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March 27, 2008

Comcast and BitTorrent Patch Things Up

Erick Schonfeld

27 comments »

best-buds.jpgAfter a lot of criticism, threats of legislation, and lawsuits, Comcast has decided that maybe it is not such a good idea after all to block its customers from sharing peer-to-peer BitTorrent files—even if BitTorrent is a bandwidth hog that accounts for “50% of Internet traffic.” Rather than discriminate against BitTorrent files per se, Comcast will now focus more broadly on any application or source of traffic that stresses its network. BitTorrent, for its part, says that it is working with Comcast and other ISPs to help them better manage BitTorrent streams.

There, don’t you guys feel better already?

(Photo by foundphotoslj).

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 7:39 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. disinfo.com

    March 27th, 2008 at 11:28 am

  2. The Broadband Salad Bar « Digitalics

    April 10th, 2008 at 7:16 am

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  1. un.valley

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:45 am

    rock on.

  2. Not a Bug

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:51 am

    Let’s hope they will do the same for Gnutella.

  3. jbenz

    March 27th, 2008 at 7:54 am

    I appreciate everything about that photo. Especially the Delorean in the background. Good find.

  4. DealerDrop

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:09 am

    Ha, i was just admiring the photo too. It is fabulous… need it for my wallpaper

  5. Rich Miller

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:17 am

    The new architecture from the Comcast/BitTorrent effort will be of great interest to content delivery networks (CDNs) who have been sorting out the best way that P2P can be used to assist in delivery of large files. Yesterday a CDN called Velocix announced a hybrid P2P streaming media service combining traditional caching with P2P delivery for live events. Velocix used to be CacheLogic, and worked with BitTorrent to develop the Cache Discovery Protocol, which lets ISPs cache the most popular torrent files, and then seed the files from servers within their network, reducing network traffic.

  6. Mystery CEO

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:17 am

    Anyone run a business selling digital products? Our products get distributed through BitTorrent so quickly…we’re working on ways to protect them better now…

    Mystery CEO

  7. anon-guy

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:31 am

    “Comcast will now focus more broadly on any application or source of traffic that stresses its network”

    WTF? Was it not mentioned that BitTorrent accounts for 50% of all internet traffic. I’m confused or are they being hypocrites?

    What programs/services are next then? DAMN!

  8. Chris

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:31 am

    “Anyone run a business selling digital products? Our products get distributed through BitTorrent so quickly…we’re working on ways to protect them better now…”

    We used to sell retail software. It was pirated all the time. I used to google cracks for our own products, and sign up anonymously to serialz forums in order to tell people the download had some type of virus in it, though it most likely didn’t.
    At a certain point, you have to stop. It’s useless. People are going to steal. Especially Canadians because their laws are made that way.

    If you’re going to ask people to buy software, tell them you’ll send them an encryption dongle through the mail with 2-3 days postage. They’ll run out of USB ports eventually, but it will save you big if you sell digital goods worth more than 20$ per unit.
    I don’t think i’ll ever try to sell digital goods again, but if I did, I would pass on the overhead and mail them a dongle.

  9. Kevin

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:36 am

    I’m not too terribly excited about this announcement mostly because I don’t think it will matter too much. I was recently switched from Insight to Comcast (Comcast took over this area) and have noticed major slowdowns. I regularly shop at AmieStreet and have noticed a considerable slow-down in my download speeds since being switched (1000+ kb/s with Insight, but with Comcast I am lucky to get 300 kb/s). When they promise to open up all the “pipes” nice and wide, THEN I will be excited. Until then I greet this announcement with a great big “meh”.

  10. pcnerd37

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am

    As of this morning, the filtering was still going on. I was unable to browse the net when I was running my torrents because they took my browsing speeds down to that of dialup. Until I actually see an improvement, I will stick with my slogan, “SCREW COMCAST!”

  11. open for business

    March 27th, 2008 at 8:49 am

    Sweet! Rock On!

    I am going back in time!

  12. addam

    March 27th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    I don’t understand why was Comcast trying to be the net cop in the first place. The users are paying their bills, why to screw them. If they started to analyze the traffic, wouldn’t it be easier to transfer p2p traffic as low priority? Sure, it isn’t the best solution, the network neutrality enthusiasts would be still upset because of the packet discrimination, and heavy p2p users would be upset because of the bittorrent slowdown, but QOS isn’t that bad for net neutrality as traffic blocking.

  13. BPL

    March 27th, 2008 at 9:42 am

    Bring it on! Just commented on the photo, i don’t think it is quite TC style.. a new style huh?

  14. Prashant

    March 27th, 2008 at 9:59 am

    i wonder what Mark Cuban would say on this ;)

  15. Mark Maunder

    March 27th, 2008 at 10:10 am

    I’m intrigued by the briefcase under the makeshift cocaine snorting table in the photo.

  16. EH

    March 27th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    Note that this is actually Comcast vs. “BitTorrent the closed-source bittorrent company,” not bittorrent the protocol. Look for Bram to implement some kind of key that unlocks Comcast’s congestion control rather than Comcast opening everything up with transparently disclosed limits.

    This is a face-saving PR move by Comcast hoping people (FCC) get the protocol confused with the company of the same name. Likely Comcast is backing this up with lobbyists at the FCC to get their investigation called off.

  17. Blue Sunshine

    March 27th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    I still have yet to see any actual “improvement”. As one of the previous commenter’s said, when running bit torrent, browsing speeds screech to a halt. Also, I haven’t seen a hint of anything concerning seeding. Verizon is looking better and better these days, even if they don’t have FIOS in my area yet.

    http://www.miscgarbage.com

  18. Andy

    March 27th, 2008 at 10:35 am

    Great, now Comcast is going to go after my non comcast VoIP - skype.

  19. Jesus H Christ

    March 27th, 2008 at 10:49 am

    F@CK comcast, i’m sick of their sh!t. I’ve moved on to Fios and i’m never going back.

  20. Zach Weisman

    March 27th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    Focus on improving your f#*$ing network.

  21. Chris S.

    March 27th, 2008 at 11:27 am

    For those that don’t know already, Comcast already works against more than just BitTorrent traffic so I don’t see the big switch. The Sandvine technology they use prevents seeding and doesn’t care whether it’s BT or any other P2P–it blocks it.

    So I don’t see this as news but more an acknowledgment of the status quo.

  22. skidoo

    March 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    how about newsgroups ?

  23. Paul

    March 27th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    the photo shows illegal drug use going on, why?

  24. Public Knowledge

    March 28th, 2008 at 7:50 am

    Whatever this deal means, it does not mean that Comcast is out of the throttling business. We at Public Knowledge are still pushing forward with our petition to the FCC to demand that Comcast abide by the FCC principles of network management. More information about our petition can be found at:

    http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1485

  25. Yossi

    March 30th, 2008 at 2:04 pm

    Still did not understand what arrangement the two reached. Did anyone ?

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