Comcast hunts down internal info leaker
According to an inside source, Comcast is trying to hunt down who leaked the internal BitTorrent memo to certain websites. The rumor is that they’re interrogating supervisors and then customer service representatives. Memos regarding the dire consequences of providing internal information to the press are being distributed. Reached for comment, the leaker said, “I really don’t care… I am happy I turned over a few rocks and let the world know.” We informed about the AP story which confirmed that Comcast, one of the biggest ISP in the world, is blocking and throttling BitTorrent traffic in their network.
The internal memo describes the way how to handle questions from customers regarding this BT matter. It was sent out to all the customer service staff at the Maryland call center.
You may get customers who are contacting us with regard to several articles which were published recently, accusing Comcast of blocking or otherwise filtering customers’ Internet traffic. An in-depth AP story suggests Comcast is hindering our customers’ ability to use BitTorrent, a peer to peer file sharing program. If a customer contacts us to inquire about this, please use the following talking points.
Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent
We respect our customers’ privacy and we don’t monitor specific customer activities on the Internet or track individual online behavior, such as which websites they visit. Therefore, we do not know whether any individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site…
We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good experience online and we use the latest technologies to manage our network. This is standard practice for ISPs and network operators all over the world. We rarely disclose our vendors or our processes for operating our network both for competitive reasons and to protect against network abuse.
… and similar crap
Come on Comcast, doesn’t it suck to hide something we all know happens?
Source: Consumerist
Comments(20)
*L* At what point do you drop the facade and give it up…
I have Comcast and was wondering why my DL’s have been slower for awhile. It all makes sense now and I real don’t want to go back to DSL.
metoo… too bad this is the only cable company here
Looks liek this might finally give me a reason to swictch to wireless broadband.. it’s about the same price and much quicker
Prove it, instead of posting useless cr_p.
one alternative is a 24/7 virtual private network service. (VPN)
or an on demand SSH Tunnel service.
think of it like this:
if 2 homes are separated by a pond and the pond is the public internet, a VPN would be like a garden hose that stretches from one home to the other across the pond.
PRIVATE “water” can flow between the homes through the hose.
as a subscriber all of your data would be sent out to the company computers on ONLY ONE PORT! on the other end it would be assigned an IP address and the approp PORT number for its data type. this is the PROXY aspect of the above services.
so what! right?
see,
now comcast really can’t tell what kind of packets you are sending out. they can’t throttle your traffic!
when you research providers, just look for someone that will allow P2P over a anonymous proxy, combined with an SSH Tunnel or VPN service.
this method works guys and is one way to get what you want.
this is an interesting link:
HOW TO BYPASS INTERNET CENSORSHIP
http://www.zensur.freerk.com/
Most wireless ISP are way slower. They have many more drop outs, due to interference, and despite their claims, having used them myself, I much more prefer fiber optical line by far.
Comcast and Version are certainly shaping their traffic. You have only a few choices here,
1) manage your traffic, for customer experience
2) allow abuse of bandwidth by a few ruining customer experience
3) provide more infrastructure to provide more bandwidth
4) save huge cost by making P2P or specifically Bit Torrent illegal
What do you think the corporation like MPAA and RIAA will lobby to pass?
In addition, President Bush’s war on terrorism, certainly isn’t fond of anyone transmitting without spying. So it goes to show, that we end users can expect more control over what we share, communicate and access information.
If you really care about peer to peer, be active, get organized, and fight for your rights…
In a intelligent method, not flame-baiting fanboism!
This leak is better than HALO 3!
@7: Thank you! For once I hear someone with a brain that USES it! Good for you and I’m all there with you. Just tell me when and where… As for this article… AHHHHHHH!!! FCK YOU COMCAST!!! i HATE you!!! Someone could have a really good lawsuit against these MoFo’s if something ever happens. I would love to see their little tyrant company hurting one of these days. Grrrrrr. Believe me, if there was another ISP that offered service in my area, I’d switch in a heartbeat.
@9: “Someone could have a really good lawsuit against these MoFo’s if something ever happens.” — For what? They don’t prevent you from doing an activity, they just throttle the speed you get doing it. You DO have alternatives (dial-up, Sat downlink, etc) if there isn’t another broadband provider you can turn to … but none of those would be as fast as Comcast (most likely).
Does it suck!? Absolutely. Could this business practice turn around and bite them on the a**? Sure. Is it something that they could be sued for? Well .. people will sue over anything, so that could happen .. would it ever win? Not a chance.
Comcast Stazis goostep their way around the office to get you!
#11 wtf?
#4 You are wrong and you will be sorry if you go from hardline to wireless, especially if you game as latency blows and packet loss is rampant on wireless this is a well known issue. Anyone can advertise any speed and they almost always fail to deliver.
My advice….. get a business package from your ISP. I used to get throttled too, until i decided to get a business package and my speeds have been phenomenal for years now, 0 throttling. Also if you ever feel that your ISP (or any large company) is screwing you over this is what you do:
1) RESEARCH WHO REGULATES THEM ! There is only one thing that scares big companies: Getting in trouble with the people that regulate them. Find out who their daddy is and get ready to tell on em ! This info is not hard to find if you search around the internet a bit. If they are unregulated, Better Business Bureau and your states Attorney General (in the USA) will be the “daddies”.
2) FIND OUT WHO RUNS THEM ! There are very few people that can get stuff done in big companies: 1 group is the bosses, the other group is the people that will get yelled at if the bosses hear about it. Finding the executives is easy and important, this is public information and is usually easily found on the company’s website.
3) WRITE THE LETTERS ! Make sure that you have a letter made out to the CEO and any pertinent Vice Presidents that may oversee the department you have a problem with, also make sure that the Corporate Attorney is in the list. Write a seperate letter for each one. Also make sure that you have letters made out to the regulatory bodies.
4) CALL/EMAIL CUSTOMER SERVICE, BUT ONLY ONCE ! Do NOT call customer service more than one time. If you sense any incompetence, stone walling, etc DONT WASTE TIME. You will find that most customer service centers will either be very helpful or not helpful at all it will be easy to tell which is which. Before you start talking about your problem make sure that you document the time, the operator#, etc and make sure that the person that you speak with is WELL AWARE that you have written letters that are ready to be sent and tell them “I AM READY TO ESCALATE THIS COMPLAINT TO THE PRESIDENTIAL LEVEL IF YOU CANNOT RESOLVE MY PROBLEM TODAY”. Also make sure you mention the executives by name and title so that the rep knows that YOU know your sh1t.
5) IF NO RESOLUTION, THEN SEND THE LETTERS ! Trust me if it gets to a presidential complaint level SOMETHING WILL BE DONE. Especially if the company has clearly done something wrong (mis-advertised their rates, features, speeds, etc). Stay professional but when someone contacts you to take your complaint show them no quarter, push for extra credits, free service, etc, etc. At this point DO NOT ACCEPT APOLOGIES AS A RESOLUTION.
6) IF NO RESOLUTION FOLLOW THROUGH WITH REGULATORY/LEGAL ACTION.
This is a basic model but a model that i have used successfully several times. I remember i sent an email complaint to my ISPs customer service due to the fact that i was getting 10000/1300 speeds on a 15000/2000 plan. After threating to go to the regulatory bodies and write a presidential complaint letter i had an apology call within 8 hours of submitting my complaint and my line has tested at 18000/2500 on my 15000/2000 plan ever since that day
thats tight….good job jdizzle…im sure comcast will be bombarded will a 1000 presidential complaintsby tommorow…
#6,
Not saying your method wouldn’t work but its been tried on the Comcast network and few people have had any success.
Here is a quick-and-dirty way to determine whether, and how much, you are being affected by the P2P management that I described at the top of this thread.
1. Start your P2P application, wait about 15 minutes for full connectivity to be established.
2. In a Console window, type
netstat -s | find “Reset Connections”
and write down the number that you get in response.
3. Exactly one hour later, repeat Step 2. Subtract the first number from this latest number. The result is how many connections were terminated by a “RST” in the past hour.
If you have a VPN, or an access to a non-Comcast line, repeat the above process (as much as you can, try to match the conditions — same applications, same uploads and downloads).
Now compare the two numbers. If you are being affected, the “Comcast” number will be an order of magnitude higher than the “non-Comcast” number.
jdizzle1337, nice load of BS!… unfortunately, for most ppl in won’t do! (that’s why it’s BS, btw)
A business plan is one thing… a regular user plan is another!
Most ppl use a faster or slower user plan and by doing so, ISP’s can limit the speed all they want, stipulated in the contract… all down to 1KB/s (can vary)! That’s how things work! Ppl can send all the presidential complaints they want, unless they get a business plan where in the contract it says clearly that the allocated bandwidth is permanent, that means the lowest limit is that and won’t drop below, PERIOD, no one can do anything against the speed throttling!
This is a problem on a lot of ISP’s all over the world… and as long as the contracts are done that way there will be no solution for regular users.
Like Law said, 1) or 4) depending in which country you live… but 2) WILL NEVER HAPPEN!… and 3) with time if there is competition but not today, nor tomorrow!
BTW, for a business plan, in my country, I need to have a registered company or some sort of legit business, otherwise a contract for a business plan can’t be made!
wireless sucks, takes me days to upload 30MB file
Well #15 sorry about your bad luck.
In the US most cable providers offer “residential” and “business” packages and the “business” packages just have higher upload ratings. There is no contract, etc or anything to sign and you don’t have to be a registered corporation to have one. Sorry that you live in communist China and your rules are different.
3 of my friends complained about being throttled but as soon as they switched to business plans like i did (an extra $30/mo) the throttling stopped, i am not saying that this is an absolute or that it will work for anyone else just sharing my experience. Companies are far likelier to rip off consumers compared to their business customers, just my experience.
However regardless of p2p or not if you test your line and it is consistently under performing compared to the stated service speeds, that is a legitimate complaint that needs to be addressed. False advertisement is illegal in all civilized countries. Don’t sign a contract that says only 1kb/s and you wont have to worry about it. You get what you pay or fight for, nothing else.
What bad luck?… my user plan works just fine… I have my up and down to the max, just as they advertise! And a quick talk on the phone with a support contact resolved all the issues.
When it comes to BT especially, it’s a different story as to why the down speed isn’t maxed out. It’s because the up/down ratios vary by a as much a ten times. That’s on almost all ISP’s, so when a lot o ppl share, they do it with the maximum they got, which I doubt is the maximum with which I can dl for the most of them. Once a lot of peers balance the seeder-leecher ratio, the speed increases to as much as it can, in my case to 3 Mbps. On DC for example I have no limit, I can download a file using multiple sources with my full download speed. The best part about my communist EASTER EUROPEAN ISP is that this month the bw is going to be raised to 10/1 Mbps and the prices drop to about 12 USD for my plan.
The bad luck is at your ISP’s!
You didn’t get the message. Sure in the US there may be different business practices, that however doesn’t change the main thing! Probably you didn’t know that when using a service you have to accept the ToS they impose. Just read it on Comcast, in this case. They have updated it just a few days ago.
The “residential” package is made because the number of ppl that use it is by far higher than the number of ppl using “business” packages and that has one thing in mind. The “business” package on the other hand is made for an assures minimum bandwidth… that’s why you don;t get throttled.
The same thing can’t be said about the “residential” package because than, the ISP, as in this case Comcast would have to assure the minimum bandwidth that the clients pay for. Say they have 1.000 clients in an area and each of them have a “Performance” package of 6 Mbps / ~512 Kbps, you really think that any ISP would make up a service that would guarantee 6 Gbps of traffic / second for all of those clients? It won’t happen cause it can’t be made at those rates, nor is there the kind of infrastructure that can sustain acceptable speeds and latencies when the number of customers is by far greater than 1.000.
Just to give you a quick hint on your so beloved capitalist ISP’s, here is a quote from the Terms and Conditions of Comcast:
“Comcast speed tiers range from 4.0 to 16.0 Mbps download speed (maximum upload speed from 384Kbps to 768Kbps respectively). The speed tier received and pricing will vary depending upon the speed tier selected and the level of Comcast video service and/or digital telephone service (if any) received. Speed comparisons are for downloads only and are compared to (as applicable, to 56K dial-up, 768Kbps, 1.5Mbps or 3.0Mbps DSL). Actual speeds may vary and are not guaranteed. Many factors affect speed.”
… read the fine print!
True, false advertising is illegal… that advertising however is a bent truth, or how those words go… you only have to understand what they advertise!
“Don’t sing” is for ppl that can choose! And even if they can, no one can guarantee that 1KB/s won’t be on all the options!
the most hilarious banner ad ever- “SWIRL SOCIETY- a dating social networking site for black woman and white men”
whats so funny about it? the fact that black woman want to date white men?