Comcast Does Block BitTorrent Downloads!

A few months ago, Comcast, the largest cable television company and one of the largest Internet Service Providers in the United States, was accused of throttling BitTorrent downloads after numerous clients came upon slow connections and very low download speeds. At that time, Comcast said that the company took action against the BitTorrent downloads only when the network encountered heavy activities. However, new data released by the Max Planck Institute revealed that two US ISPs, Comcast and Cox, are both blocking BitTorrent downloads, no matter if we're talking about weekdays or weekends.

The statistics clearly show that from a total number of 788 Comcast clients, no less than 491 hosts were blocked, while 82 Cox clients of the 151 tested could not access BitTorrent downloads. Moreover, StarHub, a Singaporean ISP, blocks no less than 26 hosts of a total of 45.

"Most (573 of 599) U.S. hosts that observed blocking are located in Comcast and Cox networks. In Singapore, all blocked hosts are connected using the StarHub network. While we did observe blocking for hosts in 10 other ISPs (7 of which are in the U.S.), we did not see widespread blocking of BitTorrent traffic for hosts in those ISPs," the Max Planck Institute explained in the research.

It's interesting to note that Comcast blocks the BitTorrent connections almost everyday, no matter if we’re talking about a weekday or the weekend. However, most hosts are blocked on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the number of hosts blocked on Friday, Saturday and Sunday remains quite high. Moreover, Comcast blocks the hosts at any hour of the day but the largest number of blocked hosts was reached at 12 o'clock.

On the other hand, Cox blocks all the BitTorrent connections between 4.00 AM and 6.00 AM while Tuesday and Wednesday are again the days with the highest rate of blocked hosts.

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