Kyle Brady: Blog » Traffic Shaping

Making Net Neutrality Policy [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:05:45 +0000

Net Neutrality policy, or, rather, the need for such policy, is not a new topic, yet it has only just reached the halls of Congress for consideration, and brought with it the usual slew of idiocy and incompetence that can only be found in a group of people trying to legislate on an arena of life they barely understand, let alone participate in.

At it’s heart, Net Neutrality is about unfettered, unrestricted, and unbiased access to the Internet, but as is typical with such a broad concept, there are many variations and definitions. The most idealistic and effective interpretation of Net Neutrality is one that prevents Internet Service Providers from filtering, shaping, or blocking traffic based on type, source, or size, as well as preventing discrimination by ISPs that may have conflicting interests.

An effective example is to examine Comcast’s holdings and behaviors: they are, at the heart, a cable network with television subscribers and have ample interest in seeing on demand media via the Internet (such as Hulu) fail to achieve mass market success - they also have VoIP telephone offerings, which competes with services such as Skype. In the case of Comcast, it would be in their best interest to prevent, augment, or charge an extra fee for the use of services over its network that competes with their offerings, but this is highly unethical and they have yet to officially implement such policy – although it is inevitable and is rumored to currently be the talk of their executives. Furthermore, Comcast has expressed interest in so-called “bandwidth caps” that would put arbitrary limits on the amount of data a user can send and receive over their broadband connection within a given time period, which is a not-so-clever approach to decimating their high bandwidth service rivals.

Companies such as Comcast already participate heavily, and illegally, in a practice known as “traffic shaping”, by which certain types of traffic are either severely impeded or prevented entirely for reasons that are not publicly admitted to – experiments have proven peer-to-peer traffic to be one of the triggers of this behavior, and using “too much bandwidth” in an arbitrary time period, a policy stated nowhere, is another trigger known for AT&T.

These are the reasons why Net Neutrality is important, but weak policy passed with a Net Neutrality label, either by the FCC or Congress, is not enough. Republicans have already, predictably, come out in force against regulating ISPs, along with their fellow corrupt politicians throughout Congress that are more interested in their own pockets than the betterment of America or its people – John McCain, an admitted technophobe and Internet-avoider, has even introduced legislation that would prevent the federal government from even getting involved in this issue.

It is critical to the future of America, most especially a digital one, that Internet Service Providers come to be regarded as the next utility company, rather than as a service that citizens can choose to participate in. If only a single lesson can be learned from the financial mess of the last two years, it is this: markets cannot, and will not, regulate themselves when there are ever greater profits to be had at the expense of their customers/beneficiaries. The lack of regulation on the broadband market so far has resulted in a situation that is quickly approaching chaos, with a variety of plans and machinations to provide ever-less services for ever-greater prices.

The inevitable argument in Congress will be whether the networks have the ability to support unadulterated traffic, and the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. This, however, will be hard to express to those who are technologically illiterate by trade or ignorant by choice. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that digitally-minded citizens across America make their voices heard on this issue: if a customer has ever experienced less-than-advertised speeds, long-term disconnected service, traffic filtering/shaping/blocking, or been the recipient of other such nefarious activities, both the FCC and Congress need to know.

An America that has bandwidth caps, approved traffic types, and networks that don’t communicate with each other is not a country that can continue to grow and compete on a global, or digital, scale. Technological illiterate Senators such as John McCain should be excluded, by whatever means possible, from the process, along with those Senators that have indicated their loyalties lie with those finance their campaigns, such as Diane Feinstein. This issue, much like true healthcare reform, is one that can only be accomplished through brute force and political strength of will – there will be no bipartisanship, and it is likely that anyone within Congress that considers themselves a conservative, regardless of party, will oppose such legislation as well.

In light of Congress' known stagnation and distinct lack of progressive interests, perhaps the FCC should pass their legislation first, however weakened, to set the tone and discussion for future Congressional legislation – if there is policy in place that provides the foundation of true Net Neutrality, it would be considerably more difficult for detractors to argue against the mere existence of such legislation.

Julius Genachowski, it is time to prove that you are capable of achieving what you claim to believe in - America is waiting.

The Fall of AT&T Began on 7/26/2009 [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:05:07 +0000

On Sunday, July 26th, 2009, AT&T made a grave miscalculation in their attempt to garner ever more customers to their internet-related plans (DSL, ADSL, U-verse, etc.) , as they moved from merely traffic-shaping and lying about their packages to actually blocking sections of the internet. The target, in this instance, was a highly visited dark corner of the nerd world known as 4chan, specifically the portions of the site dependent on the “img” subdomain such as the /b/ image board. - at a time when the FCC is moving towards further telco regulation in the vein of Net Neutrality.

The quickest way to explain /b/ is this: “a mostly-anonymous, no-archives message board with only light moderation that ranges from intelligent topics to highly NSFW imagery, while managing to spawn most Internet ‘memes’ and serve as an organizational method for the anti-Scientology movement known as ‘Anonymous’ and other such truth-minded endeavors”. The caveat to the prior statement is that the activity on /b/ is occasionally legally questionable, and usually ethically murky at best – unless the /b/rothers are targeting lying salesmen, cat killers, or being otherwise noble.

AT&T has apparently admitted to blocking traffic to “portions of the internet site 4chan.org”, which is easily tested by comparison of a user’s connection+response to the results of a site like downforeveryoneorjustme – the question is no longer “are they really?”, but “why?” and “what happens next?”. The “why” will probably never be satisfactorily answered, since there are entire legions of people and organizations that would love to see /b/ blocked, and would pay for it to happen, but the current excuse is that DDoS attacks were originating from AT&T’s internet services – obviously it’s a better solution to block the endpoint of an attack than to deal with the hassle of monitoring your own customers for highly illegal and destructive activities.

The “what happens next?” is a considerably easier question to answer: the estimated 1.5 million people who call themselves /b/tards or /b/rothers will be very angry, if they aren’t already. Anon already has a considerable history of viciously taking down anyone that opposes it or its interests, and blocking access to their most beloved of websites qualifies as an opposition of interest. AT&T can expect many lost customers, even if this issue is “resolved” quickly, complaints to the FCC, and any number of other attacks on both the company’s integrity and profits.

However, the supporters of AT&T's ethically ambiguous behavior are already beginning to make their voices heard, such as Bill Belew of the “Christian Worldview Examiner”. These people are the same that have always lauded the shutdown of 4chan or the arrest of "moot" (the owner/administrator) as a solution to their problems – free speech is free speech, and Net Neutrality has no caveats. Censorship in any form, whether it’s traffic-shaping or an outright ban, is not only uncalled for, but illegal. Especially in America.

Regardless of the reasons for AT&T's banning of portions of 4chan to their customers, the important point is that they took such an action, and not whether such sites should exist - it is not the place of network administrators to decide what is and is not appropriate, if anyone at all. Many individuals and organizations, usually religious in nature, don’t like the numerous porn sites that exist across the Internet, but until now they have merely had to bite their tongues. Banning any data endpoint, for any reason, sets a dangerous precedent, especially in the lobby- and interest-driven society of the modern world.

7/26/2009 could mark a turning point in the life of AT&T, when the future looks back on history, as the day that the shady practices of an ethically challenged company finally caught up with them: traffic filtering, site banning, and lying about service packages can only continue for so long before the FCC, along with the bill-paying public, takes a stand.

Update (7/27/2009 12:50pm PST): AT&T has made an official statement that the blocking of 4chan was due to a DDoS - which could very easily be a lie. However, it doesn't matter for "why" - the blocking of access to content is the exact definition of censorship, and that doesn't change the nature of this offense. The block has also apparently been removed.

GigaOm, you disappoint me by yet again siding with the people that pay your bills.

Update (7/27/2009 1:20pm PST): 'moot' has weighed in that some of their hardware caused AT&T to think there was a DDoS going on, and that AT&T had a "disproportionate response". While I'm inclined to believe this account of the story, AT&T's reaction was still shady at best, not to mention ethically questionable.

Incorrect Base Assumptions About Network Management [OpEd]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 07:05:20 +0000

IEEE recently ran a lengthy article in the latest (July 2009) issue of Spectrum, their major monthly publication, called “A Radical New Router” – essentially describing and promoting a smarter network router to better manage traffic. Overall, an interesting piece that could prove highly useful in the industry, but throughout, the author and inventor of the technology, Dr. Lawrence G. Roberts, makes references to the so-called need to filter, augment, and otherwise monitor certain kinds of traffic – specifically, peer-to-peer (P2P) content. This base assumption from which he operates over many sequences of logic is incorrect, despite producing good insights into the current state, and possible future, of the modern global network. Not to mention having participated in its invention.

Whenever the subject of bandwidth usage and availability comes up in any public forum, P2P traffic is inevitably blamed with “hogging” bandwidth, “clogging pipes”, and other such euphemisms that imply wrongdoing and questionable use. The reality, no matter what the telecommunications or cable companies say, is that bandwidth is not disappearing into the ether due to the massive usage of protocols like BitTorrent. These myths and halftruths are perpetuated by internet service providers (ISPs) because they can produce a better bottom-line by spending less on equipment and infrastructure to support their userbase - as well as the copyfight-abuse organizations like the RIAA and MPAA because, when taking the longview, they have the same goals: reducing P2P traffic by any means necessary in order to potentially achieve higher profit margins.

Consider, for a moment, the issue most often cited for “traffic shaping”, the practice of filtering a users traffic based on the type and source: legality of content. While there is an abundance of content with questionable copyright origins based on the current interpretations of the DMCA (in America), there is also a sea of legal content being acquired by the same means: Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, and a number of other musical artists have experimented with a freely available online distribution method, in addition to countless young movie producers that are only interested in their content being available and seen.

How can network monitoring practices differentiate between “legal” and “illegal” P2P traffic? Filtering by content source, such as a band’s official website vs. IsoHunt, is impractical – the content available via the official source is likely licensed for free distribution and sharing by other means. Filtering by traffic size, as in number of bytes transferred, is a gray area at best – setting an arbitrary size for acceptable P2P traffic, or any type of traffic, creates artificial pricing levels, not to mention potentially endorsing the acquisition of questionably sourced content. There is really only one option left, and it is what most ISPs choose in such cases: filter by traffic type.

Examples abound of ISPs delivering the speeds expected, or close to expected, for common traffic like web-browsing, email, and IM conversations, but getting heavily choked to lower levels (sometimes resembling dialup speeds) when a Torrent file is active – regardless of legality, content, or source. When the ISP will even admit to doing so, which is rare, they tend to blame their need for such filtering based on total bandwidth availability - “5% of the users in some networks [consume] 75% of the bandwidth”, to quote Roberts’ article. While it is hard for the ISPs to support such claims with hard evidence, this is improbable at best – how can a user consume that much bandwidth when they are prevented from doing so in the first place?

Yes, the internet, and networks of all types, are seeing explosive growth. And, yes, it will present some challenging problems in the coming years. But the true bandwidth capacity of the current infrastructure, which is constantly being expanded and optimized, is not anywhere close to being “full” – let alone full because of P2P traffic. The tech community likes to think that “the cloud” is the future of computing, meaning accessing remote rich applications via a web browser, and this means an increase in network traffic, purely by default – this is already being seen thanks to Facebook, Google, and countless others. Include Voice-over-Internet-Protocol applications like Skype, instant messaging, videoconferencing, remote desktop access, and numerous other now-standard types of network traffic, and the reason for the massive increase in bandwidth use becomes clear. P2P traffic is a part of it, but is by no means the singular culprit.

But if P2P isn’t inherently illegal or “bad”, can it be a large part of the future? It has been used to distribute video games, distribution of multimedia content from a United States government agency, and as a means to alleviate server stress for video playback for a major news outlet. These examples are merely the world-at-large testing the waters for this relatively new type of traffic, and the future may contain exponentially more – assuming the network connections don’t arbitrarily prevent users from connecting to such rich experiences. In the days of Usenet and bulletin board services, who could have predicted a common, open, and mostly free global network? If the network administrators of the time had decided to prevent an evolution of protocols, merely on the basis of profit, the modern Internet would not exist.

This is not to say that prioritizing network traffic, as the majority of the Spectrum article addresses, is not valuable. Packaging data streams such as video and audio together for processing and transmission could have substantial benefits on network stresses and overall activity patterns – evolving from “dumb” to “smart” routers is a necessary step in expanding the capacity, functionality, and ability of the Internet. However, there is a considerable difference between “prioritizing” and “filtering” – prioritizing means temporary delays that the end-user will never notice, on the scale of milliseconds, while filtering is restricting or preventing entirely the transmission of data.

Such Old World assumptions about the proper use of the Internet need to be discarded in order to allow it to continue the evolution into a more complex and useful tool – this is the basis of Net Neutrality, an area which the United States Federal Government is finally getting involved in. Lawrence G. Roberts, the IEEE, and hardware developers the world over would do well to take note: network management may be difficult at times, but the answer will not be found in restricting the freedoms of users. Many Internet users know this, the Federal Government appears to be slowly awakening to a similar realization, and it is time network operators joined the rest of the world in acknowledging what amounts to a Rights and Freedoms issue for the modern, digital age.

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Update (7/9/2009 10:50am PST): Quoted in a Net Neutrality piece by p2pnet.

Update (7/9/2009 4:14pm PST): I exchanged emails with Dr. Roberts himself regarding this, and the direct communication seems to help clarify - heavy editing may have been a culprit for some of the confusion on P2P traffic. A position of "fair and equal traffic" is much better than "regulate the unwanted traffic" - apparently Dr. Roberts and I are in agreement on this topic. Here's his clarification, unedited and printed with permission:

Perhaps the IEEE article was not sufficiently clear due to significant editing. However, I have never claimed P2P file sharing was bad. However, any multi-flow application is likely to consume far more than its fair share of the capacity an ISP allocates to a DSLAM or cable channel (often about 1000 subscribers). What most people don't understand is that the capacity for those 1000 subscribers is shared and not equal to 1000 times the peak capacity advertised. Often the ISP is at fault for misleading advertising but no ISP allocates much more than the statistical peak usage created by 1000 normal users. Unfortunately, IP networks today, using TCP, provide about equal capacity per flow, not per subscriber. Thus a multi-flow application using 100 flows will consume 100 times the capacity available to the normal user who is using one flow. Thus, if even 1% of the users are using certain P2P applications that open many flows, they will consume 60%-90% of the shared capacity of the DSLAM or cable channel. This reduces the capacity available to the other 99% of normal users to a small fraction of what they paid for. That is the problem. What I am recommending is for the network to adjust the sharing process such that when congestion occurs, capacity is allocated so that it is "equal capacity for equal pay", not equal capacity per flow. This means the multi-flow user gets their fair share in peak hours without hurting their neighbors, and in off hours get all they can use.

P2P happens to be the current main multi-flow application. However, cloud computing appears to be the next big multi-flow application and there will be others. My goal is to keep the Internet working smoothly and this requires it be fair, even under overload. Equal capacity for equal pay accomplishes this where today there is serious un-fairness. It is also important that this be accomplished not by picking on any specific application (like P2P) as DPI devices do, but by fixing the basic sharing process. P2P is not bad, and as you say no-one can tell if the file is legal or illegal. But any multi-flow application can produce unfairness due to the current structure of the network and it is this un-fairness that is the problem.

Larry

Update (7/9/2009 6:15pm PST): I only just noticed (sorry Cory!), but I was mentioned on BoingBoing for this.

U.S. Broadband – A Call to Arms [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:08:29 +0000

Broadband providers seem to be in the news every week for one reason or another, but an important issue is arising in New York: companies are finding they have to compete with each other for customers, which really just means they can't sell "we're going to screw you over" packages anymore, and they actually are being forced to deliver on their promises.

Despite the many hopefuls out there, I'm skeptical. I've had problems with AT&T and them lying before, and the situation isn't getting any better.

I'd love to have a blindingly-fast internet connection that's not filtered, shaped, or anything else... just a raw pipeline. Some people seem to think this is coming. I would willingly pay $99/mth for consistent 50Mbps download speeds, and I would jump on Verizon's FiOS bandwagon the minute it's available in my area (if ever). But keep in mind that lots of small and random countries, like Estonia or Japan, have much better connectivity than we (the U.S.) do - and they continue to stay one step ahead of the game.

There is really only one hurdle to achieving high connectivity: corporate reluctance and profit margins.

Until a few years ago, American ISPs were relatively normal companies- they provided a service that customers paid for, end of story. But wave after wave of corporate lies and greed [1] [2], copyright abuse [1] [2], and traffic filtering/shaping [1] [2] are quickly proving that these companies don't have the best interest of the customers in mind - they're interested in obtaining maximum profit for minimal work, usually via overloading their networks or blocking/filtering/slowing certain kinds of traffic.

Where are the regulators in all of this? Where is the heavy-hand of the government that is supposed to defend our freedoms and liberties? They spend huge amounts of time, money, and effort defending our physical freedoms, but what about our intellectual and digital freedoms?

The RIAA is breathing down the neck of copyright law, trying to use it in ever more creative ways for destruction, all while looking to have the terms of copyright (and punishment for violation) extended to new heights. Lobbyists in Washington, in tandem with their corporate sponsors, are in a frenzy to prevent any sort of telco regulation related to their activities - even if the point is to protect their customers. Large portions of Congress are even in the telco companies' pockets, and are defending them voraciously - which includes the takedown of competition via government friends.

If the Internet is going to survive in any freedom-having format, then a few key events need to occur: Net Neutrality needs to be established in the U.S., setting a standard for other countries to follow; the FCC needs to heavily regulate what telcos can and cannot do regarding their broadband services/customers; and inquiries into the delivery of said services (connectivity, downstream, upstream, persistence, filtering, etc.) need to begin within the highest levels of government possible.

We already have countries clearly violating their citizens' rights (like Sweden), but the problems in America stem from corporations, not the government - do you really imagine Time Warner or Comcast would refuse to collect data on their users for the government? They already participate in shady activities, what's one more?

America could be turned into a highly-dense checkerboard of fiber, creating massive pipes to every home, and it wouldn't matter. What good is a fast connection when you can't use it? Or when you do, it gets downgraded, blocked, filtered, or otherwise interfered with?

American citizens need to stop sitting quietly in the background, and make it widely known such practices are not only despicable, but need to be flat-out illegal. For far too long these companies have operated on a policy of "screw the customer, they have no control" and the situation continues to quickly degrade in the absence of action from a slow-to-care government.

When the Internet becomes only a small conglomeration of sites you're allowed to visit, then will you (both the American people and the Federal government) care? That day is fast approaching - but don't depend on the Internet to find out about it.

It's probably blocked.

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Update (5/9/2009 11:55pm PST): It appears the EU has beaten us to the punch. While I applaud this and wholeheartedly endorse the movement, it's embarrassing that we didn't approach the issue with legislation first.

AT&T and Their ADSL Package- Continuing to Screw Me [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:51:42 +0000

For a quick history, see my post regarding AT&T and .torrent files. It's from a year ago, but not a whole lot has changed since then... Also, you can skip to the takeaway points of this, rather than reading the entire, rather lengthy, piece.

I changed apartments a few months ago, and in doing so I had to transfer my AT&T ADSL service from the old location to the new one... I haven't written about it until now, because I didn't have good enough reason to, but they screwed it up. Big time. And as of writing this, months later, the issues aren't fully resolved.

Oh, and they still filter my traffic too.

The Great Escape

To make a long story short, I requested them to transfer my service from Location A (old and then-current apartment) to Location B (new apartment) by Date C (about a week and a half from when I called). Within 24 hours, my modem mysteriously broke (killswitch?), and after calling in again to receive a new modem (free only by agreeing to a verbal contract of a year of service), I discovered that my transfer request has "disappeared" from their system. We created a new account request for Location B, active once again on Date C, with the modem to be received within 48 hours at Location B.

The modem didn't show at the new apartment, and it still wasn't there a week later. Having been without service for at least a week (in either location), I called after I received a bill. As it turns out, they misspelled my address and didn't include an apartment number, so it had been sitting in the closest UPS facility for the last 7 days. UPS had told AT&T to contact me to pick it up, so they sent a note to my address (not calling me once) - which I never received, because they didn't address it properly. The people at UPS said this is a regular event from AT&T.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Now having a modem, and managing to avoid any other idiotic issues when connecting to my service at the new apartment, I was content. However, a month and a half later (two weeks ago) I received two bills: each for a different account, totaling $130.

I spent two hours on the phone with the Billing Department, listening in as they spoke to different departments for my benefit. Apparently what had happened was that I had two accounts for the same service, in the same location, one of which was the "missing" account from the original transfer request.

While on the phone, they asked for one account to be closed, but not physically disconnected, via the Disconnect Dept., since I still had an active and valid account at the same address. They credited a payment from the false account to the true account, and placed a "billing changes pending" marker on the account - supposedly filing a bunch of notes for future reference along the way. I spoke to a supervisor, non-outsourced, who promised to call back within 48hrs. with an update on how much was being deducted from my account balance based on false accounts, lack of service, etc.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Less than 24hrs. later, I had no service, and had instead a blinking red status light on my month-old DSL modem - at 10am. Someone had come out from the Disconnect Dept., and disconnected me, despite being told not to.

Before doing any normal-life things like eating breakfast, making coffee, or showering, I called AT&T and spoke to the Line Dept., bypassing Tech Support completely, briefly explaining the situation. After asking the agent to look at the notes on my account, he enlightened me to the fact that no notes existed whatsoever.

Despite AT&T causing my problems, by being absolutely retarded, the earliest they could come out was the following Monday... I was calling on a Thursday morning. My request for escalation was processed, and I received a robot-call telling me it was denied 5 minutes later, no explanation.

Fight Club

My internet was reconnected by a very helpful field contractor, who gave me his cellphone so I "don't have to wait for AT&T to schedule a call whenever they feel like it", and I was again content. But further consultation with the Billing Dept. has shown that they also have no notes on my account, nor any reference to a supervisor callback that I never received - and they won't discuss my billing issues with me since I have an account change pending.

The very change that was placed on my account to prevent late fees being assessed while things were straightened out.

Romeo and Juliet

In the last 3 months, I've been without service a minimum of 2.5 weeks, none of which has been credited to me, and they claim that I actually had service during these periods. My connection is highly spotty, sometimes reconnecting multiple times within the span of a minute, but my hardware is all brand new, so it's not a local issue.

I pay $45/mth for "ADSL Pro Elite", purporting to have 6.0Mbps downstream - which I demonstrably don't have anything close to. They still filter my traffic in terms of torrent files and other file downloads, taking over an hour to download a single standard-definition TV episode (of, say, South Park) or needing to wait a few minutes to build a buffer when watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on Hulu. I still get penalized if they feel I used enough bandwidth for an arbitrary time period, such as slowing my connection to a crawl if I even dare to watch a streaming Netflix movie, resulting in picture quality that I could produce in my bathtub with a handful of crayons - with similar audio.

Count Dracula

At this point, I don't have many options: AT&T refuses to acknowledge that most of these events that have even occurred, they "lose" account notes that may have not existed in the first place, and generally screw me over in the use of their service. Comcast, being the only local cable provider, is not an acceptable replacement, for obvious reasons. Verizon doesn't provide service in my area, let alone FiOS, and none of the other major telcos don't either. I can't even use a Verizon satellite-card connection, because it wouldn't support having a home network like I do.

I'm painted into a corner. Paying too much for a service that doesn't deliver, to a company that lies, without options to go elsewhere.

What I really need is someone like Covad to provide solid, dependable, and quality service, downgraded in both specifications and price to a consumer level. If there ever was a reason for the Federal government to be involved in net neutrality and the internal network operations of the telcos, and not just "let the free market sort it out" (because total free reign has worked so well elsewhere!), this is one.

Maybe the real question is: who wants to form a telco startup?

p.s. Yes, it was worth the time it took to write this epic saga of lies, deceit, and backstabbing by AT&T. I feel slightly better now.

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Update (5/11/2009 9:30pm PST): I received a notice/bill/warning from a bill collecting agency today for part of the payment that is disputed and AT&T was supposed to be looking into... even though I've kept my account current monthly, while the other fees are "investigated" (or not... who knows, maybe they lost those records too). The saga continues.

AT&T Not “Traffic Shaping”? Right. [Expose]

Kyle Brady — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:22:31 +0000

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.

----------------------------

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.