Expose:

AT&T Not “Traffic Shaping”? Right.

April 24, 2008 by Kyle Brady
Tags: AT&T, Bandwidth, Deceit, Lies, Torrents, Traffic Shaping
As required by the FTC, a Full Disclosure is available - this piece adheres to the Code of Ethics

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Take a look at these screenshots.

Screen 1:  downloading a torrent for tonight's Scrubs.  The source doesn't matter, since there are both legal and illegal sources for this kind of content.  Download speed, via test, is 661Kbps, and the torrent is at a crawl.  Web pages and uploading things via SSH to a server take forever.

Screen 2:  all torrents now paused.  Download speed, via test is 2.2Mbps.  Everything is fast and quick.

This has been happening over the last week, maybe week and a half.  Never a problem before, but if I have a torrent active, even a simple thing like using SSH via command line becomes difficult and very "laggy".

What the hell?  I left Comcast because they sucked at life (bad customer service, traffic shaping, lies, etc.), and now AT&T is starting to do something that's highly decried as a "major no-no" in the public eye?

Great.  Thanks, assholes.

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Edit: just for the record, I'm on "AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet Pro".  It's a DSL dryloop plan.

Update (4/24/08 1AM PST): I called AT&T, got forwarded to a nonsense number, and then called back.  There was no record of me calling, no trouble tickets.  Because that's not suspicious.

Update (4/24/08 1:40AM PST): "Call back tomorrow when our Line Department is open, it's probably an issue with your line."  Got a ticket number this time, but the SOB Manager wouldn't give me his full name ("Chris" was definitely not part of it, that's for sure) or a direct number to that department.  We'll see what happens in a few hours.

Update (4/30/08 2:00PM PST): I sent off a few emails to different departments at AT&T, linking to this with a "this is bullshit, fix it or I'm leaving your service immediately" message.  In every case, I either got "this isn't our department's problem" or "we have determined this not to be an issue" in response.  I haven't called back yet, because I wanted to see what would happen... the results?  My bandwidth is not being capped as much as before, since I now get about 60% of the promised speed if a torrent is involved.

This obviously didn't just happen on it's own, but I find it interesting nonetheless.  However, it's not completely fixed yet, so I'm not giving up on this issue... I wonder what department fixed this, and why they did if it wasn't "an issue" or their "problem"...

Update (9/23/08 7:30pm PST): I stopped downloading things for the last two months or so, in the hope that whatever they've flagged my account with disappears.  It didn't.

I'm still dealing with bandwidth caps when torrents are connected, and getting the run-around from anyone who bothers to talk with me about it from on high.  And yet, they claim to be "down" with P2P.

I'm calling "shenanigans" on this one.

Expose pieces are irregular posts attempting to hold people and organizations accountable for their actions.
Kyle can be found on Twitter and MySpace, or reached via email.