News Comcasting
posted by on October 22 at 9:16 AM
This report from the Electronic Frontier Foundation is a little technical, but the bottom line is this: Adding on to last week’s story that Comcast, the nation’s no. 2 internet provider, was hampering downloads by unplugging BitTorrent, additional tests show that they’re screwing with Gnutella as well.
Get a router and restrict/monitor your ports. You'll be fine.
Poe: What do you mean "restrict/monitor" your ports?!? What does that mean?! I've never trusted Comcast...
mr. poe is saying that the tech unsavy should have no right to complain.
What Bellevue Ave said.
@1 - That's a funny joke :D
What actually works is to forcing protocol header encryption and/or use SSH or VPN tunnels.
When you are sending your torrent requests over the network in the clear, it is easy for Comcast to see what kind of request you are making. These are the packets they intercept and reply with a bogus reply that tricks your client into thinking the connection was lost.
If you encrypt your requests, then they can't distinguish your network traffic from granda millie (to use an Enronism) down the block who is looking up a pecan pie recipe.
Comcast can't intercept what they can't read.
@2 - Read the link above, and you should most likely be able to configure your client to encrypt your headers. That's the simplest as you don't need to know anything about SSH or VPN.
If that doesn't work, then this is a great opportunity to learn something about SSH and VPN! Not only will it keep you downloading loads or pr0n, music, and movies, but you'll be able to impress you friends with your 1337 skillz.
I heard a rumor that Radiohead's "In Rainbows" theme was inspired by Comcast. Around the studio, apparently Jonny kept referring to it as their Comcaschtick.
@5
Didn't read in to the actual issue. My bad. Wow, Comcast is ridiculous.
@2
Try option #1 in #4's link. Ignore #1. Port restricting has nothing to do with it.
Thank god Comcast is restricting transmission of the non-copyrighted Bible overseas.
Luckily, the Book of Mormon is copyrighted, since it was written on gold tablets by Mitt Romney's forbears in the USA, when they got bored one winter.
@5: Actually, the SSH tunneling is the only thing that works. Merely encrypting your traffic is not sufficient: the appliances Comcast uses to shape traffic will send RST packets simply whenever there are a number of inbound TCP connections to the same port. It's a very heavy-handed approach to networking and breaks all sorts of things in addition to file-sharing applications (Lotus Notes' file transfers, for example.)
As usual, the Slashdot comments are instructive:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/19/1417238
More info, including a link for SSH tunneling setup instructions:
http://torrentfreak.com/comcast-throttles-bittorrent-traffic-seeding-impossible/
Comcast sucks donkey dick!
Aren't they crying about the extra usage of their bandwidth along with the usual DMCA garbage?
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