Speaking as a network manager, if people only used it for the legal stuff (Linux ISO’s, and World of Warcraft patches being the main two legal things people do) we wouldn’t be having this debate. People download their ISO or WoW patch, the whole event is over in a couple hours, they shutdown the client and move on with their lives.

The stuff most people actually use this for goes more like this …. select every episode of the simpsons ever produced, a bunch of family guy episodes, 6 or 7 movies, hit download and let it download for days, weeks or months on end. Then I get a nice little letter from NBC, FOX, or some other copyright holder telling me to take it down, which due to the nature of BT and the legal requirements of the safe harbor provision in the DMCA means that I lock your modem and have to give you a lecture regarding right and wrong.

I manage a relatively small network (something like 2000 cable modems) and spend easily 10 hours a week researching and locking accounts because of this.

Why shouldn’t I just block BT? Do it’s redeaming qualities and uses outweigh what the criminals (yes, sharing copyrighted matierials w/o authorization makes you a criminal in this country) abuse it for?

It puts a huge strain on network resources, mostly due to people BREAKING THE LAW and creates a non-trivial amount of wasted labor to boot?

Add to the fact that the protocol creates not dozens but in many cases hundreds or thousands of connections all taxing routers, switches etc; that now need to be upgraded and I’d like to toss the whole thing out the window.

IN short, P2P is not inherently bad, but what people actually use it for is. I’ve often thought that a blacklist of trackers primarily intended for distributing illegal content that I could subscribe to via BGP would be a wonderful creation. Then I could let my users do all the legal stuff they want and get rid of the headache induced by the illegal activity.

You know, I’m not so sure that Comcast is so worried about the size of the files as much as the concurrent connections. You realize that for every web connection to an internet site you actually open up 4 to 8 ports to make the connection. P2P can sometimes open up to dozens of concurrent connections. And since TCP/IP is limited to 65,535 ports at the gateway, they can get eaten up pretty quickly. And when more ports are requested, the gateway tears down the oldest connection first which sends resets on the connection, and on a busy network this can cause spotty service. P2P therefore wrecks other peoples’ previously connected sessions faster than web browsing can wreck a P2P session.

This is basic networking and it would be the same on all networks, not just comcast. And because Comcast is getting so big and jamming more and more customers on the same trunk, they are forced to do what they can to limit frivolous connections.

I can understand that a sustained download rate of X mb per second can hurt the provider’s network as a whole, but they would have to specify it in their TOS first.. and maybe they do… it’s just that most people never read the fine prints.

But you are not buying “bandwidth” when you subscribe to Comcast’s service. You pay a fee to connect to their network, which has policies and protocols it enforces. You have to pass through their network to get to the Internet. Sometimes several hops depending on your location.

If its bandwidth someone needs, those traditional internet connections are still available and they are lots cheaper than they used to be. But you will need your own router. A 45 MB T3 line runs about $2,000 per month, but its cheaper if you get burstable speeds. Then you have bandwidth, and you can torrent till your ears bleed.

Companies that distribute software solely via torrents are quite possibly shooting themselves in the foot. Government and most corporate systems disallow P2P because of the security risks and the (again) bandwidth it consumes on the network. Sure they can distribute software that way but unless they allow for FTP or normal http downloads, they are not going to reach their full customer base.

Finally, using words like “wrong” and “illegal” and “Crime” to describe what comcast did assigns a level of morality to this whole issue. What they did was sloppy and clumsy, heavy-handed too, which is exactly what Comcast is known for and why I dumped them two years ago to get FIOS. But its their network, and they can govern it the way they want.

Yeah, to my knowledge, Bittorrent P2P packets are of normal size. However, the application spawns dozens of ports at once whereas http and other protocols use 4 or eight-

And for Comcast’s basic service, such applications are disruptive to other users trying to use the bandwidth at the same time.

P2P users have been invited to upgrade to Comcast’s premium service that has less restrictions, and so far, I don’t know of any Bittorrent users that have taken Comcast up on their offer.

I get Comcast advertising too. I really don’t remember any verbage in their flyers talking about using P2P applications that can crush my neighbor’s access. It also doesn’t say that I can’t send smtp messages that originate from my own PC either. Instead they make me send email through comcast’s smtp server.

Is that wrong too? I also want to see what all of my neighbors are using for printers and see if they have any open shares of their local hard drives. But dammit, Comcast blocks that too. Is this illegal shaping of traffic?

I see no difference in these restrictions. But the religious zealots of net neutrality ignore these facts. Rather, they focus on P2P and claim they have been mistreated or comically, that Comcast is breaking the law.

When you say “A packet is a packet is a packet” you are wrong, wrong, and wrong. Packets can be fragmented, oversized, specially crafted to damage certain equipment, and can contain payloads that are against the terms of service of just about every ISP out there.

Bittorrent p2p traffic doesn’t, just by being bittorent traffic, meet the conditions you are asserting in this statement. I agree that ISPs should do what they can to protect me from ill-formed and malicious packets, but Comcast’s actions go far beyond that, damaging the ability of their own customers to use they paid Comcast for and which Comcast advertised. It’s wrong.

The rational people are those that agree that something has to be done to provide a common service to all subscribers when there are users who hog bandwidth.

The irrational people are those that believe, almost religiously, that TCP/IP and traffic management cannot evolve, ever. That it is a perfect protocol and it is okay to overclock it with certain applications an no one is allowed to criticize those that do it. In fact, the hysteria in adamantly refusing to allow ISP’s to manage their own netflows is more akin to religious zealots that say that embryonic stem cells should never be touched because they are somehow magical repositories of life.

When you say “A packet is a packet is a packet” you are wrong, wrong, and wrong. Packets can be fragmented, oversized, specially crafted to damage certain equipment, and can contain payloads that are against the terms of service of just about every ISP out there. And to say that it is none of the ISP’s business what the contents are is also incorrect. Chances are, the ISP’s at both the source and destination inspect your packets to ensure they comply with their security policies. Those that do not comply are dropped and sometimes IP’s get blacklisted.

I agree that it is foolish of Comcast to have launched new methods of shaping their network traffic without being open about it, and they messed up much further by not training their personnel on how to relate the information to the customers. The result was flat out denials and lots of confusion.