech that would otherwise be less accessible.”

Then Richard Bennett says:

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on you, dude. Who in the world depends on BitTorrent to communicate their political opinions?

I never said ‘depends’ but ‘use’, which is different.

The books that I have in the past found using p2p include numerous books by Noam Chomsky. These are more available on p2p than in any other medium, although certainly if you live in NYC or Chicago you can find in a bookstore. But what if you live in Des Moines or Bismark, North Dakota?

The second point I would make, that Richard Bennett ignores, and I believe is much more significant is this:

Further, it cannot be ignored that the distribution of linux and FOSS to dismantle the centralized power structures of large corporations is itself an act with a political dimension. So, any attempt to dismantle or disrupt Bit torrent traffic is a de facto act of political repression.

It is clear from Ed Felten’s work that this throttling was specific to Bit Torrent traffic, not just bandwidth. If an ISP wants to set a limit, so be it. That would be fine. I think most people want unmetered service, but if Comcast wants to offer a max throughput or max traffic per month that would also be fine, too.

Just let us know what you are doing, so we can vote with our pocketbooks and go to another company, or enact regulation to stop it, if that is our democratic choice.

Comcast did what they did in secret, and lied about it because they KNEW IT WAS WRONG.

The Internet as a whole, you see, depends on people using TCP in order to keep from going unstable. The entire traffic management capability of the Internet is wrapped-up inside TCP, and it’s quite easily defeated, without hacking any kernel code, simply by using capabilities already present on each and every system that connects to the Internet: it’s called UDP. UDP is a non-flow-controlled protocol intended for real-time applications where the TCP retry metrics aren’t appropriate, and BitTorrent uses UDP as well as TCP.

Jaminus mentions some P2P applications, and lumps BT in with them, but that’s not the issue in this case. Comcast allows BitTorrent to run in P2P mode just fine (downloading while seeding.) They only get upset when your downloads are all done and you operate in seeding-only mode, which is, in effect, a server. Comcast isn’t down on P2P as far as I can tell, but it is very much down on Servers, and always has been.

If upstream bandwidth users are a money losing proposition, Comcast may just prefer that they go away. Much like all-you-can-eat buffets would prefer that gorgers not come around, or like how hospitals would prefer that those without insurance get sick somewhere else.

Back when residential broadband was a newcomer, the client/server distinction made sense and residential users had no real need to use their connection as a server. As a remnant from the past, nowadays many providers still include a clause in their TOS very similar to Comcast’s ban on servers. But it’s widely understood that using residential internet as a server is acceptable as long as there are no sustained, commercial-grade high-bandwidth activities like web hosting. So even though most people are technically prohibited from using a server, many do without repercussion or so much as a peep from their provider.

Comcast’s network can handle peer to peer traffic in moderation. Instead of simply banning these server-based protocols, Comcast would be wise to ensure residential users do not overutilize peer to peer applications. Simply educating people about the network congestion caused by peer to peer traffic and giving customers tips on “bandwidth conservation” would be steps in the right direction for Comcast.

I am a Comcast customer because it is my only choice. Even though I chose my home largely because it was only 5000 feet from my CO and there are no technical limitations on my loop, Verizon refuses me DSL service because their CO has been maxed out for almost two months now. But my phone number qualifies on their system, so the only way I can check the status of my CO is to place a DSL order, pay $95, and wait two weeks to hear back from Verizon engineers as to the eligibility of my line.

Comcast has given me zero incentive to shift my bandwidth-heavy tasks to off-peak hours. Nevertheless, I do my heavy downloading between midnight and 6AM, out of respect for their network. But most “hogs” are not so courteous. I download 720p movies from Xbox Live IPTV, and they are up to 10GB each. Just a dozen of these movies a month can generate some serious traffic. The only thing discouraging users from overutilizing their connection is the concern that Comcast will terminate their account for exceeding the secret cap. But it’s unlikely that Bittorrent uploading at 800 Kb/s will rack up the gigabytes fast enough to get an account blacklisted.

Seth, your statement that “no business can afford to sell server-level bandwidth at home-use-level cost” doesn’t reflect reality. Given the current discussion is about Bittorrent, I assume you define server-level bandwidth as what’s used by peer to peer applications. But I challenge you to find a legitimate report of a FiOS or DSL customer being terminated or asked to upgrade service due to heavy P2P use. DSL and FiOS are business ventures which use aggregate usage to develop a price model that can generate profit without restricting bandwidth consumption or peer to peer traffic. DSL and FTTH do prohibit web hosting and block inbound servers on a handful of ports, but there’s no blanket server ban or blocking of peer to peer file sharing protocols. Obviously Verizon and AT&T; use traffic shaping, but the impact of their throttling on peer to peer is far less noticeable than what Comcast uses.

Comcast business-class broadband is horrible for residential use. Comcast workplace account representatives are not available except during weekday work hours. While residential service has 24/7/365 support for billing and technical issues, for whatever reason Comcast workplace cannot discuss account issues except Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. Plus the $250 installation fee is completely unjustifiable for residential users, because unlike businesses there is no need for Comcast technicians to wire a building for cable internet especially when all that needs to be done is replacing a residential grade modem with a business class one. And one-year mandatory contracts for workplace broadband are fine for businesses which have stability, but forcing customers to sign contracts is problematic because many people rent and switch homes regularly. Comcast’s triple play gives discounts to those who commit to a year of service but still lets customers elect against a contract, while business cable outright refuses any customer who declines a contract. Unlike cell-phone service, in many parts of the U.S,. Comcast isn’t the service provider, so if someone moves but they are in a contract they can’t just transfer service.

If Comcast can’t make money because of peer to peer users, they would be smart to offer business-class service with residential power users in mind. Sure, it’ll cost $100 a month or more, but there is no doubt people are willing to pay, especially when Comcast is their only choice. No contracts or mandatory on-site installation should be necessary.

It’s technically possible for a good hacker to hack their Linux (or FreeBSD) computer’s TCP/IP stack so that it violates TCP standards and doesn’t back off properly on congestion. However, an application (p2p or otherwise) cannot possibly do that — it needs to be done by changing the operating system (if, like in all modern machines, the TCP/IP stack runs in kernel-land).

If you successfully hacked your kernel’s stack, then all applications running on your machine would “benefit”… as long as no un-hacked network apparatus correctly implementing TCP was anywhere along your packets’ paths, of course (including the peer you’re communicating with, but also routers, firewalls, and the like, along the way). Targeting p2p specifically would be useless anyway (you’d just use other, non-p2p protocols and applications); using a watchdog to monitor leafnodes for such suspect behavior might work (but anybody who’s hacked their TCP/IP stack for such purposes surely knows enough to block RST packets too — so, Comcast’s behavior would NOT harm such uberhackers, only ordinary folks).

So, summarizing: no, it is NOT possible that Comcast (who DOES have plenty of excellent network engineers, after all) is as confused as you are between the responsibilities of the various layers in a TCP/IP stack (and the extreme unlikelihood of such violations being widespread, in a world full of Windows machines, routers, etc, etc;-).

Alex

Back when residential broadband was a newcomer, the client/server distinction made sense and residential users had no real need to use their connection as a server. As a remnant from the past, nowadays many providers still include a clause in their TOS very similar to Comcast’s ban on servers. But it’s widely understood that using residential internet as a server is acceptable as long as there are no sustained, commercial-grade high-bandwidth activities like web hosting. So even though most people are technically prohibited from using a server, many do without repercussion or so much as a peep from their provider.

Comcast’s network can handle peer to peer traffic in moderation. Instead of simply banning these server-based protocols, Comcast would be wise to ensure residential users do not overutilize peer to peer applications. Simply educating people about the network congestion caused by peer to peer traffic and giving customers tips on “bandwidth conservation” would be steps in the right direction for Comcast.

I am a Comcast customer because it is my only choice. Even though I chose my home largely because it was only 5000 feet from my CO and there are no technical limitations on my loop, Verizon refuses me DSL service because their CO has been maxed out for almost two months now. But my phone number qualifies on their system, so the only way I can check the status of my CO is to place a DSL order, pay $95, and wait two weeks to hear back from Verizon engineers as to the eligibility of my line.

Comcast has given me zero incentive to shift my bandwidth-heavy tasks to off-peak hours. Nevertheless, I do my heavy downloading between midnight and 6AM, out of respect for their network. But most “hogs” are not so courteous. I download 720p movies from Xbox Live IPTV, and they are up to 10GB each. Just a dozen of these movies a month can generate some serious traffic. The only thing discouraging users from overutilizing their connection is the concern that Comcast will terminate their account for exceeding the secret cap. But it’s unlikely that Bittorrent uploading at 800 Kb/s will rack up the gigabytes fast enough to get an account blacklisted.

Seth, your statement that “no business can afford to sell server-level bandwidth at home-use-level cost” doesn’t reflect reality. Given the current discussion is about Bittorrent, I assume you define server-level bandwidth as what’s used by peer to peer applications. But I challenge you to find a legitimate report of a FiOS or DSL customer being terminated or asked to upgrade service due to heavy P2P use. DSL and FiOS are business ventures which use aggregate usage to develop a price model that can generate profit without restricting bandwidth consumption or peer to peer traffic. DSL and FTTH do prohibit web hosting and block inbound servers on a handful of ports, but there’s no blanket server ban or blocking of peer to peer file sharing protocols. Obviously Verizon and AT&T use traffic shaping, but the impact of their throttling on peer to peer is far less noticeable than what Comcast uses.

Comcast business-class broadband is horrible for residential use. Comcast workplace account representatives are not available except during weekday work hours. While residential service has 24/7/365 support for billing and technical issues, for whatever reason Comcast workplace cannot discuss account issues except Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. Plus the $250 installation fee is completely unjustifiable for residential users, because unlike businesses there is no need for Comcast technicians to wire a building for cable internet especially when all that needs to be done is replacing a residential grade modem with a business class one. And one-year mandatory contracts for workplace broadband are fine for businesses which have stability, but forcing customers to sign contracts is problematic because many people rent and switch homes regularly. Comcast’s triple play gives discounts to those who commit to a year of service but still lets customers elect against a contract, while business cable outright refuses any customer who declines a contract. Unlike cell-phone service, in many parts of the U.S,. Comcast isn’t the service provider, so if someone moves but they are in a contract they can’t just transfer service.

If Comcast can’t make money because of peer to peer users, they would be smart to offer business-class service with residential power users in mind. Sure, it’ll cost $100 a month or more, but there is no doubt people are willing to pay, especially when Comcast is their only choice. No contracts or mandatory on-site installation should be necessary.

It’s technically possible for a good hacker to hack their Linux (or FreeBSD) computer’s TCP/IP stack so that it violates TCP standards and doesn’t back off properly on congestion. However, an application (p2p or otherwise) cannot possibly do that — it needs to be done by changing the operating system (if, like in all modern machines, the TCP/IP stack runs in kernel-land).

If you successfully hacked your kernel’s stack, then all applications running on your machine would “benefit”… as long as no un-hacked network apparatus correctly implementing TCP was anywhere along your packets’ paths, of course (including the peer you’re communicating with, but also routers, firewalls, and the like, along the way). Targeting p2p specifically would be useless anyway (you’d just use other, non-p2p protocols and applications); using a watchdog to monitor leafnodes for such suspect behavior might work (but anybody who’s hacked their TCP/IP stack for such purposes surely knows enough to block RST packets too — so, Comcast’s behavior would NOT harm such uberhackers, only ordinary folks).

So, summarizing: no, it is NOT possible that Comcast (who DOES have plenty of excellent network engineers, after all) is as confused as you are between the responsibilities of the various layers in a TCP/IP stack (and the extreme unlikelihood of such violations being widespread, in a world full of Windows machines, routers, etc, etc;-).

Alex

Richard, you’ve brought a lot to this discussion. Thanks.

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on you, dude. Who in the world depends on BitTorrent to communicate their political opinions? I can find everything from Nazis to Anarcho-Syndicalists on the Web, using plain old HTTP. Why I would need to use the proprietary BitTorrent protocol to get access to political speech is a total mystery.

Or are you just trying to be hyper-dramatic?

Seth makes the ultimate killer point here, by the way. Comcast will be glad to sell you a commercial account if you want to run a server, but the residential account is restricted from server operation. A BitTorrent seed is nothing more or less than a server, hence it’s a clear violation of TOS for residential accounts. If it’s all that important to you to serve up files with BitTorrent, buy a commercial account.

This stuff really isn’t complicated, once you sweep the histrionics aside.

To dig into the smear campaign a bit I would suggest two excellent sites:

exxonsecrets.org & http://www.sourcewatch.org

Second,

Seth is also right about the informational exclusions that libertarians make–unable to ever recognize a market failure, or a successful government organization–they just can’t exist. Amartya Sen so cogently made this argument in Development as Freedom, I am tiring of repeating it here, as libertarians are without riposte to Sen’s arguments.

A case in point is Jim’s recent argument made in a recent post, the response to which I shall post below:

Once again, someone at TLF has defined a market success so narrowly, that by his very definition, it is impossible ever to discuss an example of a market failure. Here we have Jim Harper, discussing the recent supression by Comcast of Bit torrent traffic:

“But I expect that we’ll soon learn more about the situation, and the conclusions to be drawn from it will be less obvious. There might be legitimate security reasons for what Comcast has done. We’ll see. We should expect full disclosure from Comcast.

My take: If Comcast is “shaping” traffic inconsistent with their terms of service, for non-network-security reasons such as copyright protection or surreptitious usage control, they shouldn’t be doing that.

More important is the meta-point: Independent testers found what they believe to be an impropriety in Comcast’s provision of broadband. They called it out, and interested parties among advocacy organizations and the media swarmed all over it. Comcast has to answer the charge, whether meritorious or not.

These are market processes working their will, and the outcome will be reached in short order-”

By this very low standard, it is impossible for there ever to be anything disclosed that is an example of a market failure and that would therefore require government intervention because if it is discovered and therefore discussed, Jim would just say something like: “My meta-point remains: Independent testing revealed alleged wrongful behavior by Comcast and an array of forces are requiring them to account for it. This is being done through operation of the market, without government intervention.” However, realize that this is just yet another example of a large corporation stifling public discussion to further its business plan. The internet is the new town square, and to permit toll booths and road blocks and secret protocols to intervene is unacceptable.

Comcast has, despite the gnashing of teeth of the libertarians, convincingly made the argument for network neutrality legislation that no one else had as yet made so eloquently.

The secret throttling of bandwidth is restraint of freedom of speech; many use Bit torrent to disseminate minority political speech that would otherwise be less accessible. Further, it cannot be ignored that the distribution of linux and FOSS to dismantle the centralized power structures of large corporations is itself an act with a political dimension. So, any attempt to dismantle or disrupt Bit torrent traffic is a de facto act of political repression.

Ok, point taken. Now, let’s define ‘server-level bandwidth’, and while we’re at it – perhaps define ‘home-use-level’ as well.

Is 64kb/sec upstream for an hour or two per day within ‘home-use-level’? Yes? No? Depends? Sometimes?

It is easy to throw around opposing terms like ‘server-level’ and ‘home-use-level’ in order to make a convincing argument. But to define those terms, even generally or vaguely, is much less easy. If only Comcast would firm-up their definitions of terms such as those.

No definition which encompasses all possible situations need be developed here, because this is a very simple case indeed.

Ok, point taken. Now, let’s define ‘server-level bandwidth’, and while we’re at it – perhaps define ‘home-use-level’ as well.

Is 64kb/sec upstream for an hour or two per day within ‘home-use-level’? Yes? No? Depends? Sometimes?

It is easy to throw around opposing terms like ‘server-level’ and ‘home-use-level’ in order to make a convincing argument. But to define those terms, even generally or vaguely, is much less easy. If only Comcast would firm-up their definitions of terms such as those.

But, main point, again: No business can afford to sell server-level bandwidth at home-use-level cost. It doesn’t take any Neutrality Commission to say that, yet making the point doesn’t do any good.