Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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 com
Subject: 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 many
parts 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's
customers' 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 running
tests 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 popular
Internet software wouldn't work on its network. And Comcast is still  
doing
it.

<snip/>


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