Clearwire limiting P2P

Random

Right, so one of the lads at work is having some issues running Limewire. After ringing Clearwire customer support they say they block all known P2P ports (not block.. throttle .. and then they said they dont' limit, they just impose fair usage .. we all get the jist anyhow ...).

They said that should you be running a game server (for some friends) you should be ok though.

I suggested then that if Limewire was running on port 27015 (Counter-Strike server port) they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. They tend tried to fob me off with some bs and just wouldn't gimme a straight answer.

My understanding was that an ISP can only really monitor your usage over certain ports and to certain URLs - they have no way of knowing if you're actually using a P2P program beyond maybe the port it's on (or obviously by the level of traffic).

How so can they be limiting usage (to the extent that Limewire won't work) if Limewire is running on a nice innocent port?

I'd rather not get into a discussion about firewalls, port forwarding etc ... I'm trying look at this from the ISP side and see how they could possibly be blocking it.

Cheers!

Roen

I was over in a mates house recently and tried to get azureus to work. I tried a whole host of different ports but to no avail. I disabled his firewall and rebooted just to check was that the issue. No joy I'm afraid.
Now that I think of it I couldn't even download the .torrent files from any websites I tried. The requests just timed out. I went straight home and tried from my pc and there was no probs, so it wasn't the fact that multiple web sites just happened to be down. Surely they are not blocking the download of the .torrent files themselves. Are they?

Random

Someone else I know on Clearwire can use torrents without issue.

sc4rf4ce

sounds like it could be a problem with the clearwire router.
port forwarding.
you could always change the limewire port anyway.

Random

I'd rather not get into Client-side issues. I wanna know how the ISP could possibly be isolating and limiting P2P traffic on their end - like he claims.

ntlbell

ciaranfo wrote:

I'd rather not get into Client-side issues. I wanna know how the ISP could possibly be isolating and limiting P2P traffic on their end - like he claims.

Application signatures, ports...there's lots of ways, do ISP's go to this amount of trouble?

I doubt it.

Random

ports - you can change the port to something like a game port as I've said .. so this method would be defunct .. unless I've missed something?

Application signatures - please elaborate.


and yes, apparently Clearwire do.

ntlbell

ciaranfo wrote:

ports - you can change the port to something like a game port as I've said .. so this method would be defunct .. unless I've missed something?

Application signatures - please elaborate.


and yes, apparently Clearwire do.

I'm not your school teacher.

You can change the port of course, but that doesn't get around application signatures.

They may claim to, I very much doubt they really do.

If you want to find out about application signatures, you're sitting in front of the biggest libary in the world and paying clearwire to use it, so use it.

Random

"If you want to find out about application signatures, you're sitting in front of the biggest libary in the world and paying clearwire to use it, so use it."

Why can't people just share knowledge? Why is the standard answer to everything "use google!" ... it annoys me no end.

Also, I'm not a Clearwire customer.

ntlbell

ciaranfo wrote:

"If you want to find out about application signatures, you're sitting in front of the biggest libary in the world and paying clearwire to use it, so use it."

Why can't people just share knowledge? Why is the standard answer to everything "use google!" ... it annoys me no end.

Also, I'm not a Clearwire customer.

If the standard answer was to "use google" I wouldn't have giving any input in the first place, now you have somewhere to start.

Why is it standard for people to be so lazy and not do any research themselves and hope someone else has got up of their arse and done it for them? why do people expect so much? "it annoys me no end"

Random

It's the implied tone of your comment ("If you want to find out about application signatures, you're sitting in front of the biggest libary in the world and paying clearwire to use it, so use it.") that's got me going ... forget it ... sorry if I took it up wrong.

A brief outline of traffic analysis techniques can be found here http://www.securityfocus.com/print/infocus/1843 for anyones who's interested.

Any other thoughts would be great.

Peanut

I've tried using some of the freeware data classifiers to prioritise different traffic (l7 filter, ipp2p).
They essentially just search data streams for specific strings or patterns.

You get mixed results with them, a lot of the problem is that especially with p2p, it's tricky to keep up with all the different releases of p2p apps, and then they can go and encrypt data on them & you are screwed anyway.

However they can help by implementing them the reverse way - try to match known 'good' protocols and giving priority to them, then dumping the rest of traffic with the remaining bandwidth. This tends to work better because the more standard protocols like http will have certain RFCs that define headers etc. , and will be easier to match, also they are usually on stardard ports anyway so it's not a big deal.

Wireless ISPs absolutely have to manage traffic because the amount of 'last mile' bandwidth to the user is orders of magnitude less than on DSL or equivalent. There's only so much data you can pump through the air on a given bandwidth allocation, therefore there is huge contention with this, and p2p apps make managing this far more difficult due to their mode of action with respect to, especially, opening tons of simultaneous connections and a tendency towards being bandwidth greedy.

Sheridan

Hi,
I was wondering if anyone can clarify the position regarding clearwire's compatibility with P2P applications, such as LimeWire and Soulseek, neither of which are working for me. I brought my laptop into work and asked a colleague to configure it correctly for use with these programs, and experienced no difficulties. However, once I returned home and connected to my clearwire box the problems returned.

Is clearwire specifically prohibiting use of these programs by blocking the ports and if so can anyone advise me of a solution? Any help greatly appreciated.

Ludo

All peer to peer traffic is blocked by Clearwire as policy as their network cannot actually handle the amount of traffic. This means that lots of applications such as Sky by Broadband, PalTalk, Limewire, etc, etc and torrent sites will NOT work on Clearwire.

I would be very interested in seeing how the person above who says they have seen p2p work on Clearwire achieved it.
I know someone got around it recently as their tech support told me last week they had to block a load more ports due to this, and as a result their were more major problems running certain applications the weekend before last.

layke

A mate of mine works for clearwire and when I told him my traffic usage he told me "our broadband is not for you" it's for people who just browse and such. He also mentioned some bloke in there who makes sure all of thoise ports are locked down.

Move ISP mate.

Ludo

True. Pity they don't tell everyone who subscribes that.

I am cancelling mine next week as they do not offer the service I subscribed to. All these blocks came in after I joined so it is really a breach of contract on their part as I was never notified of any changes to the service.

Sheridan

Cheers for the responses, bad though the news is. Unfortunately, since I live in Stillorgan, don't have an active phone line and my landlords prohibit the installation of aerials etc, my options are somewhat circumscribed, if not limited to Clearwire. Looks like my P2P days are over until I move elsewhere unless anyone can suggest an alternative. Thanks again.

bushy...

Thinking about it i'd reckon half of IBB's problems would go away if they limited p2p etc , the 2M upload & download they offer must attract huge (p2p) traffic

optiplexgx270

bushy... wrote:

Thinking about it i'd reckon half of IBB's problems would go away if they limited p2p etc , the 2M upload & download they offer must attract huge (p2p) traffic

Half of their problems would go away but 75% of their customers would too me along with them I actually find IBB great for example a while back i downloaded 11Gb in 2 days by mistake left pc on while i was away and it was set downloading a few bits and peices the next day my connection was crap but i kept it under a gig and next day was back to normal I was expecting to be punished far worse for at least say a week.

ciaranfo: When you are talking decent hardware firewalls easily €50000+ the likes of the ones ISP's use they can be set to automatically filter out various types of packets P2P included. So changeing a port wont hide it from the firewall.

oscarBravo

Peanut wrote:

Wireless ISPs absolutely have to manage traffic because the amount of 'last mile' bandwidth to the user is orders of magnitude less than on DSL or equivalent.

Not necessarily true. "Orders of magnitude less" implies only 1% of the equivalent wireline bandwidth, which simply isn't the case.

Peanut wrote:

There's only so much data you can pump through the air on a given bandwidth allocation...

...equally true of wired broadband...

Peanut wrote:

...therefore there is huge contention with this...

Not necessarily so. A wireless network can be well-managed to keep contention entirely manageable.

Peanut wrote:

...and p2p apps make managing this far more difficult due to their mode of action with respect to, especially, opening tons of simultaneous connections and a tendency towards being bandwidth greedy.

This part is entirely true - p2p apps are horribly badly designed by contrast with the superb work that has gone into the older Internet protocols.

I was forced to kill off p2p filesharing completely on the Knockmore Community Network, as it made web browsing impossible. At one point I found that the main firewall was trying to keep track of 30,000 open connections - with just 30 users, only about 2-3 of whom were using p2p. That's just braindead.

vasch_ro

optiplexgx270 wrote:

I actually find IBB great for example a while back i downloaded 11Gb in 2 days by mistake left pc on while i was away and it was set downloading a few bits and peices the next day my connection was crap but i kept it under a gig and next day was back to normal I was expecting to be punished far worse for at least say a week.

.

I think you are saying here that IBB employ some sort of throttle depending on usage of the network, is this what they do "punish you" for excessive downloads or uploads , i had perhaps naievely thought that there was no cap.....

gordonnet

clearwire amoung others use bandwidth management software normally a unix box which can not only block ports, but specific protocols as well as applications. another words there is NO way to bypass.

Peanut

oscarBravo wrote:

Not necessarily true. "Orders of magnitude less" implies only 1% of the equivalent wireline bandwidth, which simply isn't the case.

I'm comparing the aggregate wired bandwidth of DSL customers compared to the aggregate bandwidth usage of a WISP, as opposed to comparing a single customer connection in each case. I don't have exact figures, but it appears fairly clear that there is a huge difference between having dedicated copper to each subscriber (even given contention at the exchange), and the amount of contended bandwidth on a wireless channel,

e.g., slightly older ripwave base station -
http://www.tuanistechnology.com/products/navini/data.pdf
Has to share 16mbps between subscribers.

oscarBravo wrote:

...equally true of wired broadband...

Of course.

oscarBravo wrote:

Not necessarily so. A wireless network can be well-managed to keep contention entirely manageable.

Doesn't tend to happen very much though! Especially in high-density urban areas. Like you say, you have to kill off/throttle p2p to keep it manageable, of course the ISPs should make this clear to potential subscribers though.

gordonnet wrote:

..another words there is NO way to bypass.

Not necessarily true, protocols can always be disguised & tunnelled through other protocols.

optiplexgx270

vasch_ro wrote:

I think you are saying here that IBB employ some sort of throttle depending on usage of the network, is this what they do "punish you" for excessive downloads or uploads , i had perhaps naievely thought that there was no cap.....

There is "no cap" but if you are taking the piss like 5+Gb a day they will just destroy your connection. Better having 1 unhappy customer than having all the other customers in your pipe complaining. I learned to accept this and rarely need over 5gb in a day i average 600Gb a year download and about 400-500Gb upload.

DemonOfTheFall

Sheridan wrote:

Cheers for the responses, bad though the news is. Unfortunately, since I live in Stillorgan, don't have an active phone line and my landlords prohibit the installation of aerials etc, my options are somewhat circumscribed, if not limited to Clearwire. Looks like my P2P days are over until I move elsewhere unless anyone can suggest an alternative. Thanks again.

You can get ripwave in stillorgan. My friend has been trying it out for the last couple of days. IBB's website said she couldn't get it, so she borrowed someone else's ripwave. Gets between 8 and 20 kB/s download and steady 12 kB/s upload. Not amazing, but better than dial up...

jimjimk

Peanut wrote: »

Not necessarily true, protocols can always be disguised & tunnelled through other protocols.

Not necessarily true either with DPI (deep packet inspection) as opposed to your usual stateful packet inspection port based firewall, its possible to stop these types of traffic, even if tunnelled over other ports, or dynamic ports.

foggy_lad

so what ye are sayiny is that clearwire are restricting my transfer speeds on larger downloads?? am getting between 20-80kbps, it will start at around 250-400kbps but drops to nothin after about 5-10seconds. they are now claiming i may have some virus consuming bandwidth!

thebman

optiplexgx270 wrote: »

There is "no cap" but if you are taking the piss like 5+Gb a day they will just destroy your connection. Better having 1 unhappy customer than having all the other customers in your pipe complaining. I learned to accept this and rarely need over 5gb in a day i average 600Gb a year download and about 400-500Gb upload.

Yeah I've noticed IBB do this but I have to say despite this, it is a great service 99% of the time and the only time you have problems is when you are downloading something massive.

I've found that they are pretty decent about most things.

I know they claim its unlimited but in practice we all know this isn't possible as there isn't enough bandwidth for everyone to be at full speed all the time so you'd be at 20:1 contention the whole time and down to near dial up speeds with your "unlimited bandwidth". In practice the contention almost never kicks in so I'm very happy with their policies.

You could claim unlimited bandwidth is misleading but if we had an advertising standards body they'd stop ridiculous claims like that. Its obvious that the bodies in place have no interest in doing their jobs in this country by the three thread.

Cabaal

please don't drag up 12 month old threads,