BitTorrent throttling by Comcast

[Venkman]

Slashdot article about Comcast throttling BitTorrent, as originally noted here.

Over the past few weeks, more and more Comcast users have reported that their BitTorrent traffic is severely throttled and they are totally unable to seed. Comcast doesn't seem to discriminate between legitimate and infringing torrent traffic, and most of the BitTorrent encryption techniques in use today aren't helping. If more ISPs adopt their strategy, could this mean the end of BitTorrent?"

So will this affect Blizzard, make them actually do it right by their players? Or is this related to something different?

(I thought it best to post here because no other popular MMORPG I know of releases their patches in this method... though I welcome more examples).

[schild]

It would seem Cox started doing this.

Yesterday.

I noticed while downloading which uses bittorrent DNA.

That's to say, Dq, something else will be using it soon.

[Trippy]

Slashdot article about Comcast throttling BitTorrent,
So will this affect Blizzard, make them actually do it right by their players?

No. They'll just ask more sites to host their standalone patches while they don't bother to host any of them themselves. They could write a real launcher/patcher program like just about every other MMORPG uses but robust networking stuff has proven to be beyond their capabilities.

[Miasma]

I've only used bittorrent once or twice but a lot of people use the hell out of it, I imagine they could lose quite a few subscribers over this (provided they have competition in the area... ).

[Paelos]

What do people get with bittorrents? Am I missing out on some facet that I shouldn't be here?

[Big Gulp]

What do people get with bittorrents? Am I missing out on some facet that I shouldn't be here?

Damn near every app on my computer (you think I'm paying the real cost of Photoshop???) has probably been obtained via Bittorrent.  Of course, I do my fair share of buying, but I'll readily admit that I'm a filthy pirate who has no compunction about downloading music, apps, etc.  Games, I treat differently.  I will torrent a game if there is no demo readily available.  I will torrent a game if it's old and not available via Steam, Direct2Drive, etc.

In short, it's a convenience.

[Paelos]

So, bittorrent's primary use at this juncture is piracy?

[Arrrgh]

There are legal downloads. Try

http://www.vuze.com/app

http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/

[Chimpy]

So, bittorrent's primary use at this juncture is piracy?

In effect, yes.

The legitimate uses are far exceeded by the less than legitimate uses at this point.

[Fabricated]

I'm annoyed but not too stunned by bittorrent being throttled. It really does just works the hell out of networking hardware and uses a shitload of bandwidth (wasn't a majority of internet traffic worldwide revealed to be bittorrent recently?), so ISPs wanting to QoS it to death so people can actually browse websites kinda makes sense.

[angry.bob]

BT is inferior to USENET in every way, with the exception that complete fucking retards can use it. With newsgroups you actually have to find out the address of your ISP's news server, or god forbid, subscribe to a premium service (well worth the $20 a month). Torrents are slow, a pain in the ass, and rely far too much on other people keeping the stuff available. I'll take USENET any day of the week, stuff remains 100% available for up to 3 months depending on the group and I can easily download a solid 16-20 gigs a day.

Torrenting sucks shit and is for retards. I wholly endorse anything that will make the technology impossible to use.

[Phred]

BT is inferior to USENET in every way, with the exception that complete fucking retards can use it. With newsgroups you actually have to find out the address of your ISP's news server, or god forbid, subscribe to a premium service (well worth the $20 a month). Torrents are slow, a pain in the ass, and rely far too much on other people keeping the stuff available. I'll take USENET any day of the week, stuff remains 100% available for up to 3 months depending on the group and I can easily download a solid 16-20 gigs a day.

Torrenting sucks shit and is for retards. I wholly endorse anything that will make the technology impossible to use.

Bittorrent is kind of handy when no one is uploading what you are looking for. Usenet is fine for top 10 stuff but anything old, cult or obscure, or all 3, is usually easier to go look on bittorrent sites.

[Xanthippe]

What sort of stuff do you download from usenet groups?  Besides porn, I mean.  I haven't even looked at usenet in a few years.

Can you get tv shows?

[Fabricated]

You can get pretty much anything from USENET still. Typically brand new games/filezzz hit USENET and IRC before they hit BT.

[Jayce]

Torrenting sucks shit and is for retards. I wholly endorse anything that will make the technology impossible to use.

So, lemme get this straight.  Those who want stuff for free, like not paying $20 for a CD, should instead pay $20 to get on Usenet and pirate it?

Yep, sounds like something a retard would do.

[angry.bob]

What sort of stuff do you download from usenet groups?  Besides porn, I mean.  I haven't even looked at usenet in a few years.

Can you get tv shows?

Yes, Pretty much anything on TV/HBO is available in varying degrees of quality within 24 hours, the lower end but entirely watchable stuff starts showing up in as little as 30 minutes after the show ends. You used to be able to get SVD encodes of shows like Buffy, Angel, and Firefly  before they actually aired because people could get the wild feeds to the stations, though the industry fixed that a few years back. Fansubs of anime and manga are another huge category. Current run movies are another thing, and if you know what groups to look in you can find encodes from screener DVDs and overseas shops doing the localization. Sometimes though you can only find the in-theater cam stuff though. There are many robust ebook groups that cater to different categories from tech manuals to rpg and tabletop gaming books. You can get entire CBT courses as there are several groups devoted to those. If it's something that can be digitized, it IS on usenet someplace.

Pretty much it's all pirate booty, but pretty much anything is available if you know the group name. Most popular groups have a .repost group for older items to be reposted in. Items considered classic/must have are usually reposted continuously so that they're usually available if you have a premium news service. There are websites out there that list posts and what groups they're in that help allot. They're not completely comprehensive, but they're a big, big help for an inexperienced user. The biggest problem is that some of the categories "wander" from obscure group to even obscurer groups to avoid spam and sporgers, though that's mostly limited to the Porn categories.

I disagree on some stuff being harder to find Phred... There are some very specific groups for some really obscure shit, and people are usually very good about posting requests as long as people aren't obnoxious about it. The same stuff you might be able to find a torrent for but nobody has it available to share. Or even worse, you spend a week and a half getting what you want to trickle in and then it turns out to be a Burl Ives .avi that someone has not only renamed but is incomplete on top of everything else. I may have had bad luck, but so far out of USENET, old school P2P, and torrents, I've had nothing but good experiences with USENET.

And don't even get me started on Blizzard's patcher.

[angry.bob]

Torrenting sucks shit and is for retards. I wholly endorse anything that will make the technology impossible to use.

So, lemme get this straight.  Those who want stuff for free, like not paying $20 for a CD, should instead pay $20 to get on Usenet and pirate it?

Yep, sounds like something a retard would do.

1) You don't need to pay for it at all if you don't want. It's part of any basic internet service.

2) The pay service provides a 3 month retention instead of the 3 or 4 days that an ISP typically has.

3) For the $20, you have the ability to download items with pretty much infinite value. Seriously. With a 3 month retention, you could download $100,000 worth of stuff in a week. $20 to get as much of whatever you want with no real limits is a pretty good deal even for a broke-ass pirate kid. Your comparison is pretty fucking stupid really. It's much more like the different between paying $20 for a candy bar or paying $20 to go into a grocery store and eat anything you want, whenever you want, and as much as you want than it'slike  paying $20 for a CD or paying $20 to pirate a CD.

[tkinnun0]

You don't need to pay for it at all if you don't want. It's part of any basic internet service.

The only recent source I found says that a full feed is over 2TB/day, so no it's not.

And really, not only copyright infringement, but paying someone to facilitate it? That's what the author gets for turning the other cheek?

[angry.bob]

Prattle

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

You should really, really edit your entire post to say something like "I love Bob" before I get home and can respond properly.

[caladein]

About the only legal uses of BT for me are OpenOffice and the occasional fansub.

That said, all I need to do is download the .torrent and my BT client is set-up to automatically download files, prioritize certain ones (say, TXTs and NFOs), and move them to another folder on completion. In comparison, IRC (well, XDCC) and USENET are fucking hassles (tiny chunks .rar1 through .rar9000, when I can only download 5 at a time is the definition of infuriating).

Ease-of-use isn't just for the benefit of the retards .

[angry.bob]

About the only legal uses of BT for me are OpenOffice and the occasional fansub.

That said, all I need to do is download the .torrent and my BT client is set-up to automatically download files, prioritize certain ones (say, TXTs and NFOs), and move them to another folder on completion. In comparison, IRC (well, XDCC) and USENET are fucking hassles (tiny chunks .rar1 through .rar9000, when I can only download 5 at a time is the definition of infuriating).

Ease-of-use isn't just for the benefit of the retards .

Fansubs aren't legal, thet're just not discouraged as they're used by the industry as a barometer for the viability of licensing a show.

As far as lots of tiny rars, you're either making that up or the poster is a clueless nub. Or you could have been the nub and not had a reader tht combined multipart posts. a DVD9 encode that's almost 8gigs doesn't need split up into much more than a hundred parts, and that's mostly for ease of posting. If someone was willing to do it, they could post the whole thing as one file and it would be fine. Regardless, wether it's in 1 rar file or 9000, extracting it is simply doubleclicking a file - not quite the draining hardship you make it out to be. Beside, depending on what you're getting, a lot of BT stuff is rared or zipped anyway. And you're ignoring the whole acquisition time thing. With Usenet, I can get 4gb that's split into however many rar files in about an hour or two, as opposed to the days, weeks, or months it may take with BT - assuming enough people keep the file you need up long enough for you to get it.

See, the thing is, it isn't actually easier to use, it just pretends to be and people believe it. It's really a much bigger hassle to use on a regular basis, and is completely inferior in every other aspect. It's truly a horrible, pointless technology. But it's trendy and hip.

[Merusk]

I agree with what bob's saying here. Before the usenet feeds my provider uses went to shit it was 1000 times easier to get stuff than through BT.  Not to mention BT's been throttled on my provider for at least the last 4 years, while Usenet isn't, because so few people use it.

Most folks problem is they use something like Outlook or Outlook Express.. which are really, really crappy usenet clients. Particularly since they don't support y-encoding (last I used 'em at least) so you can't download most of what's posted these days anyway.

[Big Gulp]

It's truly a horrible, pointless technology. But it's trendy and hip.

Bullshit.  Even good newsgroups usually only have a 90 day retention rate, and finding older/rare shit can be a real hassle.  I'm glad you feel you're supahleet because you've mastered .PAR files  but that doesn't make BT useless.

Quite frankly, I'd rather just do one search on a tracker site and then wait for the long download than hunt through broken/strangely named shit in various alt.bin newsgroups.  If you have some patience BT works out just fine.

[angry.bob]

You don't need to pay for it at all if you don't want. It's part of any basic internet service.

The only recent source I found says that a full feed is over 2TB/day, so no it's not.

And really, not only copyright infringement, but paying someone to facilitate it? That's what the author gets for turning the other cheek?

I can't heap enough scorn into the written word to adequately respond. You are every thing wrong with internet forums. I'm sure the 2-second google search you did on "usenet access" or whatever  yielded them as the top result, but so what? Big shock that a search for usenet access turned up a pay news server. Guess what. basic usenet access is free. It's part of any basic internet service. Your fucking ISP has their own news servers that you just connect to If you have an ISP, you have free, basic usenet access. Granted, most ISP's have poor news service nowadays, but it's good for getting your feet wet. Here, here's a minifaq:

[Q] How do I get to my ISP's news servers?
[A] You put the server address in the box labeled "News Server Address" in your newsreader.

[Q] I need to know the server address? How am I supposed to know that?
[A] It's usually in your ISP's FAQ or support page. If not, call their help desk and ask. Or you could just try the standard "news.serviceprovidername.com" that it's named 99% of the time.

[Q] That's amazing! When did ISP's start offering this?
[A] Since the internet. You didn't hear a special announcement because it's always been that way and you're supposed to know it. It's like their mail server. Hohaho, it's a lot like their mail server actually.

[Q] They have a mail server too? Is it googlemail?
[A] Sure, why not.

[Q] If my ISP has this for free, why are their premium news services?
[A] Your ISP news service will only keep posts around for 2, maybe 3 days at most, and many times has spotty completion rates for multipart posts. Pay services have retention times that run into 2 or 3 months, and have 99.9% completion rates. Really, the only time you have an incomplete post on pay services is if the poster has a problem on their end.

As far as copyright infringement, that's a whole other can of worms. To sum up my attitude, f#@%k them. Various entertainment industries have lobbied for copyright laws to be overboard and blanketing, and gotten the changes passed - as well as had multiple software and hardware technologies hobbled or outright killed. I refuse to acknowledge their authority, and quite frankly they've lost. They can change their business model to match reality or die the death of any lumbering industry that refuses to adapt and modernize.

I'll get to Gulp's after I get some sleep.

[Chenghiz]

Wow bob, you're so cool. Clearly the fact that you find usenet to be better means that another, different, completely viable and practical method of file distribution should be obseleted. My hat is off to your infallible logic.

[Reg]

For what it's worth, my ISP (Sympatico - one of the major Phone company DSL guys) discontinued its basic Usenet service about a year ago and even before that it was crappy. What few .bin groups it carried at all had retention of only a few days. From what I understand some anti-kiddie porn group discovered the nasty stuff you could get on newsgroups and went on a campaign to have them shut down with the major Canadian ISPs. Somehow they must have missed the rest of the Interweb. :)

This is good info to have though. Sympatico doesn't throttle torrents at the moment and my account is so old that it's grandfathered in without download caps. But if that changes it sounds like it'd be worthwhile to pay a few bucks to get access to a well run Usenet server.

[Xerapis]

Hearing of your sad stories about American ISPs make me chortle with glee as I stroke my piracy-approved Korean connection.

[Ironwood]

This kinda veered right off being about Warcraft, didn't it ?

[Tebonas]

I just want to say that if I would theoretically download myself some US series to watch over here since the series are not on out TV yet, I would grab the torrent files the morning after it aired in the USA, go to work, and after work I would have all of them sitting on my computer to watch. So, IF I would do such a thing, the days and weeks waiting time implied here is quite inflated.

At weekends when I don't work and wait for the actual file to finish it usually is two to three hours for one 45min episode. Would be, I mean.

[Xerapis]

Um, yeah.

What Tebonas said.  One day delay.  There when I get home.

[bhodi]

Wow, the elitism is flying thick in here. Angry.bob's living up to his name.

Bittorrent is a great invention, and, assuming you can follow a very detailed wiki page, you can set up port forwarding on your NAT and get connections working properly. You just download your favorite bittorrent client and go to town. The same is true with getting usenet configured -- you need to get your local usenet server, if your ISP has one, or pay for something like usenext, and then download a newsgroup reader like newsbin pro or galaxy that does spam filtering and post aggregation, find your choice newsgroups.

Once both are set up, getting more of the latest movies, games, music, and amateur pornography to drown Texas is still just one or two clicks away from awesome. Which to use depends on your ISP and what you are looking for.

Think of usenet as dipping a cup into a moving stream of the latest goodies -- if you miss the window, it's gone forever. That means you check it a few times a week to see what's new -- ISPs will only keep things a certain time, generally a week on minimum to 90 days on the outside, and many ISPs (like mine) limit downloads to Xgb/month. Mine's 10gb/month with is not a lot, so I don't use it much. Usenet is also good if you have a very high download but really shitty upload.

The other issue with usenet is the encoding format -- you'll have to download about double the amount of data you are expecting, but generally this isn't a HUGE deal since you are often connected directly with your ISP and you're downloading from your maximum download rate to a few MB/second. This is generally faster than bittorrent.

Bittorrent is more like taking a sampling of water from any water source in the world. It's a hell of a selection, but you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes, there's one guy with tin-cans and string and you could try for days to get something and still fail when he goes offline. Generally the more popular stuff (the key here, like usenet, is new stuff) is well seeded and you'll be able to download anywhere from 1x-2x your upload speed. For me, I'll generally get ~400k/second. Needless to say, I use bittorrent.

Not like it matters; Either way, modus operandi is to turn it on, go to bed and wake up with goodies.

With all this said, there is no reason one is 'better' than the other -- they are different. Can't we all just get along and agree any method of taking bread out of intellectual property creationist kid's mouths is a good one?

[SurfD]

Real Men use mIRC and troll the fileserves.

/duck

[schild]

Why is someone names Arrrgh the only person that linked to legal downloads?

[bhodi]

I didn't think it was necessary. We're all educated here and know the difference between content and a content delivery device.

[Xerapis]

When the legal way to do all this becomes just as convenient, I'm there.

Until then, fuck those fuckers for hating on the fact I'm in Korea.