My ISP is blocking P2P Traffic in my area b/c the RIAA

[JiMiThInG]

Ok here we go....

About 3 days ago I woke up to notice that my Bit Comet wasn't working right. All my transfers where stilling at pretty much 0Kb/s up and down. I figured it might be a temp problem and didn't worry about it to much. However after a time it didn't improve. I began to do various things to try to correct the issue. The first time I get on the phone with my ISP, Mediacom they don't really have any ideas what the problem could be. I explain to them how I use bit torrent to exchange legal live recordings of concerts by certain bands... After a few more calls to mediacom they finall tell me they think they know what the problem is. My modem has gone bad. Fine no problem I get a new one. Get it all setup and working...same problem. Call them back..after a few more calls and people they decide my line might be having some problems and setup a service call. Tonight I call to ask them a few questions and the tech support guy explains to me that the problem is. He says that the ports Bit Torrent uses are being blocked but not by mediacom, as they don't block any ports. However he says "someone" is blocking these ports. He can't seem to tell me who or what ports are being blocked. I call back to talk to someone else. I go threw some banter with the guy and tell him what the other guy had said about ports being blocked and as for more information. Now he puts me on hold for a bit. He comes back and says that he now knows. Mediacom gets there service from AT&T and that they are the ones blocking the ports. I ask him why as bit torrent has many legit uses. He responds. That the RIAA had requested that of them in certain town in the country that had lots of P2P traffic that they felt where illegal. I ask him if AT&T is doing this willingly or being forced to. He says he doesn't know but that the rumor at mediacom is that they are being forced to by the court. I don't find this likey as people probaly would have heard about it. I suspect they are simply working with the RIAA on this one. The mediacom guy says thats all he knows...he has no idea what ports are affected and that I should maybe try AT&T. I finally find a human to talk to at AT&T and he says as I am not one of there customers all he needs to tell me is that yes they are blocking certain ports in certain areas. He would not tell me what ports or why... So I am looking for help for all you guys out there to find out more about this. Looking for people who have AT&T broadban and can help me track down info. Thanx

[Siskabush]

considering that P2P was ruled nice and legit, the RIAA should not be doing this.

And if is the RIAA, that means what they are doing is illegal.

[Deegin]

If you have any other ISP options in your area.. I would think about switching, because blocking P2P traffic is a pretty lame thing for an ISP to do IMHO. RIAA or not.. that's still lame.

[Betamax]

Setup your BT to use non-standard ports. I'm not sure how to do it with BitComet.

This is from the torrentbits FAQ:

"Why do I get a "rejected by tracker - Port xxxx is blacklisted" error?

Your client is reporting to the tracker that it uses one of the default bittorrent ports (6881-6889) or any other common p2p port for incoming connections.

TorrentBits does not allow clients to use ports commonly associated with p2p protocols. The reason for this is that it is a common practice for ISPs to throttle those ports (that is, limit the bandwidth, hence the speed).

The blocked ports list include, but is not necessarily limited to, the following:


Direct Connect
411 - 413
Kazaa
1214
eDonkey
4662
Gnutella
6346 - 6347
BitTorrent
6881 - 6889

In order to use use our tracker you must configure your client to use any port range that does not contain those ports (a range within the region 49152 through 65535 is preferable, cf. IANA). Notice that some clients, like Azureus 2.0.7.0 or higher, use a single port for all torrents, while most others use one port per open torrent. The size of the range you choose should take this into account (typically less than 10 ports wide. There is no benefit whatsoever in choosing a wide range, and there are possible security implications).

These ports are used for connections between peers, not client to tracker. Therefore this change will not interfere with your ability to use other trackers (in fact it should increase your speed with torrents from any tracker, not just ours). Your client will also still be able to connect to peers that are using the standard ports. If your client does not allow custom ports to be used, you will have to switch to one that does.

Do not ask us, or in the forums, which ports you should choose. The more random the choice is the harder it will be for ISPs to catch on to us and start limiting speeds on the ports we use. If we simply define another range ISPs will start throttling that range also.

Finally, remember to forward the chosen ports in your router and/or open them in your firewall, should you have them. See the Why am I listed as not connectable? section and links therein for more information on this."

[black_magiic]

thats pretty lame. I didnt think they could do that

[JiMiThInG]

Well it gets more intresting. Talked to some higher up people at mediacom. They are no claiming that they nor AT&T block any ports or in anyway restrict p2p activity. Although I have a friend here in town that is having the exact same problem with mediacom. The higher up person I talked to said that the two guys in tech support I talked to must have been mistaken.

[Lehk]

Try using Shields Up https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 to find out what is up with your ports, use the selection for "all service ports"

[JiMiThInG]

here are screenshots of my results from that site
http://img78.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img78&image=screen5.png
http://img78.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img78&image=screen6.png

[napho]

You could try exchanging files with friends and testing traditional ports at 1st, like BT,Gnutella and FT ones. http://www.wfshome.com/

[eivioolla]

here are screenshots of my results from that site
http://img78.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img78&image=screen5.png
http://img78.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img78&image=screen6.png

Most of your ports seem completely unaccessible. There are few things that you naturally need to concider.

First make sure that the IP address that is being probed is the same as what ipconfig in cmd prompt tells you. Otherwise some other computer (proxy/router/etc) is being tested and the results tell nothing.

Second, obviously you need to turn your own firewall off, otherwise you can't know whether it's the ISP or your own FW that is blocking the access.

In a normal non blocked (no firewall, no nat) scenario most ports would report closed (blue) and some might be open (red) if you have a program listening on that port.

Green results are completely blocked, either from your own firewall/NAT or at ISP.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Anyone else keeping up with this happening? It seems to be wide spread and maybe even moving into other areas. This could soon effect many more people. Read the ongoing story at Slyck


http://www.slyck.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7722

[@bloody_bloo]

HI im new here, first post, from Argentina.

I was searching the Net trying to find HOW legal this PORT filtering is. I mean, if it is any free internet legislation that prevents ISP from filtering your download.

I can tell you what's happening right here. It seems there too. Most of all ISPs here started a couple months ago filtering ports. What for? To punish p2p users. Seems that we have no right to download whatever we want. I do not allways use p2p to download illegal material but its up to me to face a trial in case someone wants to sue me. So why is this happening? Bandwith limitation. They limit our download capabilities with a Copyright excuse. Rubish.

In the beggining ISPs started filtering by port number, then they switched in a datagram filtering. They cut off all emule p2p activity transfer rates droped down. They say they do not block, they just give less priority to certain paquets. I dont know.. for me a paquet that comes after a time out is blocking.

Well, just wanted to tell whats going on here. Is there a way to notify internic of this abuses from isps? who defends us?

[Mels_Smileys45]

This type of action by ISPs really sucks but its well with in their rights to filter whatever ports they wish to do. All ISPs make you sign a users agreement and in it, it usually states something to the effect that they reserve the right to alter services at any time. After all, it is their company to run how they see fit. They can even deny you access to their service altogether if they so wish. About the only option is to shop around for another provider.

[@bloody_bloo]

Fresh data:
Some friends started using different client, BitComet. Its a torrent client, not the same as e2k but this client can get through proxies. Its easy to bypass filtering with this one. Try it before they filter this one!