Tot Blocking All Torrent Traffic

[rhino533]

I just tried to use my utorrent. Nothing works. I'm in Rayong. If they blocked torrents then they have lost a customer. I'll wait for a few more days and if it still dosen't work I'll go cancel my subscription with tot. I bet they will lose a ton of customers. And what right do they have to stop us using torrents? What's going on with Thailand?????????

Edited:

Right after I wrote this my u torrent connected. I'm downloading a torrent right now and it seems to work ok. But didn't work earlier at all. Hmm maybe they got to many complaints and threats of cancellations.

Edited August 11, 2010 by rhino533

[rich54321]

i have a complaint at the office every month and have had for 2 years - sometimes its ok other times is very very slow and yes at least 4 times a month it aint on - and every time they say - the fibre optic cable is broken - full of shit and excuses! how can the cable be broken every month????

Also they do piggy back the cables in the housing areas - there could be upto to 8 houses connected - so if all are on - ITS SLOW

as far as down loading is going it has been fine the last couple of days - ask for a discount on your bills - i did and do get it everytime its not working about 50 baht a day roughly...give or take. Unfortunately evrywhere sells products but DO NOT have the infastructure or the know how to provide customer support - and for all the idiots that say TIT - <deleted>! everyone needs to politely argue thier point and things will get done! Thats if the Thais complain as well

Edited August 11, 2010 by rich54321

[cotrina]

Hello all

I can see some of you are located in Nonthaburi. I always use EMULE and until about a month or so the speed was really good using TRUE (4mbs). However the downloading speed has reduced dramatically. I am not an expert on Torrents so I thought the problem was caused by ports fowarding but I have been unable to get the same speed as previously. I think that TRUE have been doing something to affect torrent users. Any feed-up on this? Should I start using a different program instead of EMULE?

Thanks

[rich54321]

I just tried to use my utorrent. Nothing works. I'm in Rayong. If they blocked torrents then they have lost a customer. I'll wait for a few more days and if it still dosen't work I'll go cancel my subscription with tot. I bet they will lose a ton of customers. And what right do they have to stop us using torrents? What's going on with Thailand?????????

Its working up north - i rely on it - for sanity!!!!!

[Llareggub]

...<snipped>...I pay my Internet connection like the others and I want to have my Skype strong enough to talk to people in Europe. But the quality of my connection is scrapped by torrent users who use all the bandwidth in my area, and reduce the amount of available bandwidth for data located outside of the country.

In these conditions, I don't want to be located to the same router or backbone than torrent/donkey users. This is the reason why I'm not with TT&T as you have to share your connection with your neighbors and you can't do anything anymore when they start they p2p.

I guess you must have one of the a basic TT&T packages. They offer fast speed but you share the connection with lots of others.

I have TT&T's basic 'Premier' connection..it's just a 3/1mb U/D...but I share the connection with far fewer users.

Hence, I can download torrents...AND simultaneously use Skype to chat to those in the US and Europe.

While there have been a few times the speeds have been somewhat slower, they are uncommon!

I think you problem is using a cheaper connection, though it claims to offer greater speeds, but it shares bandwidth with more users!!.

As far as I was aware, the TOT package is a dedicated package, you don't share with anyone, you pay for your dedicated bandwidth, unlike cheaper packages that force you to share, this is the entire reason for complaining. I didn't buy a shared package, I bought a 3mb/512, not that you ever got it, but this is a disgrace, telling you what you can or cannot download. On my contract I couldn't find any statement that said "Your 3mb will be cut to zero if you want to use it to watch a movie" Maybe they should start cutting bandwidth to Youtube and realtime everything, just so we can send an e mail once a day!

[ScienceGuy]

For all you "pay your fair share people" there is a very simple way for TOT to prioritize VOIP and HTTP traffic over P2P so that everything works as expected. I know my connection speed is limited and restrict my bandwidth accordingly so VOIP works and P2P gets the most when other traffic isn't using it. Perhaps y'all are just using windoze and that's why your connections suck?

Why??? Why not just supply the customer with what you advertised and charge for? Everyone gets what they paid for, no prioritizing this or that, just GIVE PEOPLE WHAT THEY HAVE PAID FOR, if you can't do it, don't sell it, it really is quite simple.

Does anyone know what you exactly need to switch to TRUE ot ATT or any other provider? I am in the boonies and only seem to have TOT cable, do 3BB or True rent TOT cable etc.? Thanks.

I'm just saying that after you bypass the blockade, you are back to square one. Your computer is hogging the bandwidth because windoze does not respect traffic prioritization. On linux it works fine and VOIP calls go out in the clear, even while peaking the available bandwidth.

[geoffphuket]

I'm overwhelmed by the response to my thread - Now almost 12,000 views! Thanks to (almost ) everyone for the constructive input.... but Please don't feed the trolls that keep popping up !!

Lets see what happens at 10 O'clock tonight

geoffphuket

[Prasert]

Ontopic regarding the OP:

this is all p2p traffic on my TOT line over the last weeks. It's for sure gone down.

As for the discussion that started later in this thread:

ISPs advertising with more and more bandwidth are basically giving you a green light for 1 thing: downloading.

If you would only use your connection for webbrowsing, email, skype, msn or an occasional ftp transfer, you would probably use less than 1Mbps. The bandwidth actually doesn't really matter, but latency does: you want websites to appear on your screen at once, not show up picture by picture while you're www-aiting....

So if an ISP offers connections of 4Mbps and higher, that's basically giving you a big go to use all that bandwidth and the way to do that is downloading (regardless of how).

But....

I think it's on the other hand not unfair what George suggested and Mattcodes advocated in a devilish way: Charge those who use loads of bandwidth more than that first group.

One argument is the equipment required to sustain this kind of traffic. The light-use example I gave could be an internet cafe. 20 computers that are used to mainly browse the web, use skype or msn and tourists uploading pictures on facebook.

This traffic is for sure light - all 20 computers together will use around 100 simultaneous connections and the equipment on the other end of the phoneline won't have a problem handling the traffic.

If a DSLAM has 20 lines, a 4Mbps uplink and 20 internetcafes connected, two old 2600 Cisco routers would easily handle all PPP sessions from these 20 subscribers (and 400 computers!).

If one of those computers starts using bittorrent, the entire picture changes drastically. One single computer can generate 500 simultaneous sessions and the traffic is not in small bursts but continuous full-on. That is a big impact and those small routers will have to be replaced with bigger ones that can handle hundreds of thousands packets-per-second.

1 p2p user out of 400 computers is just a theory. 200 p2p users is more real-life. And yes, these users impact the internet performance of the other half that's just browsing some pages on facebook.

Blocking just torrents is difficult. The payload of these sessions look the same as a passive FTP data session or Skype session. Simple blocking on highport to highport would kill these applications as well.

On top of that, TOT engineers lack the knowledge to keep systems running that are able to do deep-packet inspection (if they have 'm, they're very likely installed by farang engineers), as they have demonstrated over the last decade with even simpler and more basic technology.

Edited August 11, 2010 by Prasert

[Llareggub]

For all you "pay your fair share people" there is a very simple way for TOT to prioritize VOIP and HTTP traffic over P2P so that everything works as expected. I know my connection speed is limited and restrict my bandwidth accordingly so VOIP works and P2P gets the most when other traffic isn't using it. Perhaps y'all are just using windoze and that's why your connections suck?

Why??? Why not just supply the customer with what you advertised and charge for? Everyone gets what they paid for, no prioritizing this or that, just GIVE PEOPLE WHAT THEY HAVE PAID FOR, if you can't do it, don't sell it, it really is quite simple.

Does anyone know what you exactly need to switch to TRUE ot ATT or any other provider? I am in the boonies and only seem to have TOT cable, do 3BB or True rent TOT cable etc.? Thanks.

I'm just saying that after you bypass the blockade, you are back to square one. Your computer is hogging the bandwidth because windoze does not respect traffic prioritization. On linux it works fine and VOIP calls go out in the clear, even while peaking the available bandwidth.

You misunderstood my meaning I think, all I am saying is that if TOT cannot deliver the package offered, they should stop selling it until they can get a enough supply. Like in our local village, for years you could not get a telephone number, so they didn't sell you a telephone, because you couldn't get connected.

This is the same thing, they are selling millions of internet packages and they cannot supply the demand, it doesn't matter what you use the internet for, downloading anything, it is the package you paid for, whether you want to sit downloading shit allday is not the point, the point is, these idiots are selling bandwidth they don't have, and, so to try to appease some people they victimize others.

what exactly is the difference in me using my PAID FOR 3MB download to download torrents, as opposed to some other person using their 3mb download to download pictures or audio or whatever? they offered 3mb and now they cannot supply, there is no grey area here, these bastards just care about money.

[moskito]

On TOT, and no trackers connect since last night. On my way to the nearest True office to change providers. TOT has played too many games with me in the last Year. Enough is Enough. Even in case this turns out to be a glitch (I seriously doubt they have the expertise to block torrents, judging by the way their net and routes and all is configured), it is the one glitch too many I experienced with this Company.

Absolotely agree, these constant problems with Telephone UNOrganization of Thailand is annoying and I cancelled one of my two numbers today. For the other one I unfortunately get no other ISP then ToT (what means DEAD in german btw )

I just checked hotfile.com out for the opener of this thread here, I am in Phuket and its workin in my area. Kino.to is working too, lotz of movies there but not really a torrent downloader. Hotfile nobody needs anyway, mostly porn there

After more than 20 years of public access to the internet the services ToT provides is a shame. We dont have internet in this world since yesterday and I know some countries in Central Africa where it works much better than here sometimes. Where do all the millions for our broadband access go????????

[Llareggub]

http://paw-project.sourceforge.net/

Maybe this can help, I will have a go and see what happens.

[rbrick49]

Can all those affected get on the phone NOW and start complaining to TOT. If nobody does anything we'll be stuck with the situation

f tot its crap and i am not far from roi-et

[geoffphuket]

Hmm... Wouldn't it be fair if we paid for the resources we consume, like your electric or water meter?

But we do george. I chose the download package I wanted from TOT and paid the asking price for it. Now they can't deliver the goods. If I wanted to just download e-mails I'd have chosen a cheaper package. As the saying goes, 'You get what you pay for' but that seems to have just gone out the window with TOT

geoffphuket

[Digitalbanana]

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) won't help.

Why do you say that? I have found it is the only way I get get access to the box and such since last 2/3 weeks. Mind you I am on True not TOT but situation is same. In meantime True is about to offer 6mbps to all their 4mbps subscribers according to their web site, presumably from all the bandwidth saved?

Using a VPN with TheBox will get you banned: http://thebox.bz/announcement.php

The link you refer to confuses the issue and does not specifically ban VPN users, annon proxy maybe. Hasn't bothered me at all.

[A_Traveller]

There seems to be a pervasive misunderstanding here. P2P is an issue for ISPs because it spawns connexions. It is wrong to compare downloading from a single location to a torrent. As its name implies the source is a multiple set as is the connexions within the 'thread'. A while ago it was estimated that the spawned P2P traffic made up some 65% of the net traffic worldwide. I'm not so convinced for that figure, but can certainly see the logic for it being in the upper 40s even allowing for application of additional hardware/pathways Worldwide. Note that I'm looking at the global picture, the EU & North America have seen this drop in part because of the addition of resources, and also it has to be said a move away from simple P2P to other [ironically more traditional] services.

Further, despite the claims made herein, to the best of my knowledge all ISPs [not just in Thailand] have a variation of the 'fair use' clause, and here I've even seen specific P2P exclusions from terms of service. So in blunt terms you don't have xMB/s to do with as you please, never have had either here or elsewhere.

Traffic shaping software has been in place with the ISPs here for yonks, and because of its resource usage pattern P2P is clear target. Closing it altogether seems curious, I do wonder if a new shaper has been mis-configured. I know only too well that there's nor effective test rig here, so configuration of takes place in broad daylight on the live system, hence obfuscation.

In closing let me note that the Thai internet suffers as much from the fact that there is little if any local drivers for content as it does from other areas of concern. Korea's net was and is driven by local content which has the consequent result of connectivity outside Korea. Here, the level of local content as a driver of traffic and resource usage is small, language notwithstanding, curious when you think about it.

Regards

PS I'm on TOT at this location, utorrent [2.x] is non functional but I can access a torrent as a test with FlashGet [owing to upd connectivity ?]

Edit /add connectivity thought in PS/

Edited August 11, 2010 by A_Traveller

[geoffphuket]

How about some of the 238 guests reading this topic signing up and having their say? I want to keep as much pressure on TOT as possible

geoffphuket

[A_Traveller]

I should point out that uTorrent for example has made public its protocol [uTP] which has been designed to technically assuage concerns by ISPs and regulators. The protocol is designed to provide a dynamic throttling based on network load. So it can be seen that even the providers of the technology acknowledge there is an issue to be addressed.

Regards

edit /typo//

Edited August 11, 2010 by A_Traveller

[faxx]

I believe this is part of an organized crackdown on piracy. I observed various raids yesterday in Fortune Tower targeting counterfeit CD/DVDs and today on Sukhumvit Road. It was a small group of extremely good looking law enforcement officers .... and there was always a guy filming how they confiscated goods. Well, they threw a couple of shirts in a plastic bag ... while the sales booth next to them was left untouched.

[geoffphuket]

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) won't help.

Why do you say that? I have found it is the only way I get get access to the box and such since last 2/3 weeks. Mind you I am on True not TOT but situation is same. In meantime True is about to offer 6mbps to all their 4mbps subscribers according to their web site, presumably from all the bandwidth saved?

Using a VPN with TheBox will get you banned: http://thebox.bz/announcement.php

The link you refer to confuses the issue and does not specifically ban VPN users, annon proxy maybe. Hasn't bothered me at all.

How clearly do you want it spelling out? Here's the text from the web page copied and pasted:

Proxies/VPN's/TORs - End Of The Line..

http://thebox.bz/faq.php#prox1

FAQ wrote:

Why can't I use a proxy on your site?

It is our policy not to allow new accounts to be opened from behind a proxy.

Any account found using a proxy to mask real ips (this includes TOR proxies) will be disabled and banned.

IT has come to our attention that people are trying to use proxies and avoid this rule, unless YOU, IN YOUR account notes HAVE express ADMIN permission to use a proxy, YOU CANNOT.

From Thursday 24th June 23:59hrs BST and accounts found with a KNOWN or UKNOWN proxy WILL be disabled and will NOT EVER be re-enabled

There will be no discussion or arguements on this as you agreed to this when you signed up to the site. This is a direct violation of the rules & T&Cs of the site.

Any threads created will be binned & people will lose their posting rights.

Sorry to be heavy handed but enough is enough of violating the sites rules.

Any queries feel free to PM me (SMPJC08) or Sweetmess - but dont expect any change in policy as this rule has been on site since Day 1.

A proxy is a way of hiding your HOME ip with another IP

eg using a British Internet IP to use BBC Iplayer instead of your French/USA/OZ IPs which the BBC rejects...

ie a way of MASKING WHO YOU ARE

if you are connecting from your modem at home and arent doing any silly software "get-arounds" you should be fine. It is NOT our responsibility to TELL YOU if YOU are using a proxy. Any Pms or Staff messages asking will be binned - UNANSWERED

Edited August 11, 2010 by geoffphuket

[elkangorito]

I have been using P2P for quite a while. I spent months reading forums etc about it. It became obvious to me that P2P traffic was a major cause of bandwidth reduction for many users.

I still use P2P but I ensure that my upload speed is never greater than about 5kbps. From what I have read, it is the uploads that cause most of the bandwidth problems & therefore I limit my upload capability. This means that I must be patient for things to 'equalise' (share ratio) before I rush into downloading any new torrents. I only wish that other users did the same instead of being greedy pigs.

Edited August 11, 2010 by elkangorito

[Llareggub]

I just called the TOT 1100 number, they are indeed "limiting bandwidth" for Torrents!

The guy I spoke to was quite honest, he said that they were Prioritising Traffic, he then tried to give me an analogy of having a car that could do 180KPH and would I expect to drive at that speed all the time!

I gave him the 25 bottles of beer analogy and him delivering 5, he burst out laughing and agreed with me that I should use this in getting a rebate, he cracked me up!

But it seems to be true anyway, but the way things sound, they have been getting a lot of pissed off people, and hopefully life will get back to normal. I feel sorry for the poor buggers on the end of the phone having to deal with their idiot employers decisions. I must say, he brightened my night with his sense of humour, a lot of people here cannot understand a bit of irony or sarcasm, but at least he was honest and told me what was happening.

[geoffphuket]

I believe this is part of an organized crackdown on piracy. I observed various raids yesterday in Fortune Tower targeting counterfeit CD/DVDs and today on Sukhumvit Road. It was a small group of extremely good looking law enforcement officers .... and there was always a guy filming how they confiscated goods. Well, they threw a couple of shirts in a plastic bag ... while the sales booth next to them was left untouched.

Off topic as downloading torrents is not illegal - File sharing copyright material is, but that's another topic altogether.

[lomatopo]

Further, despite the claims made herein, to the best of my knowledge all ISPs [not just in Thailand] have a variation of the 'fair use' clause, and here I've even seen specific P2P exclusions from terms of service. So in blunt terms you don't have xMB/s to do with as you please, never have had either here or elsewhere.

Can you share TOT's AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) with us? Does it document a cap (say 250 GB per month)? Do they offer some way to monitor usage? Does TOT's service agreement exclude P2P?

It is one thing to speculate but if you have any specific details re: TOT I think we'd all welcome them.

FWIW, TOT is not doing any throttling or shaping, as of 3 hours ago anyway.

Unless TOT clearly communicates their new policy I plan to flip one of 4 lines (TRUE: 2x, CSLoxInfo: 1X and TOT: 1X) back to CSLoxInfo.

[tragickingdom]

The question is: Did you phone to TOT and did you ask them? I did, and they flatly denied doing so. I think they were having trouble. I had a problem too and saw that myPeer listening port was blocked. Than I randomly generated other listening ports which were also blocked. Of course in most torrent programs you can enter a proxy in the settings. This was not necessary though. I changed the listening port to 80 and it was working again. When I flushed my cache I was able to connect to the standard listening ports again and I have a now problem uploading or downloading.

Maybe it makes sense to phone 1100 and ask TOT before jumping to conclusions. We all know that all internet providers are throttling or blocking P2P on a regular basis. This is because their infrastructure has not kept up with the number of customers.Often a few hours later when they solved the problem it is working again.

In case torrent sites are not working there is plenty of information on the net that helps you out getting around the problem. Sometimes the solution is amazingly simple, sometime a bit more complex. What you always can do is create a VPN. My experience with TOT is pretty good, they have in general a good service and both the people in the call centers and in the TOT offices are often very helpful finding a solution to the problem. In the end you can always switch from a "Home" version to a more expensive "SME" version, although I admit that this is for lots of people not a real option given the significantly higher monthly costs involved.

[geoffphuket]

I just called the TOT 1100 number, they are indeed "limiting bandwidth" for Torrents!

The guy I spoke to was quite honest, he said that they were Prioritising Traffic, he then tried to give me an analogy of having a car that could do 180KPH and would I expect to drive at that speed all the time!

I gave him the 25 bottles of beer analogy and him delivering 5, he burst out laughing and agreed with me that I should use this in getting a rebate, he cracked me up!

But it seems to be true anyway, but the way things sound, they have been getting a lot of pissed off people, and hopefully life will get back to normal. I feel sorry for the poor buggers on the end of the phone having to deal with their idiot employers decisions. I must say, he brightened my night with his sense of humour, a lot of people here cannot understand a bit of irony or sarcasm, but at least he was honest and told me what was happening.

I'd like to tell him what's going to happen to their subscriber data base

[Nickthegreek]

Well firstly I am devastated as the rest of you....I live for my torrents and its the only thing that keeps me sane here with television...if only we could buy Uk TV from the local market.

Anyway currently I am blocked on the sites mentioned,however I have one site with you can use another method for download and thats seems to be working ok,I am still getting 90KBs.

I do remember this happened about 6 months ago I panicked and change my torrent programme only to find a couple of days later it all came back on again.!

the only other option will be to user a server based in bangkok where you can pay for download limits and then collect with flashjet daily..always options..

Edited August 11, 2010 by Nickthegreek

[Llareggub]

Further, despite the claims made herein, to the best of my knowledge all ISPs [not just in Thailand] have a variation of the 'fair use' clause, and here I've even seen specific P2P exclusions from terms of service. So in blunt terms you don't have xMB/s to do with as you please, never have had either here or elsewhere.

Can you share TOT's AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) with us? Does it document a cap (say 250 GB per month)? Do they offer some way to monitor usage? Does TOT's service agreement exclude P2P?

It is one thing to speculate but if you have any specific details re: TOT I think we'd all welcome them.

FWIW, TOT is not doing any throttling or shaping, as of 3 hours ago anyway.

Unless TOT clearly communicates their new policy I plan to flip one of 4 lines (TRUE: 2x, CSLoxInfo: 1X and TOT: 1X) back to CSLoxInfo.

I do seem to remember on the back of an old TOT envelope used to deliver the bill, there actuall was something about P2P being available between 12 midnight and 5 am or similar, sadly I have chucked them a long time ago and the latest envelopes don't have it.

[Stomatopod]

Am in Phuket and doing a test subsequent to reading the above - apart from the usual times when it really slows down, seems to be downloading fine (for the time being)..

[hhgz]

Finally, TOT is doing something from people stealing intellectual property. Yeah!

[geoffphuket]

Am in Phuket and doing a test subsequent to reading the above - apart from the usual times when it really slows down, seems to be downloading fine (for the time being)..

Sites that use peer exchange seem to be working, so you might be able to download from Demonoid and a few others, but the majority (if not all) private trackers are blocked.