ISP seeing FF14 as a P2P client

[Lettis]

This is really irritating. My ISP is seeing FF14 as a P2P client so they throttle me. It's to the point where I can barely play the game I am paying for. Is anyone else having this happen to them? The really annoying part is that I don't even torrent. This didn't start happening until the latest patch.

Just for reference I have TIme Warner Cable in Southern California. I don't want to make any ISP look bad. I'm just wondering if this is happening to anyone else.

[Ruse]

Call your ISP

[Lettis]

They want me to take the issue up with Square Enix. All they are saying is that they are seeing patterns of torrent software. The whole situation just seems like a mess to me.

[Fruits Priest Samurai G™]

The only one that can smack them into sense is Squeenix, which they probably did before, but the ISP got all stupid for some reason. Wouldn't be the first.

[Misa]

ffxiv 1.0 downloaded the patch files like a torrent, actually you could find the downloadfile and download it with utorrent then put the files in the ffxiv folder, they did this because all the servers were in Japan and doing it as P2P would make the download faster for those far away from the game servers.

anyway I'm not sure if they still use P2P for the patches but it wouldn't surprise me if they did

[Lettis]

That would explain my situation perfectly. ISPs are stupid about that stuff though. They automatically assume that you're using P2P to download something illegally. I was lagging so bad earlier that I couldn't even walk around in the game. Time Warner never use to give me any issues before the merger with Comcast. I wish Google Fiber would come to my area.

[Fyce]

Originally posted by Ballard:

ISPs are stupid about that stuff though. They automatically assume that you're using P2P to download something illegally.

Whether the use of the P2P protocol would be illegal or not is not relevant. It's not the job of an ISP to take action against someone who is using their services to get access to the Internet.
The job of an ISP it to grant you an Internet access, no matter what you're doing with it.
By filtering the P2P protocol and assuming that you are doing illegal stuff with it is taking the job of the police and the judge.
A private company shouln't be able to enforce the law the way they want. Period.

You don't have to take care of what you say in order not to "make any ISP look bad". If an ISP is doing that kind of filtering without the decision of a court, they "look bad" by themselves.

It's TIme Warner Cable fault. Square Enix doesn't have to do anything.

Unfortunatly for you, I believe that the USA are in a very bad situation in terms of internet providers, each one having some kind of monopoly in their area, and it's very difficult for the people to "switch" providers... I don't know if that's your case, but it's more likely to be it.
So, in that case, well, first, you now understand why monopoly is bad, and second, that you won't be able to apply any kind of pressure to your ISP to sort this sh*t out.

Sorry mate.

[Fruits Priest Samurai G™]

To play the devil's advocate...

They're not assuming anyone is doing anything illegal (since they're not allowed to do that), but are simply throttling certain services that are straining the entire network so that all users can have equal oportunity. And it is true that with more and more people using faster and faster internet it's getting harder to provide full bandwith for everyone (in some cases, how much of a problem it really is, only the ISP knows).

/devil's advocate

The situation is this, they can throttle your connection in the name of the above all they want as long as they're not hurting anyone financially with that. But only Squeenix can confront them about it. At least that's how I think it is in US since there's no real law that would regulate throttling (I think...).

[Fyce]

Originally posted by Fruits Punch Samurai G™:

The situation is this, they can throttle your connection in the name of the above all they want as long as they're not hurting anyone financially with that.

This is true, but only as you stated it: they can reduce your overall bandwidth speed in order to have a good balance between the demand and what the physical network can handle.

But they should not be able, in any way, to filter a specific protocol or service based on that particular argument, or the one talking about illegal P2P stuff.

If they have to limit your download/upload speed to ensure a good supplying to an area, so be it. But filtering out P2P is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and something people should be fighting against if only they know what net neutrality stands for (meaning that you only need to read the first sentence of the wikipedia article).

So, no, if an ISP is filtering your internet usage, it is you who should do something about it. In that case, not Square Enix.

[Ruse]

News flash, it's their service you're using. You signed a contract with your ISP (paying the bill is signature enough) and they can do anything they wish. Especially now since the FCC pretty much removed net neutrality.

[Lettis]

Unfortunately the only other ISP in my area is AT&T. My cousin had them for a little while and their service sucked. They were always having outages. If I call Time Warner again I just want to be really careful how I word things. I don't want to anger them and have them messing with my connection. I've read about people calling and complaining and afterward their internet got capped to 300KB/s or even blocked completely because they know you can't switch to anyone else.

[Jin-]

Knew it, there is no actual freedom.

I had different problem, my packet loss were 80%. Maybe try disable IP flooding in modem settings.
All i can say now, sorry

[Asphe]

Originally posted by Ballard:

This is really irritating. My ISP is seeing FF14 as a P2P client so they throttle me. It's to the point where I can barely play the game I am paying for. Is anyone else having this happen to them? The really annoying part is that I don't even torrent. This didn't start happening until the latest patch.

Just for reference I have TIme Warner Cable in Southern California. I don't want to make any ISP look bad. I'm just wondering if this is happening to anyone else.

Originally posted by Ballard:

They want me to take the issue up with Square Enix. All they are saying is that they are seeing patterns of torrent software. The whole situation just seems like a mess to me.

SE's patching is done via P2P. So of course, they'll see patterns of 'uTorrent'. They must be doing some DPI and noting the client's ID and such then throttling you. I would imagine they put your IP address on some list, since if they did throttle in based on SE's client, more TWC customers would be up in arms.

Originally posted by Ballard:

Unfortunately the only other ISP in my area is AT&T. My cousin had them for a little while and their service sucked. They were always having outages. If I call Time Warner again I just want to be really careful how I word things. I don't want to anger them and have them messing with my connection. I've read about people calling and complaining and afterward their internet got capped to 300KB/s or even blocked completely because they know you can't switch to anyone else.

They won't do that. It would be a lawyer's dream if they did.

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Use a VPN, you can google some (look for the ones with free trials so you can try it out). This will mask you and prevent them from seeing anything but the amount of data up/down. It still possible to throttle you, but they'll do it based on other criteria. P2P traffic is easy to spot (multiple connections to multiple IPs/etc) while your connection to your VPN would be a single pipe.

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Netflix is a major problem all over the US/Canada. You can try playing at other than 'netflix' peak hours. When the ISP's bandwidth is being used up, they usually change their criteria for throttling to be stricter.

[Lettis]

I found this thread on the Square Enix forums. I'm surprised at how many people are having this happen to them.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/74559-Request-for-information-ISPs-and-P2P-throttling

I just hope I'm able to get this sorted out. I paid for 2 months of membership... XD... It feels like such a waste of money now.

[Asphe]

It's a 3 year + old problem. I really with they'd just dump P2P patching and go back to the old method. Which was slower (instead of the current 'few minutes', it could take half a day if it was right after a major patch) but at least it wasn't P2P. Or perhaps as an option.

PS SE will ask you to take down file you might put up. Just FYI.

[Lettis]

File?