At&t, att, azureus, bittorrent, fcc, gadgets, net neutrality, p2p, vuze

Azureus/Vuze Says AT&T Is Pulling a Comcast, Resetting Torrents

A month after releasing its plugin that detects if your ISP is performing reset voodoo on your torrents, Azureus/Vuze is claiming AT&T hexes them with the same reset TCP packet curse as Comcast, despite AT&T's explicit statements otherwise. AT&T denies the accusation and points out a flaw in the plugin's method, that it can't tell the difference between naturally occurring TCP resets and artificial ones generated by an ISP. Azureus, while admitting the issue, still says AT&T is full it.

According to their data, "the results show a significant enough difference in the level of resets from one network operator to another, to warrant asking certain network operators to describe their network management practices," and AT&T, Cablevision and AOL are at the top of the heap. In our feature on ISP network management, while AT&T directly stated its "techniques don't include degrading or blocking traffic," they did decline to elaborate on what they did do.

While in Comcast's case, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told a Senate committee they lied about throttling torrents only during periods of congestion and never issued a flat denial, AT&T's repeated, direct counters incline us to believe them. But we still agree with Azureus's goal, to push ISPs to be completely transparent about how they manage their network—we'll leave whether the FCC should mandate net neutrality up to the policy wonks. Besides, it's looking like the FCC is moving toward transparency regulations anyway, if not neutrality. [PC World]

5:06 PM on Mon Apr 28 2008
By matt buchanan
4,608 views
16 comments

Comments

Noobs-R-Us at 05:15 PM on 04/28/08
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What do u expect when they're just like the Bush administration and Republican Newspeak?
mechfluff at 05:17 PM on 04/28/08
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I use AT@T. They kill my torrents. I was downloading faster using dial-up. Can someone please tell me a way around their crap?

//I'm only going to use it for legal fansubs, I swear.
twreckx at 05:22 PM on 04/28/08
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Hopefully someone out on the interwebs will do some independent testing and call whichever side on their BS.
Monty at 05:24 PM on 04/28/08
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How could anyone doubt the nice employees working on that pretty small moon?

Wait, that's not a moon ...
geowrian at 05:27 PM on 04/28/08
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@mechfluff:
Fansubs aren't legal unless the original program is allowed to be downloaded/uploaded/rebroadcast/whatever.
madlogik at 05:53 PM on 04/28/08
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try setting your mtu to various numbers?
(below your max mtu!!)
(read: [help.expedient.com] )
I'm not being killed with videotron so far.. so I cant test anything out..
well let us know if any ways of shaping YOUR traffic might fool the system!!! :)
mechfluff at 06:00 PM on 04/28/08
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@geowrian: Yeah, I was under the impression that they were. Bad info source.

Guess I'll just have to stick to legal streaming from networks.
skittlzncombos at 06:15 PM on 04/28/08
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I've been using At&t for a while and haven't noticed any big issues at all. Maybe my connection is just lame-slow to begin with so it's hard to notice a decrease in nothing.
fastmike at 07:18 PM on 04/28/08
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Thats not a pretty moon , thats The Death Star ........ now wheres that Mr Stevens
Accelerata at 07:55 PM on 04/28/08
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@mechfluff: personally, legal or not, i often find the fansubs do a better job than the companies that eventually come along and license the shows later after the fan base has already been established (read this as: i think most of them are greedy poaching bastards rather than trying to bring more entertainment to enrich our lives).

they are also tacitly tolerated when no official licensee exists because it does promote a larger fan base, which brings in more revenue from merchandising for the originating company.

in other words, find ways to support the shows you like financially, but don't feel bad about downloading fansubs of shows broadcast on network stations overseas.
Soliq at 08:23 PM on 04/28/08
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Interesting, I definitely was struck by Comcast's torrent slow-down and switched to AT&T, which so far has been immeasurably better than Comcast, not just for torrents.
chuloallen at 09:22 PM on 04/28/08
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@Soliq: i wish i could afford to do that.. i have comcast and get 10Bytes/Sec and disconnected every 8 to 10 mins ... any time of the day torrent is turned on
geowrian at 09:47 PM on 04/28/08
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@Accelerata:
Agreed. Sorry if I made it seem otherwise? I 100% support fansubs as long as the person watching it purchases the series (if it's worth the money).
LexicalConverter at 10:07 PM on 04/28/08
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My AT&T connection gives me 300kbps for torrents. Unfortunately, my "3mbps" connection only runs at 300kbps...

Dammit.
kylo4 at 10:43 PM on 04/28/08
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I thought it was great today when I turned on Azareus and it said Rogers was known to throttle and switched something on for me. I'm supposed to get 800 kbps but I still get around 250 max.
tkatz at 11:05 PM on 04/28/08
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@madlogik:
I'm also with Videotron, but sometimes I feel like they might be throttling my torrents, as my torrents are going at 100 kB/s when it used to fly at around 900 kB/s.

I guess it all depends on the seed quality.