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Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:35:55 -0500
Begin forwarded message: From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks) Date: December 14, 2007 7:37:41 PM EST To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair
[Note: This item comes from reader Jeff Hodges. DLH] From: Jeff.Hodges () KingsMountain com Date: December 14, 2007 1:29:28 PM PST To: dewayne () warpspeed comSubject: more on comcast: Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair
Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair <http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair> Comcast is the second largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the United States. They run the cable TV and cable Internet networks in manyparts of the United States, and many consumers know them as their duopoly
or monopoly provider of residential broadband Internet access.Some time around May 2007, Comcast installed new software or equipment on
its networks that began selectively interfering with some of Comcast'scustomers' TCP/IP connections.1 The most widely discussed interference was
with certain BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing communications,but other protocols have also been affected. This white paper is intended
to set forth the current state of public knowledge about Comcast's interference activities. <snip/> Comcast's Secret War on File-Sharing By Annalee Newitz, AlterNet. Posted December 5, 2007. <http://alternet.org/workplace/69779/>For the past several months, Comcast has been covertly sending commands to your computer that tell it to stop receiving information -- especially if
that information is coming to you via BitTorrent, Gnutella, or other file-sharing applications. In May disgruntled Comcast users started posting on message boards about how BitTorrent and Gnutella weren't working for them anymore. So researchers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, along with an AP investigative journalist, started runningtests on the Comcast network, using software tools to examine what exactly
Comcast was doing to BitTorrent. What they found was disturbing. Without telling customers, Comcast had begun a secret program to send automatic reset commands to customers' computers if they were using BitTorrent, Gnutella, or a few other programs. None of these programs are illegal. Moreover, Comcast had sold its services to customers without informing them that this popularInternet software wouldn't work on its network. And Comcast is still doing
it. <snip/> ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair David Farber (Dec 16)