Comcast was throttling BitTorrent. On Friday 1st August, FCC ruled against Comcast. Comcast is not allowed to block or throttle any P2P traffic. FCC pushes for strict net neutrality (regardless of the legality or illegality of the transferred data). Nevertheless, FCC did not fine Comcast.

FCC’s message is clear. Illegal activity on P2P cannot be fought through throttling or any other type of bandwidth shaping.

ISP throttling P2P networks is not new. But often, they just control the bandwidth once they identified P2P packets. It is why encrypting the transfer (BitTorrent has an encryption mode) often cures throttling. Comcast uses a new method, deployed by Sandvine, of throttling. When a comcast peer seeds a non-comcast user/peer, after a few seconds Comcast issues a reset (RST) packet to the non-Comcast user. This has two consequences:

• The non comcast-user losses its seed
• The comcast-user losses some upload bandwidth. This may have an impact on the transfer ratio in case of private P2P. In these P2P network, the more you seed, the more and faster you receive

Of course, the community immediately reacted and worked on the problem. The nicest solution is based on the use of Linux Firewall. It is possible to filter the RST packets, thus stopping the throttling. Some sites provide all the information to setup the filtering for different Linux distributions ( For instance Tux training)

But was is more interesting is the reaction of the FCC. It is expected that FCC will order Comcast to cease throttling. According to a majority of members of FCC, they believe it is illegal to throttle without informing customers. Decision to be announced in the coming days.

We may expect some ISPs soon to change their licensing conditions and put in it that they may throttle. If there is an obligation to announce clearly throttling, this will be an argument for choosing his/her ISP (with or without throttling).

Many torrent tracker sites compete. Thus, they publish data such as number of available torrents, of registered users, of seeders and leeches. One of the most important sites, mininova publishes the number of downloaded torrents: 4.918.964.636. At their current pace, mininova will reach the threshold of 5.000.000.000 downloaded torrents in a few days.

I find this figure more interesting than the other ones. For instance, the number of available torrents is not really meaningful. Many torrents are not active (thus the health bar on any site). Mininova publishes other data. The distribution of the type of downloaded contents is interesting. 39% are on TV series, 22% on movies, and 20% for music. The most downloaded torrent is episode 17 of Heroes’s first season. This craze torrents of TV series is extremely interesting and should be carefully analyzed by broadcasters.

In any case, BitTorrent is really the protocol of choice. Many progresses have been done both by the software themselves and by tools allowing search (BitCHe, TorrentFinder toolbar, …), making them easier to use.