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The Attempt to Murder Bittorrent


Honeyfrog

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Regarding this thread.

Note, carefully, that the ISP trick referred to cripples seeding but not downloading of torrents.

Conclusion: This is no accident -- saving bandwidth from "evil" P2P is just a smoke-screen; the REAL purpose is to murder bittorrent stone-cold dead by KILLING ALL THE TORRENTS. How? Well, what do you think happens when torrents are leeched but not seeded? They croak.

As noted, other ISPs are latching onto this, so simply switching providers is only a short-term solution -- and one that won't amount to squat anyway, since if more and more peers are prevented from seeding, the torrents you make will die anyway unless you personally seed them forever. Similarly, my futzing around with DNS settings, proxies, and other manner of attempts to permit me to seed effectively will also fail, because the great bulk of average-IQ peers aren't going to know how to do that. They're just going to seed less and less and less, and torrents will die.

I have about a hundred torrents presently which, due to DHT, small piece-size, multi-tracker announce lists, and cross-posting to many hosting sites, generally persist unattended. But over the last few weeks, I'm seeing many of them become unseeded. At first it was just one or two. Now there are bunches. And, just the other day, I had trouble with a just-completed upload failing to maintain seeds. Normally, while initially-seeding a new torrent, there will be a half-dozen peers clustered at nearly maximum percentage delivered so far (because their UL speed exceeds my 44kbps), but recently this clustering has dropped to only a few or no peers -- which indicates to me that seeding is becoming more difficult for everyone.

If they can de-seed my torrents (which are specifically designed for longevity as described above), then they can kill just about any torrent.

Overcoming this should now be the ultra, A-numeral-Uno priority mission of every bittorrent client developer, and they should share all of their knowledge with each other. Seriously: Everything else needs to be back-shelfed right this instant, until this overriding new threat is neutered.

Otherwise, put the forks in your backs already, because you're *done*.

--//--

Addendum to illustrate the gravity of the situation: Those hundred torrents I mentioned above? They represent over twenty times the physical space of my hard-drives at present, which is what I'd need to seed them all full-time. And, if I were to do so, I'd just be a glorified central-server no different than if were letting folks leech away off an IRC or eMule shared-folder.

Seed-killer tech has to potential to "de-list" 90% of existing torrents within weeks of it being widely implemented. Essentially, is akin to a viral deletion program plowing through the whole "virtual hard-drive in the sky".

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you're dramatizing stuff ways too much. It's no different from shaping upload AND download speed. Comcast is actually doing less "bad things" than rogers (canada) for example. And what rogers does doesn't have killed bittorrent either.

I figure you are personally affected by this and thus want to gain vocal supporters to lobby bittorrent devs into droping everything and taking care of your problem.

Yes, it is a problem, it is being worked on but that doesn't mean you have to make such a fuzz about it and claim it's the end of the world.

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I hope someone else will comment on this thread, because the number of Az devs on it currently outnumbers the number of UT users on it. :D

I should point out that some of us are on ISP's which don't disrupt BitTorrent traffic...

If you're on Comcast, and you're finding that encryption isn't working for you, then maybe you might want to volunteer your services to help us try and find a solution?

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The8742: you're dramatizing stuff ways too much. It's no different from shaping upload AND download speed. Comcast is actually doing less "bad things" than rogers (canada) for example. And what rogers does doesn't have killed bittorrent either.

Rogers was a camel's nose poking under the Canadian side of the North American tent. Comcast's sandvining is the camel's whole head inside the tent and snorting around. How long before the whole camel is in the tent?

The8742: I figure you are personally affected by this and thus want to gain vocal supporters to lobby bittorrent devs into droping everything and taking care of your problem.

It's not just l'il ol' me being "personally affected" as a Comcast-subscriber; I have public torrents over a year old that have always had in excess of twenty peers and which have never needed monitoring now, within the last few weeks, being hobbled due to Comcast (because Comcast is so huge). I used to be able to post incredibly obscure old now-in-public-domain film torrents, and expect them to survive -- but in only the last month I now have five(-and-counting) without seeds, and, prior to this seed-strangling business, that never happened with my small-piece-size, multi-tracker publicly-indexed torrents. It didn't dawn on me what was going on until I read the posted thread (linked in first post); and it really hit home this morning when Comcast flipped the switch on my region.

It "personally affects" everyone who uses bittorrent. My being a Comcast subscriber merely illustrates, to me, the stark contrast in how I was able to effectively share yesterday with being crippled today. I.e., it lends me a certain empathy and ability to predict what's going to happen writ-large if nothing gets done in a fairly prompt manner.

If Time-Warner Roadrunner joined in on this, they'd have a lock on North America, and many torrents would puke within days.

amc1: I should point out that some of us are on ISP's which don't disrupt BitTorrent traffic...

Irrelevent, as I explained. All that's necessary to kill torrents is that a critical-mass of peers are unable to seed. Comcast is also a huge "triple play" monopoly across great, heaping swaths of geography; it's not just a matter of switching internet-providers. Trust me: I'm already looking into this, and I'm conservatively estimating it's going to cost me 150%-200% more to split my services, to say nothing ot the time/value lost in dealing with seperate companies. If a large percentage of people stick with their sandvining $99/mo. "Triple Play Plan" regional monopolies due to cost reasons alone, then bittorrent is going to suffer. I.e., my replacement service could be flawless, but if 40% of the peers in every torrent are Comcast, Rogers & downstream local-name line-piggybacking affiliates (basically: a third of North America), then torrents will go unseeded and croak.

amc1: If you're on Comcast, and you're finding that encryption isn't working for you, then maybe you might want to volunteer your services to help us try and find a solution?

I create and seed torrents constantly; I'll happily field-test any alpha & beta versions you have.

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Honeyfrog is right in one regard:

It's about to start raining nearly everywhere...and changing what ISP you're on may help little if all the OTHER ISPs are throttling/blocking BitTorrent. Who are you going to connect to then?

The legal means various forces are using to shut down BitTorrent websites are also having chilling effects on society in general. Due to DMCA in the USA, ISPs are taking down websites without considering if the websites are legal or not...just to avoid being sued as an accomplice. Free speech and free flow of information are both put in jeopardy when more and more content uses DRM that prevents not only fair use backups but also insulates it from criticism.

ISPs' terms of use / "fair use" policies (fair use is in quotes because what they consider fair can be pretty ridiculous) can not only limit your use of your broadband connection to a fraction of its rated speed most of the time (such as 5-20 GB monthly bandwidth quotas) but can also put additional restrictions on what you do with it and THEY will be monitoring what you're doing to see if they can make an extra profit off selling your web surfing habits (lists of where you visited and for how long) to advertisers.

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We're not at the "we have a solution" stage yet (though we have some ideas and have performed some experiments so far). If seeding with encryption isn't working for you and you're willing to spend some time experimenting with things, then send me an e-mail and we'll see what we can do.

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Preface: I want to rewind, briefly, to the crocodile-tears "P2P is strangling us!" arguments these providers forward. One only needs to contemplate all the new, massive high-def television services* being offered by these same providers to come to the conclusion that it's a smoke-screen for anti-P2P agendas borne of a perceived need to avoid lawsuits and further government regulation. Furthermore, cutting seeds every few seconds means it will require more bandwidth to seed a given amount of material due to decreased efficiencies; certainly the techs who modified Sandvine realize that, and would have informed their employers if bandwidth were actually the issue. No, what they really intend to do is make bittorrenting unpleasant, and hopefully kill off as many of those wicked, wicked aXXo torrents as possible. (And then everybody migrates to eMule, which is even more inefficient...but corporate intelligence can only divine the future so far.)

(*I was flabberghasted that Dish Network -- leader in plasma-bursting HD offerings -- had only a snail-like 24kbps-down/12kbps-up internet service, and no integrated phone service. Clearly they don't realize how easily they could royally GUT the competition with a real triple-play package.)

If seeding with encryption isn't working for you and you're willing to spend some time experimenting with things, then send me an e-mail and we'll see what we can do.

I will quit my job (by firing myself) to make time to experiment with things. Email on its way.....

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If Time-Warner Roadrunner joined in on this, they'd have a lock on North America, and many torrents would puke within days.

I haven't looked myself to verify.....but I do know that my girlfriend's cable co. was Roadrunner, and they just got swapped to Comcast (possibly purchased?).

This is in the Houston, TX area...

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