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For a few months Comcast has been the subject of scattered reports that say it throttles BitTorrent traffic.
TorrentFreak saidin August that Comcast was surreptitiously interfering with file transfers by posing as one party and then, essentially, hanging up the phone. But when we contacted Comcast at the time, it flatly denied doing it.
Thanks to testsreported Friday by the Associated Press, however, it's clear that Comcast is actively interfering with peer-to-peer networks even if relatively small files are being transferred.
- Jun 11, 2011 - When you enable private browsing modes, you are telling your browser not to record which websites you're visiting, and telling it not to use or download any.
- Comcast is using an application from the broadband management company Sandvine to throttle BitTorrent traffic. It breaks every (seed) connection with new peers after a few seconds if it’s not a.
The testsinvolved transferring a copy of the King James Bible through the BitTorrent network on Time Warner Cable, Cablevison, AT&T and two Comcast connections (in Philadelphia, Boston and San Francisco). Only the Comcast-connected computers were affected.
This is significant. The Gutenberg versionof the King James Bible is only 4.24MB, which is relatively tiny and indicates that Comcast was singling out even small files.
Now, even though there's been some musing that Comcast can't do this, I'd be surprised if a court would say that it was somehow unlawful. Comcast's Terms of Service says: 'You further agree to comply with all Comcast network, bandwidth, and data storage and usage limitations. You shall ensure that your bandwidth consumption using the Service does not exceed the limitations that are now in effect or may be established in the future. If your use of the Service results in the consumption of bandwidth in excess of the applicable limitations, that is a violation of this Policy...if the Service is used in a way that Comcast or its suppliers, in their sole discretion, believe violate this AUP, Comcast or its suppliers may take any responsive actions they deem appropriate.
Which is pretty broad.
The danger for Comcast is twofold. First, its hyperactive filtering may zap perfectly legitimate file transfers, which seems to have happened in one case involving a customer using Lotus Notes.
Second, it encourages countermeasuressuch as obfuscating BitTorrent traffic or encrypting it. That means that future efforts by Comcast to manage its traffic may be far more difficult. (If Comcast had merely slowed down BitTorrent transfers instead of cutting them off completely, users wouldn't be escalating this arms race as quickly.)
Probably the best result would be tiered pricing. BitTorrent users who are heavy users of bandwidth would pay more, while average home users would pay less. It's not perfect, and lots of Internet users may not like a tiered pricing model, but it's probably better than escalating a technological arms race, or not being able to use BitTorrent at all.
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I recently changed my internet provider from Frontier Fios to Comcast xfinity. Through Comcast, I get somewhat low torrent speeds.
Frontier Fios: 15 down / 5 up. Torrent speed 1.5 MBps.
Comcast xfinity: 15 down / 5 up. Torrent speed 0.5 MBps only.
- Got up/down speeds using speedtest.
- Testing through wifi only.
- Frontier had provided their own router.
- Using an old dlink router (tm-g5240) with Comcast.
- Transport Encryption is on w/ torrent client to avoid throttling.
I'd like to know ...
- Is Comcast throttling OR is it just congestion on Comcast side?
- Will a new router help? I do remember getting 0.5+ MB/s w/ Time Warner few years back with same router.
Torrent Download
What should I do get at least 1 MB /s torrent speeds?
3 Answers
I find it unlikely that Comcast would throttle BitTorrent traffic so significantly since they got in hot water for doing that in the past. They still do shaping like any large ISP, but probably not enough to knock your speeds down in half versus Frontier. With BitTorrent there are so many factors that affect speed, it's challenging to figure out where problems arise.
An easy way to test if your BT speeds are truly capped at 500kBps is to try different torrents and configurations. I hardly ever see my speeds go above 1MBps on Verizon FiOS, so I might assume a cap too. But if I torrent a popular Fedora release, speeds easily go up to 7MBps. Doing tests like this at different times of the day can also help determine if this performance is congestion related. The pipes can get flooded after school/work, but should be pretty bare early in the morning. Testing over Ethernet versus wireless may show a difference, but probably not. FYI your ISP can look at patterns in your traffic and deduce that you're using BitTorrent regardless of your using transport encryption.
Comcast Throttling Torrents
If the router worked with high BT throughput on Frontier, I don't believe it should have to be replaced to work with a similar connection system. Comcast may have specific settings for routers connected to its network, and that's a good question to ask about to support. If you're convinced it's the router, Comcast will be able to tell you which new routers/router-modem combos are compatible with its system. If you tell them your specific problem, they're likely to be more helpful.
You can also see this similar question about BitTorrent throttling.
Some VPN services promise no throttling for different transmission protocols.
You're probably getting throttled. Not much else to say than what's already been said, but if you're using old networking equipment, Wireless B/G only, that can cause slow connection speeds... And, if the signal is moderate to low you're going to have packet loss. Wifi is already prone to duplicate packets and packet loss, distance can really affect the problem... Try using an Ethernet cable, see if it improves.
The Encryption/Decryption process is also a factor in download speeds, since every packet out must be Encrypted/Decrypted and every packet in must be Encrypted/Decrypted. Even on good machines this can be a problem.
My ISP restrict the connection speed once you've downloaded over a certain amount of gb. EG, 2MB/s upto 20GB, then down to 500Kb/s after for the rest of the day.