Report: Israeli ISPs Are Blocking P2P Traffic
Two of the three Israeli ISPs have been found blocking P2P traffic.
Ynet News is reporting that two of the three Israeli internet service providers are blocking file sharing traffic. Its research, found in this report, is based on external participants including bloggers, Web surfers and technology reporters. Ultimately, it was concluded that there was--and still is--direct and deliberate interference in P2P traffic by these two ISPs.
"Deep packet inspection and P2P-caching is performed by at least one ISP and that another one probably operates some kind of preference on specific ports," Ynet reports. "The results indicate a possible trend which should be examined by the Communications Ministry. The findings also suggest that the ISPs are acting against the clients' interests and possibly in violation of the license conditions."
ISP Netvision ranked at the top of the list, performing partial interference with traffic; it's assumed that it also performs deep packet inspection. The company received Ynet's report and examined the evidence, however it said that it's making "great efforts in providing its clients with the best surfing experience."
The other two ISPs, Bezeq International and Internet Zahav, both claimed that they do not block ports, applications, or protocols despite the evidence turned up by the investigation. In fact, both boasted about subscriber satisfaction. However, the spokesman for the Communications Ministry, Dr. Yechiel Shabi, seemed a little curious after looking over the findings, and said that there's a need for a thorough examination.
"After we become familiar with the study's findings, we shall consider the need for interference, supervision, or regulation of the matter," he said.
Get more tech and gaming news by hitting me up on Twitter here.
- Plurk Claims Microsoft Stole Its Code
- Interplay Wins Fallout Battle Against Bethesda
- Xbox Modded into Millennium Falcon
- Windows Mobile 7 to Arrive Late Next Year
- Google VP: Nexus Specs "Exclusive" to Googlers
- Judges, Lawyers Told Not to Facebook Each Other
- PICTURED: The Google Phone - Nexus One
- Playboy's Official iPhone App Hits the App Store
- Singer Stalks Google Car to Get Photographed
- Best Man Rigs Newlywed's Bed to Tweet Sex
- Chinese Couple Sell Baby to Buy Cell Phone
- Study: iPhone Users Are Delusional
- VIDEO: Lights+Guitar Hero = Christmas Light Hero
- Fuse Shows What Next-Gen Touch Phones Are Like
- Sony: PS3 Slim Could Have Been Slimmer, But Nah
- Best Video Games of the Year at the VGA 2009
- Australia Approves ISP-Level Internet Filters
- Best Buy, Samsung Named in Copyright Lawsuit
- Hacked Nook Reveals MMS, Speech Recognition
The company received Ynet's report and examined the evidence, however it said that it's making "great efforts in providing its clients with the best surfing experience."
P2P traffic is not part of "surfing." On a crappy network it could slow down HTTP traffic which is for "surfing", so by providing the best surfing experience they admitted to blocking P2P!
bezeq int. is not doing anything in that manner.
i have had a subscription with them for about 10 years or so...and never have i had any problems.
i know that Netvision and Internet Zahav are in fact doing so...
there are more ISP's in israel - Orange (which im currently using) and it DOES NOT trafic-shape or anything of that kind and xfone - who from what i have heard,is not playing dirty,too
simple...use a VPN....then the isp can't see what your traffic is.
P2P traffic is not part of "surfing." On a crappy network it could slow down HTTP traffic which is for "surfing", so by providing the best surfing experience they admitted to blocking P2P!
I have to wonder somethign though..This doesnt happen here, in Greece, but when I came back to my country fom the U.S. I checked current good providers, right? speeds, prices, reliability check etc. So P2P slows down your surfing cause using up the bandwidth. I dont see any other reason. I'm sorry but who is to tell me not to do so, P2P reasons or not, when I pay something extra for bigger upload and download rates? This is plain stupid.
Good, I don't want to be downloading torrents from a jew.
simple...use a VPN....then the isp can't see what your traffic is.
It's not as simple as that. Both ends of the connection have to be involved in order for a VPN connection to exist. You don't just flip a switch, virtual or otherwise, labeled "VPN" and all of a sudden your connection is secure for monitoring. The problem with P2P connections is that they utilize the "other" ports. By that I mean, all of the common Internet services, such as web, email, ftp, telnet, dns, etc. all have known "official" port numbers. Commonly used communications software, games and such, also have known port numbers. The P2P software, which can use different, user-specified port numbers tend to be in the other category. This makes it a lot easier for that traffic to be singled-out. Deep packet inspection can then be used to ascertain the content of packets; and the same technology which is used to help ISPs mitigate the propagation of malware can be used to mitigate P2P traffic.
^^ So if you choose a port number used for games or email or other common types of traffic for your p2p connection then your traffic won't come into the "other" catagory?
Also many VPN's encrypts traffic 128 bit encrption...surely that would stop deep packet inspection snooping on it?
^^ So if you choose a port number used for games or email or other common types of traffic for your p2p connection then your traffic won't come into the "other" catagory?Also many VPN's encrypts traffic 128 bit encrption...surely that would stop deep packet inspection snooping on it?
Yes, encryption prevents DPI, but like I said, it requires something to be setup on both ends. You can't just encrypt your P2P traffic. You would need a way to exchange the key with every other peer so your P2P connection would work. But then, if the key was that broadly distributed, it defeats the whole purpose behind encryption.
As for routing P2P traffic over "official" ports such as email or web. The problem with that is the that the routers and servers expect traffic over these ports to conform to certain specifications. If the traffic does not, it will likely be discarded. That is one of the reasons why https traffic requires a different port than regular http traffic.
Apparently proof
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3ntqAAcKW0