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Verizon, Comcast Say They Are P2P Friendly 158

An anonymous reader writes "Verizon and Comcast announced they will not 'block or throttle Internet traffic delivered via peer-to-peer networks' — essentially proclaiming that they are now P2P friendly. The decision came as a result of a test conducted with Verizon and Pando Networks, testing the benefits of a P2P/ISP partnership. During the test, the amount of P2P content delivered to Verizon subscribers from inside its network grew from 2 percent to 50 percent. This shows ISPs need to work with P2P companies to improve content delivery and manage traffic. Verizon also announced it will be looking at ways to use P2P technology to deploy new features on FiOS TV." Just the same, read on for one approach to mitigating likely tightening restrictions on P2P network use.
Another anonymous reader writes "RIAA/MPAA have recently been targeting torrent aggregators like PirateBay, because the aggregators are the vulnerable components of the BitTorrent protocol. A new open-source project to thwart such attacks was announced on p2p-hackers and released yesterday:

Cubit, a new open-source p2p overlay, enables the Azureus BitTorrent client to look up torrents via approximate keyword search... Cubit completely decentralizes the lookup process through an efficient, light-weight peer-to-peer overlay that can perform approximate matches. It performs searches without relying on any centralized components, and therefore is immune to legal and technical attacks targeting torrent aggregators."
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Verizon, Comcast Say They Are P2P Friendly

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  • Right... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wolf12886 ( 1206182 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @11:54AM (#23506448)
    I'll believe it when I see it.
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      I'm a FIOS customer, and have yet to see any issues with my torrents and disconnects, or any speed or BW issues. It does help to have a 15mb/15mb connection, but still. Curious to see how these companies will handle the P2P load. . .
    • Re:Right... (Score:4, Funny)

      by grayshirtninja ( 1242690 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:16PM (#23506802)
      Exactly. ISPs are friendly to P2P traffic like alligators are friendly to chickens.
    • Re:Right... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jeiler ( 1106393 ) <go.bugger.off@noSPaM.gmail.com> on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:24PM (#23506910) Journal
      Oh, believe it. Verizon and Comcast will be very friendly to P2P--just as soon as they can figure out a way to make a buck off the transaction.
      • Re:Right... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Shakrai ( 717556 ) * on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:50PM (#23507310) Journal

        Oh, believe it. Verizon and Comcast will be very friendly to P2P

        Why is everybody giving Verizon grief? Comcast I understand, but Verizon? To my knowledge Verizon has never throttled or limited any of their DSL or FiOS offerings. I've seeded torrents 24/7 for months on end and never heard a peep out of them. I run a server (sshd and vpn) for my own personal use -- they've never complained about that either. According to Cacti, in the last year I've uploaded 1.3 terabytes and downloaded 741 gigabytes. Not one word out of Verizon this entire time.

        Recall when Verizon fought the efforts to subpoena the identity of one of their customers who was accused of using p2p to pirate music. Recall Verizon's statements saying that they didn't believe in content/copyright filtering and didn't want to "police" the internet.

        I don't approve of all of their business practices (there's a special place in hell reserved for Verizon Wireless) but the Verizon Online guys are on our side -- at least for the moment. I don't think they deserve to be lumped into the same category as Comcast.

        • In the first week I got Verizon DSL (years ago) I downloaded around 40GB worth of stuff (tv shows, movies, etc). I filled my hard drive. Never heard anything from them. They're good people. I haven't had the same experience with Comcast... :-/
          • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

            In the first week I got Verizon DSL (years ago) I downloaded around 40GB worth of stuff (tv shows, movies, etc). I filled my hard drive. Never heard anything from them. They're good people.

            Yeah, I hadn't realized that my bandwidth totals were that high until I looked at them right now. Verizon is offering a great service as it stands. I hope they keep it that way.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by jeiler ( 1106393 )

          Why is everybody giving Verizon grief?

          Cynicism. When referring to large corporations, cynicism has rarely steered me wrong--though I'm glad to hear your experience with Verizon has been so positive.

          • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

            though I'm glad to hear your experience with Verizon has been so positive.

            Oh, it hasn't been all positive dealing with them. Verizon Wireless dicked me over in a major way and Verizon Landline is busy nickel and diming people to death (you'd think they'd be DROPPING landline rates to keep people from switching to VoIP/wireless, but there you go)

            I'll never do business with Verizon Wireless ever again and it's not likely that I'll ever pay for a landline again unless I wind up having a large family or someone with a medical condition living in my house. It's just not worth pa

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          in the last year I've uploaded 1.3 terabytes and downloaded 741 gigabytes.
          Slacker.
          • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

            Slacker.

            Hahaha, you find me a (legal) torrent that will peg my connection 24/7 and I'll be happy to seed it for you. I primarily seed Linux distros, but they are typically seeded well enough that they don't peg my connection most of the time -- even with tons of upload slots available.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          >To my knowledge Verizon has never throttled or limited any of their DSL or FiOS offerings.
          Prepare to be schooled.

          I have 1.5Mbps DSL provisioned through Covad with Earthlink. My top download speed is right around advertised (~200KB/s, 1.5Mbps)
          At the time I started my contract in 2001, I had just got done a 1.5 year battle with Verizon because they were charging me for the service on a dsl contract, but it had never worked. When I say "never worked" I mean not a single packet crossed their switch on my co
          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

            None of those stories that you told suggest that they are deliberately throttling those connections. Verizon provisions your line at the fastest speed that their tools/wire database indicate that your loop will support (unless you pay for a slower tier). If there are problems with the local loop or (more likely) the inside wiring at your house, then the modem won't be able to sync up at this speed and will fall back to slower ones and generally not work very well at all.

            That has nothing to do with thrott

        • According to Cacti, in the last year I've uploaded 1.3 terabytes and downloaded 741 gigabytes. Not one word out of Verizon this entire time.

          There's your answer--you're not doing it right.
          Try and do that in a month or two instead of a year and I'll bet you get their attention... :)
          • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

            Try and do that in a month or two instead of a year and I'll bet you get their attention... :)

            If my connection was fast enough to upload 1.3 terabytes in a month I'd be a pretty happy camper ;) That works out to about 4Mbits -- so I suppose you could actually achieve this on one of those symmetrical FiOS connections. I honestly doubt they'd notice or say anything about it though -- anyone with FiOS and a penchant for consuming bandwidth care to comment?

  • by nweaver ( 113078 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @11:55AM (#23506460) Homepage
    ISP conflict will remain, it will just become more subtle and more neutral.

    You see, 50% is not good enough from the ISPs viewpoint: That still requires just as many bits crossing the ISP's boundry as if the content provider used UNCACHED HTTP.

    In practice, many (most?) ISPs use transparent HTTP caches, so having 50% of the data stay internal is still no good, as on popular files (eg, a big youtube video), 99% of the traffic stays internal for HTTP.

    Even PERFECT P2P requires at least one outbound copy for each inbound copy, so a PERFECT P2P system will require 2x the traffic crossing the border when compared with HTTP thats cached.
    • by CyprusBlue113 ( 1294000 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:10PM (#23506688)
      I don't think you quite understand what is being talked about. A truly perfect P2P system would only need 1 copy period to come in to an ISP. Now you will never see much anything close to this, but it can definately be a *much* better situation than it is now.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Workaphobia ( 931620 )
        Even better would be if the user could submit torrents to their ISP's local hub for download at fiber optic speeds, and then simply transfer the result from there once per household. Any bandwidth consumed by this non-last-mile torrenting on the customer's behalf would be attributed to the customer's account and charged accordingly.

        Hell you could do the same thing for other non-P2P services that ISPs typically don't like customers using. Turn every account into a hosting agreement with various limitations.
    • by bconway ( 63464 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @01:01PM (#23507482) Homepage

      In practice, many (most?) ISPs use transparent HTTP caches, so having 50% of the data stay internal is still no good, as on popular files (eg, a big youtube video), 99% of the traffic stays internal for HTTP.
      No they don't. Start here [lagado.com].

      Confirmed today: Comcast, Verizon (DSL + FiOS), Time Warner, and Speakeasy.
    • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

      hat still requires just as many bits crossing the ISP's boundry

      Something tells me that the "boundary" isn't a major issue for a Tier 1 provider like Verizon or AT&T.

  • Oh goodie! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by snarfies ( 115214 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @11:56AM (#23506478) Homepage
    Jeepers, no more bandwidth throttling? Thanks Comcast!

    How much extra will you be charging us for that?
  • by Taibhsear ( 1286214 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @11:57AM (#23506492)
    My torrent stops registering massive packet forgery and my uploads stop getting throttled to 1/5 the original speed after 5 seconds from initialization. As well as my web-browsing speed, and my gaming speed, and my windows/ubuntu updates speed...
    • by frooddude ( 148993 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:09PM (#23506674)
      If you're on Comcast that speed change could just be the effects of Speedboost. They give a short term bump in throughput for each new transaction.

      I rarely get good torrent speeds unless I'm dealing with a highly transacted image. Like a new release of ubuntu.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Culture20 ( 968837 )

        They give a short term bump in throughput for each new transaction.
        A long term downgrade in throughput beyond the first transaction you say?
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by DCstewieG ( 824956 )
          To be honest it's actually a pretty fair way for Comcast to serve the majority of customers. When downloading a normal file off the internet, you get way higher that the 6 mbps you're paying for. For files smaller than 20MB or so, they fly down the line. For the rest, you get knocked back to 6 after 10-15 seconds.

          Now ignoring the fact that yes, the state of broadband in the U.S. sucks and 6 mbps being "good" is unfortunate, SpeedBoost is actually a nifty thing.

          I had Comcast (Chicago area) and actually didn'
          • by Yfrwlf ( 998822 )
            I now have WOW and am paying a little less for pretty much the same thing.

            You're forgetting to add on the cost of your time spent playing WoW though and the subsequent wounds from your lover.
        • A long term downgrade in throughput beyond the first transaction you say?

          That's not really fair; funny, but not fair. The "short bump" has a throughput that is higher than the speed you are paying for, and then it gets throttled back to the speed defined in your SLA. Comcast is guilty of many other shady practices, let's stick with those instead of resorting to slander and negative spin, shall we?
    • by Kelz ( 611260 )
      About 2 seconds after I start U-torrent, refreshing google times out. I can't do ANYTHING else if I'm torrenting, at any speed (usual speeds are 40KB up, which is far far less than I have available). I live in San Jose.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    At the same time Comcast announced a $10 increase of their Internet Service Bill since the P2P Friendly service is very costly.
  • Their P2P throttling down to 30 KB/s is down right filthy. I wish something would be done on our front as well.
    • If you're around Ottawa or feel like going there, there's a "Net Neutrality Rally" on May 27: www.netneutralityrally.ca [netneutralityrally.ca].

      My ISP (Teksavvy) emailed me a couple hours ago saying apparently most of the Teksavvy staff is taking the day off to go to the rally so please only call in with tech support questions if it's really important.

      That's pretty cool if you ask me.

      - Andrew.
    • Bell even throttled Cranky Geeks to 30 KB/s on me. The throttling is horrible, and the way they are doing it, you can't easily switch to a competitor. They throttle the competitor's connections too!

      Tip: If you release and reacquire the PPPoE connection, it appears to temporarily fool the throttling software.

      Additional tips would be appreciated.

  • What would really be great is if Cubit would eliminate all the nasty tracker ads. They are very annoying for people like me who are just after software, not porn.

    And looking at the current batch of lawsuits, I'd say now is the time to start supporting Cubit in all the major clients (I'm thinking particularly of KTorrent...) So please work on it if you have the skills, and bug people who do if you don't (that would be me).
  • Throttling - Caps (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Coopjust ( 872796 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:08PM (#23506652)
    Most consumer level service comes with an Acceptable Usage Policy. Mine says that (this is paraphrased) "At the sole discretion of big cable company (not comcast), users may be terminated for abuse or excessive usage".

    So, we'll move from throttling to arbitrary caps. Maybe after XXGB your speeds are cut to 1/10th. Or maybe (like my cable company), they can just say "Well, we don't want you as a customer any more".

    Explicit caps? We can complain or not subscribe if they're low- I'm for that if somebody is downloading 300GB+ per month, using my node. But the idea of "Well, you downloaded 'too much'" is just as bad as lying about throttling.
    • by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      had the same problem one month when i got 'the call', shortly after they raised the caps on bandwidth. ( obviously they oversold and couldn't handle us actually using what they offered .. ).

      " you have exceeded the limits" so i politely explained there were no limits when i signed up, it was explicitly unlimited, ad even tho the published AUP still says unlimited, but if there was now a limit id comply."

      But they didn't have a limit, just kept repeating that i exceeded one even tho they couldn't tell me what
  • I don't believe any of it. Where is the proof? Nowhere, that's where!

    Lying bastards.
  • by dave562 ( 969951 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:17PM (#23506814) Journal
    I've been a Verizon DSL subscriber since the late 1990s, back when they were still GTE. They have had constantly good service and great uptimes. I started using torrents about a year ago and have never had any problems. I have one running at home right now. On my 1.5/384 line I'm getting about 170k down and 40k up, constantly.

    It has been my experience that in some ways DSL is superior to cable. I remember when cable first came out everyone who got it thought it was great. Then their neighbor got it, and their other neighbor got it, and suddenly it became obvious that the entire neighborhood was on one shared pipe and a single bandwidth hog could ruin it for everyone. It doesn't seem like much has changed in the last decade. With DSL you can count on getting the bandwidth that you pay for but the peak available bandwidth isn't as high as cable. On cable you might get some really high peak speeds, but the cable networks haven't been designed to sustain high transfer rates for long periods of time.

    • by hal9000(jr) ( 316943 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:31PM (#23506998)
      If it were only so simple. At some point, all your DSL connections are aggregated somewhere and that aggregation point becomes the bottleneck.

      The WAN technology doesn't make that go away. There could be any number of reasons why you haven't suffered any depredation such as population density, the profile of your neighbors, etc. It could just be that neighborhood hasn't reached saturation yet.

      I used to have DSL and I found my connection would degrade noticeably in the late afternoon and evening simply because we had a lot of people in the area connected with lots of kids.

      The last mile is just one point of depredation. The in-home connection experience is going to get bad. I would hate to live in a city and use wireless simply because of contention on the airwaves. Hell, when I first got FiOS, I had to convince the tech that the reason for the poor performance was because the Actiontec router they provided and a neighbors were on the same channel, 6, causing contention. I moved mine to channel 11, a non-interfering channel, and wah-lah, performance problem solved.
      • by dave562 ( 969951 )
        I must be lucky, or maybe Verizon knows what they are doing when it comes to residential data circuits.
      • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) * on Thursday May 22, 2008 @01:04PM (#23507530) Journal

        At some point, all your DSL connections are aggregated somewhere and that aggregation point becomes the bottleneck.

        It seems like every time we have this discussion that someone repeats this half-truth and gets a +5 out of it. Yes, DSL connections are aggregated somewhere. But that's not the whole story.

        There's nothing technical stopping a telco from having a 1:1 contention ratio if they deem it in their best interests. Contrast that to cable -- the only way to attain a 1:1 ratio on cable is to segment the network into insanely small slices or devote more channels on the coax plant to HSI services. DOCSIS 2.0 only offers ~42Mbits of downstream -- assuming 5Mbit connections (the standard for Roadrunner around here and actually quite low compared to other areas) it only takes nine people to completely saturate the downstream pipe.

        Even without a 1:1 contention ratio it's going to take a lot more than nine customers to peg the backhaul connection from your local DSLAM.

        I used to have DSL and I found my connection would degrade noticeably in the late afternoon and evening simply because we had a lot of people in the area connected with lots of kids.

        As with anything, YMMV. I've never seen a slowdown in six years of working with Verizon and Frontier (a smaller telco based out of Rochester). I have seen them occur on Roadrunner -- in some neighborhoods around here it's downright painful when the college kids are in town.

        • I have seen them occur on Roadrunner -- in some neighborhoods around here it's downright painful when the college kids are in town.
          As one of those college kids, I concur. Time Warner sucks, my speeds lately have completely sucked. Oh well, time to graduate and move on to greener Internet pastures I guess.
      • by swm ( 171547 ) *

        If it were only so simple. At some point, all your DSL connections are aggregated somewhere and that aggregation point becomes the bottleneck.

        True in principle, but anecdotal reports (like the GP) consistently indicate that users do better with a point-to-point link to a switch at the CO than with a single LAN segment shared by the whole neighborhood.

        Remember, cable modem service was piggy-backed on the existing cable TV network. I've read accounts on Slashdot of cable companies provisioning just one (or maybe two) SDTV (AKA 6 MHz) channels per LAN segment for cable modem.

        Users used to be limited by 56Kb/s modems, and that constrained the conten

      • by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) * on Thursday May 22, 2008 @01:06PM (#23507568)

        I moved mine to channel 11, a non-interfering channel, and wah-lah, performance problem solved.

        It's voilà [wiktionary.org], damnit!

        • stop it.
          Words change. [westvalley.edu]

          Get over it.
          • Except it isn't a change in usage that I'm complaining about. In fact, he's using the word exactly the way it's traditionally used! The problem is that he has no fucking clue how to spell it, probably because he's only ever heard it said, not seen it written.

            Now, if you really want me to be pedantic about usage, we'll take a look at your sig:

            For the sake of brevity I leave out examples and exceptions, but I will be glad to do so on request.

            "To do so" refers back to "leave out," so you're saying that you'

            • Thank you for pointing out my oversight, I will correct my sig shortly.

              I am curious as to why you think I would want you to be really pedantic about usage. Is it sarcasm? Is it a thinly vieled threat? The profanity in the sentence previous suggests hostility, but for what end? What is the message you are trying to send?

              My previous point remains; words change. Maybe not in France, where the language police have called for a national lockdown of their national language, but since this is english, I thin
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Blkdeath ( 530393 )

        If it were only so simple. At some point, all your DSL connections are aggregated somewhere and that aggregation point becomes the bottleneck.

        Yes, all ISPs have that very same bottleneck and it's typically extremely large. The coaxial cable running through many residential neighborhoods quickly reaches saturation similar to that of an old 10Base2 Thinnet network where if a small handful of computers are using lots of bandwidth at once the collision rate goes up and the available bandwidth to all homes in that segment (typically hundreds, if not thousands) find saturated links and slowed browsing.

        However the "bottleneck" at the ISP level - the

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )
      I agree, I have ahd superiour customer service, never experienced any throttling at all.
      In fact, they even lowered my rate, mid-contract when they changed there rates overall. Most places have a disclaimer saying new prices aren't for current customers.

      So I don't understand where the hate for Verizon comes from.
      • by dave562 ( 969951 )
        I agree on their customer service with regards to billing. I've been with them since the days when 384k was considered "platinum" service. They don't even offer "platinum" service anymore but my account is flagged as a platinum DSL customer. No matter where I go, I get their highest available speed for $34.99 a month... the same price I've been paying since the late 1990s.

        Technical support is alright. They had some provisioning problems with their 3mb lines for a while. The initial provision was for 1.

        • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

          They had some provisioning problems with their 3mb lines for a while

          My experiences with Verizon (for all their services, ISDN, DSL, POTS, centrex, etc, etc) is that the actual ordering/provisioning process is a PITA. You place your order with one department who hands it off to another department who may hand it off to yet another department before it's all said and done. The left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing and some of the customer service people clearly hate their jobs and can't be bothered to even hide their annoyance with you when you run into prob

          • by dave562 ( 969951 )
            Verizon provisioning sucks, but it has been pretty much my experience that provisioning EVERYWHERE sucks no matter who you go with. The one exception has been UUNet, currently MCI/WorldComm/Verizon Business. Those guys are on it.
            • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

              Verizon provisioning sucks, but it has been pretty much my experience that provisioning EVERYWHERE sucks no matter who you go with

              Yeah and that's something that the telco's really need to improve. I've been around the telco culture ever since high school. I'm familiar enough with their procedures to put up the provisioning headaches. I also have enough contacts among the local techs that I can generally bypass the Business Office to get things done faster -- though I try not to abuse this unless I'm facing a service outage and the Business Office isn't being responsive enough.

              The problem is that not everybody has that experienc

              • by dave562 ( 969951 )
                I don't think the telco's can ever be that responsive but there's no reason why they couldn't cut that 7-10 day window down to 1-2 business days if they wanted to spend the money to hire more people. There's no reason why they couldn't coordinate orders better between their various departments.

                How much of that do you think has to do with the union culture in the telcos? Could it have something to do with the combination of being unable to get rid of positions and being unable to fire inefficient people?

                • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

                  I don't buy that as the source of their problems -- at least for Verizon (I've not worked much with AT&T). Most of the CSRs aren't unionized at Verizon. Most of the field techs are. And yet it's the CSRs that you usually have problems with. Beyond that, the tech support phone drones definitely aren't unionized -- and we all know how helpful they are....

                  I've never had an issue with a field tech for any phone company. Almost all of them are a credit to their occupation and will do everything within

                  • by dave562 ( 969951 )
                    I completely agree with you on the field techs. Those guys always seem to get the job done, when they eventually show up. Some are better than others about showing up on time but they definitely know their stuff when they do. I just figured that everyone involved in the process was unionized, at least in the provisioning process.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:24PM (#23506918)
    He's obviously a spinmeister working for the company.

    When people buy a product or service they expect it to work reasonably. It's like saying that a car that doesn't anymore explode into flames is now 'friendly'... The word he so boldly uses don't even appear on the FA. Save your spam for eggs and bacon.

    I believe in actions, not words and hope more people would follow suit.
  • riiight (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pak9rabid ( 1011935 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:33PM (#23507030)

    Verizon, Comcast Say They Are P2P Friendly
    Kind of like how Microsoft says that they are F/OSS friendly?
  • Hmmm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wpiman ( 739077 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:34PM (#23507048)
    I have Verizon FIOS, which has an Actiontec router with a puny 1k NAT table. Whenever I played Team Fortress, this would overflow the NAT table when I did a server refresh and the router would be unusable for 4 minutes. This was designed to prevent peer to peer applications from clogging their network. Their network doesn't look for P2P traffic, it just kills it at the endpoint.

    Interestingly enough, this Team Fortress issues seems to have resolved itself in the last week and a half. I imagine this is due to a Team Fortress update, as I did not update the firmware in my router-- but this is an extreme coincidence.

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Get a new router?
      I ahve Verizon and don't have any of those problem you mention. Did you contact support?
      • This is a very well known issue w/ Verizon FIOS ActionTec routers. It was affecting at least 2 different versions of them. And if you want both TV and Internet over FIOS you pretty much need their gear.

        I had the problem too and stopped playing TF2 shortly there-after. I don't know if/when they actually fixed it since I just don't play it anymore.

        • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

          This is a very well known issue w/ Verizon FIOS ActionTec routers. It was affecting at least 2 different versions of them. And if you want both TV and Internet over FIOS you pretty much need their gear.

          Stupid question, but I've never had a chance to see a FiOS connection up close: Can you put the FiOS routers into a bridge mode and get the globally valid IP directly on your PC? The first thing I've always done with my DSL connections is put the router into bridge mode and run pppoe/pppd on my Linux box.

          I'd much rather have the full power of iptables and the HTB packet scheduler [luxik.cdi.cz] at my disposal than use their router. I'd hate to think that I won't have this option when FiOS hits my area.

          • To the setup has similarities to a Cable internet setup, except for the fact that the Router isn't just a router but also something that controls the cable boxes. And when the fiber reaches your house there's a large converter box (with battery backup) that splits out the signal to phone lines and Coax (for TV and Internet).
            • Fiber line to your house
            • Large box near your fusebox converts optical signal from fiber to coax
            • Coax line runs to Splitter
            • Splitter distributes cables to to both the Actiontec router and s
            • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

              There's supposedly a way you can use the Actiontec as a bridge, keep your TVs working, and bypass the overflow bug but it's a pain.

              How do they plan on offering commercial services if you can't (easily) bypass their router and use your own? That would be a deal-breaker for me -- I want control over my connection -- not some badly designed NAT box sitting in front of me.

              I don't recall which authentication method it uses, though I doubt it's PPOE.

              They aren't using any authentication on DSL anymore. It's still PPP but you can enter any username and password that you'd like and it will happily establish a connection. One wonders why they even keep PPP in the loop, given the overhead of PPPoE -- probably in

              • Perhaps the commercial version uses different equipment? I don't know.

                The problem is/was only a pain to fix if you want both Internet and TV. People without Fios TV had a much easier time plugging in their own equipment.

                I think it was if you didn't have TV and your techs hooked you up with Ethernet running from the switch box then you were in the clear (could use any hardware you want). And if they would only run coax then you could still use your own hardware and just keep theirs to do (I guess) auth.

                As
              • For FIOS, the ActionTec can be configured with your router as the DMZ host, which effectively puts your router on the internet, though with one layer of NAT/forwarding.

                You can also replace the ActionTec with any other router, which gets an address via DHCP. You just have to clone the MAC address or call Verizon to tell them to reconfigure their router to talk to your MAC address. I believe that some of FIOS TV's capabilities depend on the ActionTec router (e.g. VOD).

                All very friendly and easy, if you know n
                • by Shakrai ( 717556 ) *

                  You can also replace the ActionTec with any other router, which gets an address via DHCP. You just have to clone the MAC address or call Verizon to tell them to reconfigure their router to talk to your MAC address. I believe that some of FIOS TV's capabilities depend on the ActionTec router (e.g. VOD).

                  So how does the connection actually come in? Ethernet? So you can easily replace their router with any other router or direct to a PC?

                  I'd heard that wasn't an option and they forced you behind NAT regardless but I found that rather hard to believe.

                  • by wpiman ( 739077 )
                    Even though you are a Barrack supporter: I'll answer your question :-)

                    Fios has two inputs for internet-- one is called Moca and the other is ONT. ONT provides an ethernet port on the box outside the house. If you don't have TV, you can plug your own router right into this. If you have the TV service, the set top boxes need to get IP addresses. The MOCA connection is coax and plugs into their Actiontec router.

                    I looked at several possibilities here, one was putting the Actiontec in a MOCA to ethernet

    • I'd go incompetence before malice. Many of 2wire's gateways (2700 series particularly) have the same problem, possibly worse. Go above maybe 300 incoming/outgoing connections and the modem will either lock up (requiring a hard reset), restart on it's own (takes about a minute to get back running), start dropping connections one at a time, then lock up (hard reset needed), or (this one is really odd) drop all current connections, restart, resync, but it'll temporarily forget about the connection profile an
    • by Jouster ( 144775 )
      The Actiontec FiOS router actually has a built-in automatic firmware updater. At any rate, if it really bothers you, just replace the router with your own.

      --J
  • by Duncan Blackthorne ( 1095849 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:46PM (#23507250)
    ..and here's the proof (as of just a few minutes ago), courtesy of the Glasnost test:

    Is BitTorrent traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?

    * 2 out of 2 BitTorrent transfers were interrupted while uploading (seeding) using forged TCP RST packets. It seems like your ISP hinders you from uploading BitTorrent traffic to our test server.

    * The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

    * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 713 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 720 Kbps.

    Is BitTorrent traffic on a non-standard BitTorrent port (4711) throttled?

    * 2 out of 2 BitTorrent transfers were interrupted while uploading (seeding) using forged TCP RST packets. It seems like your ISP hinders you from uploading BitTorrent traffic to our test server.

    * The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

    * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 661 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 741 Kbps.

    Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?

    * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all downloads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 713 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 661 Kbps.

    * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all uploads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP upload on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 1353 Kbps while a TCP upload on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 1403 Kbps.

  • by HumanEmulator ( 1062440 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @12:52PM (#23507340)

    If you read the article carefully, this is not about allowing unfettered P2P on their networks at all. They are deliberately obfuscating the issue. They leave the door open for blocking, filtering and "shaping" (ie. TCP resetting) any protocols they want. This is kind of like Verizon Wireless proudly announcing "We are radio phone call friendly" when the issue is whether to support GSM or CDMA.

    Verizon's senior technologist talks about "working with P2P companies", which is radically different than allowing anyone to write a P2P networking app that does (fill in the blank.) Then goes on to say that work needs to be done on P2P DRM.

    All in all, the tone of the article seems to confirm that the fight for network neutrality is far from over.

  • It doesn't matter (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday May 22, 2008 @01:22PM (#23507890)


    In the final analysis, protecting aggregators won't matter unless we get genuine 'net neutrality. The ISPs will switch to a 'whitelist' of content providers. In other words, if you want your content delivered, you will pay, become a 'partner', host ISP banner ads or whatever. All others will grovel with the lowest QoS. This sidesteps accusations of throttling 'undesirable' services. Everyone gets throttled and will have to pay to get out of jail.


    I don't think the big ISPs have anything special against P2P services (that they don't have against anyone else). They just want to extract money out of them. With big players like Google, Yahoo, and MSN, that's easy to do. There's advertising revenue that can be quantified and the ISPs can skim off of. P2P just happens to be a big enough consumer of bandwidth that the ISPs would like them to pay to play as well.

  • Didn't they also say that they were only blocking p2p traffic at peak busy hours? Then they were caught doing it all the time? Action speaks louder than words.
  • Does this mean that if you stay within the Comcast network that MediaSentry can't illegally find you any longer?
  • It irks me that ISPs get away with claiming that encouraging local premium content caching on customer-owned equipment is "P2P", or "friendly" for that matter. Then again, we're not the target audience of this; telecom regulators and legislators are.

    Robert X. Cringely once said that wireless telcos are in the business of creating billable events. What you see here is broadband ISPs desperately trying to do much the same. By convincing governing types that the P2P the public wants is faster fulfillment of
  • I'm sure the recently covered lawsuit against Comcast had nothing to do with this decision? :P
  • If you are using p2p to get content from services they can make a profit off of, sure they are friendly.

    If you arent, well too bad for you.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Fox, Wolf Say They Are Rabbit Friendly
  • And steve balmer aint gonna throw any more chairs.
  • They are as P2P friendly as Colonel Sanders is chicken friendly.
  • As I write this via my Comcast link, a yellow box in my GMail window informs me that it thinks my "network administrator has blocked GMail chat." This happens semi-reliably when my housemate is torrenting (affected services include parts of GMail as well as FTP and VNC [cexx.org]). Encryption solves this. Currently it appears that Comcast's BitTorrent blocker cannot reliably tell the difference between the individual streams and simply sends nukes indiscriminately at connections originating from the same modem where t

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