A number of ISPs have been accused of restricting the bandwidth of their subscribers who use P2P software. We covered Verizon, which said it doesn't so but will. Another ISP often mentioned is Comcast.

In the CNet article "Comcast Denies Traffic Shaping," Comcast says it places no restriction or content filtering except for extreme cases of Internet usage.

However readers commenting on that article claim they have evidence that Comcast indeed does reduce their bandwidth when they use P2P software and the Bit Torrent protocol in particular.

bob.mcclenahan wrote "I just ran a Speedtest speed test with some torrents running. I got .48 Mb/s down and .06 Mb/s up. When I stopped the torrents and reran the test, I got 14.35 Mb/s down and 1.18 Mb/s up. My torrents are upload capped at 70 Kb/s and nothing was downloading at the time. They obviously throttle my bandwidth, so I just pause the torrents while I'm surfing."