Detecting bittorrent blocking

ABSTRACT

Recently, it has been reported that certain access ISPs are surreptitiously blocking their customers from uploading data using the popular BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. The reports have sparked an intense and wide-ranging policy debate on network neutrality and ISP traffic management practices. However, to date, end users lack access to measurement tools that can detect whether their access ISPs are blocking their BitTorrent traffic. And since ISPs do not voluntarily disclose their traffic management policies, no one knows how widely BitTorrent traffic blocking is deployed in the current Internet. In this paper, we address this problem by designing an easy-to-use tool to detect BitTorrent blocking and by presenting results from a widely used public deployment of the tool.

REFERENCES

• 1: "Sandvine Inc." http://www.sandvine.com/.
• 2: "Packeteer Inc." http://www.packeteer.com/.
• 3: "DslReports: Comcast is using Sandvine to manage P2P connections." http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18323368-Comcast-is-using-Sandvine-to-manage-P2P-Connections.
• 4: "EFF 'Test Your ISP' Project." http://www.eff.org/testyourisp.
• 5: "Comments of Comcast Corporation before the FCC." http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6519840991.
• 6: "The BitTorrent Protocol Specification, Version 11031." http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html.
• 7: A. Parker, "The true picture of peer-to-peer file sharing." http://www.cachelogic.com/research/.
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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.3 Network Operations

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.5 Local and Wide-Area Networks
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS

General Terms:
Experimentation, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
bittorrent, blocking, network measurement