Teamspeak Blocking by ISP?

[Falryx]

Hi there,

Saturday morning I attempted to login to one of a number of teamspeak servers and got "No reply from server". Now, I know these servers are offline, since I can ask people in the game I'm playing if they're on TS and get an affirmative. Nothing had changed in my home setup, so I opted to mail support at my ISP and got:


Dear Customer,

Thank you for your interest in using peer to peer software on your
connection.

As you will know your package allows unlimited use of your connection which
includes all peer to peer activity. Unfortunately due to great pressure from
large media organisations we have had to suspend use of certain protocols on
our connections. These protocols include eDonkey, BitTorrent, DirectConnect
(DC++), Fasttrack (Kazaa) amongst others. In order to use these protocols we
need you to complete and return the enclosed peer to peer registration form.
This form shows that you understand the terms regarding usage of these
software packages. Once the form is returned to us we will then be able to
open up these protocols for your use. We understand that there is a lot of
legitimate usage of these kinds of software and so we do not feel it would
be appropriate to block them off completely.

If you choose not to return the form then these protocols will remain
disabled on your line. The majority of peer to peer software such as FTP,
messaging software, audio / video conferencing will still work but the peer
to multi-peer protocols will not. Please be aware that we block this by
protocol and not by port number so there are no ports being blocked on your
connection.


Is Teamspeak a peer->multi-peer app? I thought it used the server to mediate traffic rather than being a p2p app? Basically -- can anyone here confirm that the actions taken by my ISP should/would have any impact on my ability to use TS?

[Brain]

No, Teamspeak is no P2P Filesharing program. It's a traditional client-server voice communication program.


If my ISP wrote me an email like this my reply would be short:

"Good-bye morons!"


It's clearly a default answer which shows they don't take you seriously as a customer, plus they're trying to dictate what software you can use.
There's no way the almighty music and movie industry has legal leverage on ISPs like that. Well, at least not in Germany, but maybe in the USA. In the USA everything is possible, or so I've heard...

[m&m's]

there blocking the file share / file stealing mostly by the looks of the letter so there blocking some udp ports to stop it , call your isp and ask that the ports be unblocked for you and what you your useing you should be back in biz in no time

[m&m's]

No, Teamspeak is no P2P Filesharing program. It's a traditional client-server voice communication program.


If my ISP wrote me an email like this my reply would be short:

"Good-bye morons!"


It's clearly a default answer which shows they don't take you seriously as a customer, plus they're trying to dictate what software you can use.
There's no way the almighty music and movie industry has legal leverage on ISPs like that. Well, at least not in Germany, but maybe in the USA. In the USA everything is possible, or so I've heard...
he is from the UK brain or so his location says

[Falryx]

Ironically, this is in England.

All that said -- I wrote back telling them I was pretty unhappy with them as a customer for changing my service without prior notification. I'll see where that gets me. If that doesn't work, I will ask that they modify their blocking since teamspeak isn't a peer-to-peer app, but a client-server app. I will also ask how they believe they're blocking peer-to-peer traffic/protocols when it interferes with the UDP traffic on port 8767 (among others).

They claim they aren't blocking any ports, but I just don't buy it.

[Brain]

Sorry, my bad. That sounded so AOL-ish, I forgot to check your nationality, Falryx.

A friend of mine who lives in Scotland uses Nildram, they even allow channel bonding. So far he hasn't reported any problems regarding running and hosting games (Battlezone 2) or using Teamspeak.