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Summary: ISPs can take action based on the types of things you do on your internet connection. Turning off the modem might be possible, but unlikely.
It depends on the modem, but I can certainly see it as being possible. But I don't see it as being likely. ISPs have other ways of dealing with bittorrent, if they're going to care about it. I think something else is more likely. • The interesting thing about bittorrent is that when allowed to run "full speed" it can pretty much saturate your internet connection. By that I mean that you can be both uploading and downloading at your connection's maximum capacity. That's a fairly unique and uncommon situation. Everything else you've described, even World of Warcraft, doesn't put anywhere near that kind of load on an internet connection. "... it certainly is possible that your ISP
might have the ability to remotely shut down your modem. ... The
question is would they?"
What I'd be more suspicious of is a line or modem problem. By trying to push the maximum amount of data through your connection you might be pushing the modem into failure. It might have a problem that normally it can recover from so you'd never notice, but at maximum capacity it can't. Similarly, you might have a line noise problem - the telephone lines that carry your DSL connection often have small amounts of electrical noise. Once again, it's possible that your modem is able to compensate during "normal" usage, but can't deal with it at maximum capacity. Now, I have to admit it certainly is possible that your ISP might have the ability to remotely shut down your modem. They often do have the ability to remotely administer it, so shutting down doesn't seem like that far-fetched an ability. The question is would they? In my opinion they have other, less drastic ways of dealing with bittorrent. The problem with bittorrent, from an ISPs point of view, is the same as what I mentioned above: you're maximizing your use of your internet connection. That places an additional burden on the ISPs infrastructure, as they typically aren't built out with enough capacity to actually handle the majority of their users using maximum capacity. As a result, their ability to serve all their customers can be adversely affected by those few who do run bittorrent. Lest you think they should just build out more capacity, consider the cost - which they would then have to pass on to their customers, meaning you. It's a common, and accepted design approach. Even the telephone company has this same restriction; if everyone picked up their phone at the exact same time the telephone infrastructure could not handle the load. We occasionally see this at times of natural disasters. The good news it that the maximum load scenario is uncommon and things work just fine the rest of the time. The same is true of the internet infrastructure. If everyone maxed out their connection then it would likely work for no one. All that being said, the ISPs have other ways of dealing with things like bittorrent that, while somewhat controversial, avoid the all-or-nothing approach of turning you off.
All of these are just as complex as shutting down your modem when bittorrent traffic is identified, and since they're less disruptive on other internet usage I'd expect ISPs to rely on them instead. The bottom line: check with your ISP. Read the terms of service and see specifically what is, and is not, allowed. If you find that bittorrent traffic is disallowed, and especially if that's backed up with technology to slow or disrupt it, then your only real option is to find a different ISP that will allow you to use it. Related:
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Another method I've seen, which my ISP has been employing for a couple of years and is a variant of disruption, is forced assigned IP address change.
Most broadband users are dynamically assigned an IP address by their ISP every time they connect. Usually this address doesn't change during an online session: most ISPs specify a minimum "time out" period over which the address is "guaranteed" not to change, typically 24 hours.
If an ISP detects traffic that they don't like, or just an extended period of high volume, they can force your assigned IP address to change. This will terminate most P2P connections like Skype and force bit torrent clients to re-initialize their peer connections.
Posted by: Ray at September 2, 2008 11:19 AMuTorrent can encrypt your bittorrent traffic, so your ISP won't recognize them (I don't know for other clients).
-Leo
Posted by: Mike at September 3, 2008 08:24 AM
Make sure you aren't using the default port in your torrent application. Same goes if you are running any type of server. Most ISP's don't like servers and file sharing applications and will block all default ports that are used. A likely port to be blocked is Port 21 (for FTP Servers) and so on.
Posted by: Chris at September 3, 2008 06:26 PMAnother thing to note is that you can manually throttle Bittorrent so that it does not consume your full bandwidth. The settings vary from program to program, but if the problem is related to your modem crashing due to high usage, I'd recommend trying to lower Bittorrent's output first.
Posted by: RJ at September 9, 2008 01:15 PM