Net Neutrality Gets Kicked In The Butt (and some other places too)
| Monday, October 22, 2007 | BMK |
Just a few weeks ago I posted on this very same blog that I would gladly pay for premium services from my broadband ISP if that meant that there would be no degradation of the basic service level. Now, I don't have false illusions that I am big industry mover and shaker, but really, did Comcast ISP have to go and do the exact opposite? According to an Oct 19th story by the Associated Press, Comcast--the 2nd largest ISP in the nation--is blocking traffic to file-sharing and peer-to-peer networks.
The article claims that 50-90% of Internet traffic is peer-to-peer applications. To me that sounds about 50-90% full of crap. While I do agree that ISPs have the right to shape their traffic, I find it hard to believe that access can be denied. Even worse, Comcast seems to be devious in their methods of blocking access, essentially resetting connections for file uploading. Shady tactics indeed!
Of course I'm sure they claim they are winning one for copyrighted material, however I use BitTorrent to download legal content. No seriously -- I do. In fact, I am downloading a live recording of Dave Matthews on my Time Warner connection right now. While I am probably in the minority of BitTorrent users it still doesn't change the fact that I want my live copies of Dave Matthews, or John Mayer, or OAR (I could go on for ages).
In all reality most Comcast subscribers won't be affected by this new policy, nor will they notice a difference (even with that 50-90% utilization freed up), but it sure would be interesting to see how many jump ship to DSL. It will be even more interesting when Comcast stops blocking everyone's access to the Special Ops Security blog, because the views expressed are not acceptable (even though they are legal and not copyrighted).
It's one thing for an ISP (or your company's IT staff) to QoS packets or limit the amount of the pipe that is available for certain services. When they do this in a company, that decision should be based on executive staff decisions and not just the IT guy's whim. When this is done at a service provider (where CUSTOMERS have PAID for access) it should be done with a LOT more transparency. Perhaps have tiered levels of Comcastic service?
Filtered Internet with Aggressive Packet Impersonation ...... $50/month
Unrestricted Internet ...... $90/month
Here's another interesting find from DSLreports:
"The Sandvine application reads packets that are traversing the network boundary. If the application senses that outbound P2P traffic is higher than a threshold determined by Comcast, Sandvine begins to interrupt P2P protocol sequences that would initiate a new transfer from within the Comcast network to a peer outside of the Comcast network. The interruption is accomplished by sending a perfectly forged TCP packet (correct peer, port, and sequence numbering) with the RST (reset) flag set. This packet is obeyed by the network stack or operating system which drops the connection."
Hmmm... FORGED and SPOOFED traffic? Malicious RST packets fired off in both directions?? I'm pretty sure that if a CUSTOMER of Comcast were to perform these attacks, they would be violating the Acceptable Use Policy and would be banned. Why is Comcast allowed to violate their own AUP??