Re: Ok guys and girls -- just who is telling the truth.

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Sorry for the misumderstanding of what Comcast said -- I heard STOP not stop someday real soon djf  (they need better 
communictions)
________________________________________
From: Brett Glass [brett () lariat net]
Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2008 8:19 AM
To: David Farber; ip
Subject: Re: [IP] Ok guys and girls -- just who is telling the truth.

Dave:

Comcast has not said that they have stopped using RST packets (the word
"forged" is not appropriate, because they do not misrepresent their
origins; a RST packet is an announcement BY THE NETWORK that a connection
has been administratively severed or had an error).

What Comcast has actually said is that they intend to phase out the technique.
Which, IMHO, is a shame. This is a useful and innovative technique, and it is
not appropriate to limit innovation or to micromanage providers' technological
approaches to providing service.

In my opinion, this is yet another example of the company's mismanagement of
its PR. They should not have allowed themselves to be cowed  into doing
doing this; rather, they should have stood their ground and defended their
right to manage their network and halt abuse of their network by what amounts
to an exploit. (Just my 2 cents.)

--Brett Glass

At 05:32 AM 5/23/2008, David Farber wrote:

> Comcast assures us that they have stopped the forged reset method of
> limiting BitTorrent. So I ran the Glasnost test on my home machine --
> a MAC running Leopard and got the following result.
>
> Sounds and looks like at least in Pittsburgh they are still using the
> TCP RST to limit BitTorrent upload traffic (or the Glosnost software
> is in error (I dount that but it could be)).
>
> Comcast: what gives.
>
>
> Dave Farber
>
> Distinguished Career Professor of
> Computer Science and Public Policy
> Carnegie Mellon University
> and Former Chief Technologist of the FCC
> Cell:  +1 412 726 9889
>
>
>
>
> Glasnost: Test if your ISP is manipulating BitTorrent traffic
> Results for your host (c-71-206-247-106.hsd1.pa.comcast.net -
> 71.206.247.106):
> Is BitTorrent traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?
>
> * 2 out of 2 BitTorrent transfers were interrupted while uploading
> (seeding) using forged TCP RST packets. It seems like your ISP hinders
> you from uploading BitTorrent traffic to our test server.
>
> * The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in
> downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.
>
> * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent
> downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 2020 Kbps
> while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 3187 Kbps. You can find
> details here.
>
>
> Is BitTorrent traffic on a non-standard BitTorrent port (4711)
> throttled?
>
> * 2 out of 2 BitTorrent transfers were interrupted while uploading
> (seeding) using forged TCP RST packets. It seems like your ISP hinders
> you from uploading BitTorrent traffic to our test server.
>
> * The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in
> downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.
>
> * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent
> downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 2509 Kbps
> while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 2936 Kbps. You can find
> details here.
>
>
> Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?
>
> * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all downloads at
> port 6881. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved
> at least 2020 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port
> achieved at least 2509 Kbps. You can find details here.
>
> * There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all uploads at port
> 6881. In our test, a TCP upload on a BitTorrent port achieved at least
> 2264 Kbps while a TCP upload on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at
> least 2449 Kbps. You can find details here.
>
>
>
>
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