Attention Slingbox/slingcatcher Users: Mict Directive

[Goattee]

Some Background:

Our ISP is CAT. When we switched to them we had many months of superior Sling bandwidth. We went with them because they were willing to talk about international bandwidth-- and that they were operating the dominant international internet gateway (IIG).

Our bandwidth has become terrible over the last 90 days when remotely viewing our Slingbox (which is located in California). The problem is evident whether we use a Slingcatcher or Slingplayers on both Mac and PC. The problem does not seem to be on the upload side in California. I was recently in California and viewed the Slingbox remotely in several cities there. And also in the airport in Taipei. The upload path seems fine.

At the same time we noticed a cap when using BitTorrent. (Both download and upload seem to have a pretty firm ceiling.)

Today our ISP told us that they are probably doing some kind of filtering (which I guess falls into the category of traffic shaping). We were told that they were doing this to prevent piracy pursuant to a directive from MICT.

I am seeking technical answers about ways to help our ISP's identify legitimate use of Slingbox streams so they do not cap the bandwidth for them. The trick is to identify something to distinguish these streams from BitTorrent and other P2P packets.

So......assuming that the purpose is truly to prevent piracy, I would like to present some technical information to my ISP (and to the governmental ministry) that describes a reliable way to identify streams from a Slingbox. I don't think it will help to simply tell them that they should look for port 5001-- BitTorrent users could simply specify that as their public port. So what I need is some kind of "signature" that an ISP could use as an exception to their filtering.

Thanks for reading this far! I look forward to your ideas.

[Langsuan Man]

Sorry but I think your ISP is blowing smoke up your a....

My Slingbox here in Pattaya is working perfectly and the best you are going to get here are people to report their experience with it

I noted that you have made this same request on the Sling Community Forums and I hope you get an answer, but Sling Media have always treated this information as proprietary just to keep from getting into any copyright problems

They are terrified that someone will be able to "record" and then transcode the stream so are pretty tight lipped on exactly how it works

[OriginalPoster]

Regardless of what your ISP says, the issue might not just be about piracy prevention. Torrents are major bandwidth hogs, so are Slingbox streams. That may be more of a motivation to your ISP to do traffic shaping than is their concern about piracy.

[Goattee]

Thanks to both of you for your speedy replies. Of course I'm not totally gullible. It's possible the person we spoke to was just making up a story to get my partner off the line. And the quickest way to prevent further scrutiny is to blame it on the government.

I still do want to find a way if possible to get Sling streams exempted from caps or traffic shaping.

[Goattee]

Sorry but I think your ISP is blowing smoke up your a....

My Slingbox here in Pattaya is working perfectly and the best you are going to get here are people to report their experience with it

I noted that you have made this same request on the Sling Community Forums and I hope you get an answer, but Sling Media have always treated this information as proprietary just to keep from getting into any copyright problems

They are terrified that someone will be able to "record" and then transcode the stream so are pretty tight lipped on exactly how it works

Wow! You hang out in the same places.

Your points are well taken. But I would not put it past MICT to demand that ISP's intercept packets. After all, they are the same agency that determines whether certain parts of the web are fit for human consumption.

One way or the other I really need to solve the problem. We're going to try switching to TripleT next. We already have an order in. They use Jasmine's international gateway and they are using MEA's fiber feed down our soi from the main road. So latency might improve. And with fiber in place there might be value-added (or even dedicated) services in the future.

[Curt1591]

I happen to have true. I have noticed, over time, that the speeds can vary greatly, especially with the overseas trunking.

[Martian]

My Slingbox runs good 95% of the time on TOT 2 MB service. I don't think it is reasonable to think a Slingbox will run effectively 100% of the time given all the variables the stream must navigate.

[Rice_King]

My SlingBox in the US is streaming fine here on CAT's 2/1 Premium service.

Glasnost: Test if your ISP is manipulating BitTorrent traffic