eBuzz - Comcast is at It Again

Comcast is at It Again

A recent article in Ars Technica notes that

"Comcast has been "caught" blocking BitTorrent traffic in some areas, according to tests performed by the Associated Press. The news organization claims to have confirmed that Comcast is blocking—or at least seriously slowing down—BitTorrent transfers, regardless of whether the content is legal or not. If true, Comcast's actions have serious implications for sharing information online, and by proxy, Net Neutrality."

AP believes that the reason for the block and delay was due to reset packets being sent back from what claimed to be other torrent users—including the AP's second computer. "However, the traffic analyzer software running on each computer showed that neither computer actually sent the packets," wrote the AP, indicating that the packets were sent by a mysterious middle party. Further, the AP says that when it performed traffic analysis on another computer torrenting files over Time Warner Cable, over half of the reset packets came from the addresses of Comcast subscribers. This is curious, since Comcast's 12.4 million subscribers only make up about 20 percent of US broadband subscribers."

If Comcast were simply prioritizing packets, that would be one thing. However, the contention is that the company is spoofing packets back to the clients. (To understand this, think of it this way: you type in a web address and get back an error message saying the host wasn't available, but that error was being generated by the carrier and not the actual website. In that case, the carrier is impersonating the destination and returning false information.

With now-myriad lawsuits pending against Comcast, it's something to watch.

And that's our take on the news today!

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