Cox High Speed Internet: Are they messing with BitTorrent?

[Makosuke]

First off, BitTorrent has a number of perfectly legal (and cool) uses, as well as a large grey area (fansubs, etc), and the list is growing, so this isn't an illigitimate question.

Second, Cox's TOS prevents you from running a server on your connection, which a BT download is not, and I'm pretty sure their 10GB up/40GB down caps cover any network use issues, so there's no room for them to complain there.

Now, the question: Does anybody else here use both Cox and BitTorrent? If so, have they started doing something to interfere with BitTorrent transmission in the last couple weeks? I went to download something yesterday, but Azureus can't seem to establish any incomming connections,and that was not the case the last time I used it about two weeks ago. Although the issue looks just like a router/firewall problem, I don't even have a router, and turning off my firewall entirely didn't help. I also use a random UDP port for security reasons, so that's not the cause, either.

Anybody else seen this, or know something about it?

 

[Arcus]

I cant speak for COX but if they are like Comcast they are having a problem with any / all P2P apps consuming a good portion of thier bandwidth. Comcast recently increased thier upstream by 100k and it was instantly consumed by P2P communication. Net effect to regular users , 0% increase.

The main problem is off network communication. Comcast will be doing something about it in a few months. Vonage will be having a hard time on Comcast as they on examining pakets and deprioritizing off network communication (among other types).

 

[Makosuke]

I'm aware of the bandwidth drain that P2P networks place on ISPs, but really, if they're going to set and publish a specific 40GB downstream and 10GB upstream cap (that's cumulative monthly bandwidth, not the 4Mbit down and 512Kbit up line speed caps), you'd think that they wouldn't much care how that got used. If they did, why not just set the cap lower?

And that still doesn't explain what's up with the BitTorrent issues; are they blocking all incoming packets/connections that look like BitTorrent, are they messing with all incoming traffic coming from outside their own network (which sounds outright insulting from a customer standpoint), or is there something else going on?

I've always liked Cox's speed and the lack of any silly PPPoE for authentication, but if they're going that far I guess it's time to look at SBC DSL and see if they're any less draconian about their policies. At the least, they expressly state that they have no bandwidth caps, and you can even buy plans from them that allow you to run a server on your DSL line.

 

[Norouzi]

I know that I just had to download a newer version of the bittorrent client so that my girlfriend could use it. It wouldn't connect to any trackers till I updated it. Don't know if this is what's happening to you.

I don't have Cox cable, I've got CableOne, and I know they put a cap as well, but I just start my downloads at night as not to consume bandwith durring peak hours and they don't seem to mind.