Written by Janko Roettgers
Posted Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 12:00 AM PT

 

Road Runner, Charter and Cox TOS Also Include Anti-P2P Provisions

Comcast, which underwent heavy criticism last year for blocking file-sharing services like BitTorrent, has reportedly been caught quietly changing its Terms of Service. Although Comcast has denied that they interfere with P2P, even in light of mounting evidence of the contrary, the new TOS notably acknowledges the use of “reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards.”

“Industry standards.” A phrase like that kind of makes you wonder what other ISPs are doing, doesn’t it? We examined the Terms of Service of several of Comcast’s biggest competitors and found that provisions allowing interference with P2P traffic seems to be a standard part of ISPs’ legal boilerplate these days. And unlike Comcast, the competition is not shy about describing exactly what they want to do to stop P2P on their networks.

Comcast has been in the spotlight since reports about its interference with BitTorrent traffic first surfaced last summer. The company keeps denying any wrongdoing, but multiple tests have shown that they are in fact messing with their subscribers’ BitTorrent traffic. Other ISPs have been a little more forthcoming about the subject all along.

Fellow cable ISP Cox, for example, has made no secret of the fact that it’s blocking P2P traffic as well, so we weren’t too surprised to find this abstract in the company’s Subscriber Agreement: “Cox reserves the right to manage its network for the greatest benefit of the greatest number of subscribers including, without limitation, the following: rate limiting, rejection or removal of “spam” or otherwise unsolicited bulk email, anti-virus mechanisms, traffic prioritization, and protocol filtering.” And no, this is not just about commercial spammers, but about interfering with your day-to-day use: “You expressly accept that such action on the part of Cox may affect the performance of the Service.”

Time Warner subsidiary Road Runner, on the other hand, hasn’t been found to be messing with BitTorent traffic yet, but it seems to be considering this option, judging by its Acceptable Use Policy: “Operator may use various tools and techniques in order to efficiently manage its networks and to ensure compliance with this Acceptable Use Policy (“Network Management Tools”). These may include detecting malicious traffic patterns and preventing the distribution of viruses or other malicious code, limiting the number of peer-to-peer sessions a user can conduct at the same time, limiting the aggregate bandwidth available for certain usage protocols such as peer-to-peer and newsgroups and such other Network Management Tools as Operator may from time to time determine appropriate.”

Road Runner must use the same law offices as fellow ISP Charter, whose Acceptable Use Policy is virtual identical, including the option of “limiting the number of peer-to-peer sessions” and “the aggregate bandwidth available for certain usage protocols such as peer-to-peer.” Charter did however update its policies recently, adding a very telling sentence: “Charter may employ traffic-management technology, including but not limited to packet-reset technology, which technology may materially slow the uploading of certain files.”

This “packet-reset technology” mentioned by Charter is exactly the man-in-the-middle attack Comcast has been using to disrupt BitTorrent: Devices used by the ISP pretend to be the actual user and send a reset message to the BitTorrent clients of fellow file sharers, canceling uploads and thereby considerably slowing down download speeds. Comcast is reportedly using equipment from Sandvine to do this, and Sandive has been claiming that that “eight of the Top 20 broadband service providers in the U.S. are Sandvine customers”, as Om reported earlier.

To be fair: It’s not certain whether Charter actually makes use of these techniques, but the mere fact that virtually all major U.S. cable ISPs reserve the right to interfere with their users’ access to services like Vuze, Pando and BitTorrent.com could give the net neutrality debate new urgency.

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Topic: Distribution, P2P
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Comments & Trackbacks

  1. [...] rivalry is not unsure most describing just what they poverty to do to kibosh P2P on their networks. Continue datum at Newteevee.com. Tags: netneutrality, charter, cox, comcast, roadrunner, p2p, [...]

    Road Runner, Charter and Cox TOS Also Include Anti-P2P Provisions | Fresh Web 2.0 News on February 10th, 2008 at 6:34 am - Permalink

  2. I can vouch for charter’s P2P blocking. During this past December I received an upgrade in my service from 3M/256k to 5M/512k. Immediately after this upgrade, I observed how “the aggregate bandwidth available for certain usage protocols such as peer-to-peer.” means there will be less and less bandwidth for my bittorrent. I had with my previous service the ability to upload at 29KB/s. With the upgrade I have yet to be able to upload more than 15KB/s and for the last 3 weeks it hasn’t been more than 0.5KB/s. These observations are strictly based on the bittorrent protocol. Other protocols, especially new and experimental ones (such as Wua.la), have so far been unaffected.

    Anonymous Customer on February 10th, 2008 at 9:15 am - Permalink

  3. [...] NewTeeVee: RoadRunner, Charter & Cox… all have anti-p2p provisions in their TOC. [...]

    GigaNET: Weekend Edition - GigaOM on February 10th, 2008 at 7:08 pm - Permalink

  4. [...] you are a BitTorrent-loving downloading machine, Comcast’s broadband service is good enough. Today it got a [...]

    Comcast Boosts Broadband Speeds in Bay Area to 16 Mbps - GigaOM on February 11th, 2008 at 6:50 am - Permalink

  5. [...] NewTeeVee: RoadRunner, Charter & Cox… all have anti-p2p provisions in their TOC. [...]

    Desk sites » Blog Archive » GigaNET: Weekend Edition on February 11th, 2008 at 7:58 am - Permalink

  6. I can verify that even though ‘traffic prioritization and protocol filtering’ is indeed in Cox’s TOS (as well as quota limiting), they DO NOT actually employ such methods. I can torrent and use edonkey, etc without enabling encryption just fine.

    ian on February 11th, 2008 at 1:54 pm - Permalink

  7. [...] davidgward wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptWe examined the Terms of Service of several of Comcast’s biggest competitors and found that provisions allowing interference with P2P traffic seems to be a standard part of ISPs’ legal boilerplate these days. And unlike Comcast … [...]

    Comcast News » Blog Archive » Road Runner, Charter and Cox TOS Also Include Anti-P2P Provisions on February 11th, 2008 at 9:26 pm - Permalink

  8. [...] have a bit of info about their ‘traffic management’. [HSI] Charter Block p2p? – dslreports.com Road Runner, Charter and Cox TOS Also Include Anti-P2P Provisions NewTeeVee [...]

    How to increase your upload speed? - Gnutella Forums on June 6th, 2008 at 7:24 pm - Permalink

  9. [...] Your TOS: A tool that’s worth checking out is your ISP’s terms of service. They will often spell out that they’ll stop your traffic if deemed necessary. [...]

    Internet Service Deals » Are You Getting What You’re Paying For? 25 Online Tools to Test Your Internet Service on July 17th, 2008 at 8:31 am - Permalink

  10. [...] throttle your data. Simple Get to the bottom of what your ISP offers by using this simple tool. Your TOS: A tool thats worth checking out is your ISPs terms of service. They will often spell out that [...]

    Internet tools - DodgeBoard.com - Forums on July 21st, 2008 at 1:53 pm - Permalink

  11. Service Providers in Canada are kicking this into high gear, I just read that the issue of Net neutrality has been one of the most divisive issues of the new digital economy. Habitual Internet users, along with large content creators like Google, eBay and Yahoo, argue the Internet was created as a democratic medium where information flows freely, and should remain as such.

    Telecom companies, on the other hand, argue they invest tons of money in networks, and large content providers should pay a premium so their data are delivered quickly.

    Barring that, the telecoms want the freedom to manage the network to prevent “bandwidth hogs” from crowding out regular users.

    Bell Canada is now limiting bandwidth usage. Once this ball stops rolling it’s going to be hard to stop.

    Charters on November 22nd, 2008 at 12:49 am - Permalink

  12. It seems to me that these tactics empower the ISPs to use deceptive false advertising tactics. That is they advertise a certain internet speed, but that advertised speed is only valid as long as you don’t actually use it.

    I think they should be able to directly control how much bandwith each person gets, but then if they provide less than they advertise people should be able to sue the crap out of them.

    So if they say 2 mb/s, you better be able to do that much 24/7 rain or shine. If they want to provide a variable service, then define it completely so the customer knows what they are paying for.

    Then they will be forced to compete to provide the best persistent speeds. Right now it doesn’t matter because people are more likely to get a 10 mb/s service that almost never goes above 500kb/s and goes as low as 50kb/s than a 1 mb/s service that usually is that high.

    Kriminal99 on December 10th, 2008 at 4:51 pm - Permalink

  13. 75.180.130.29 appears to be roadrunners primary ip address at the moment. p2p is more than a piracy network, it is one of the few remaining technologies that allows free distrobution of opensource software without the need for a paid host. So this is ultimately another commercial effort to close down our freedom. Ironically enough, the very operating system that roadrunner relies upon is being legally and openly distributed across p2p networks as it has always been to futher its development and progress. Obviously these corporations have no respect or standards. obviously they are only pillaging what they can before trying to take domination and twist great things into very, very sad scenarios.

    ghost on January 30th, 2009 at 4:38 am - Permalink

  14. Those fascist at Charter have shut me down on p2p sharing with bit torrent.

    loki on February 13th, 2009 at 8:53 am - Permalink

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