Robb Topolski's Journal

30 June 2008 @ 03:56 pm

Gotta Love Slashdot!

Originally posted by anonymous at
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=599087&cid=23996987
(tune is "Heard It Through The Grapevine")

I'll bet you're wondering how I knew,
Why my packets never made it through,
With some other peer I was sharin' files,
Between the two of us Comcast was runnin' wild,
Reset me by surprise (reset by surprise),
I'm afraid, From the R-I-Double-A, Don'tcha know,

I heard it through the Sandvine.
Not much bandwidth's gonna be mine.
Oh, I heard it through the Sandvine...
Oh, I'm just about to lose my mind,
Honey, honey, yeah...

I know a geek ain't supposed to cry,
But these fears I can't hold inside,
Losin' the 'net and it's neutrality,
Yeah, it means that much to me,
You coulda told me (you coulda told) yourself,
That you're forgin' packets for someone else,

Instead I heard it through the Sandvine...
Not much bandwidth's gonna be mine.
Oh, I heard it through the Sandvine...
Oh, I'm just about to lose my mind,
Honey, honey, yeah...

People say "Believe half of what you see,
Son, and none of what you hear",
But my router's mighty confused,
So if it's true, please tell me dear,
Do you want (do you want) to make me go,
Back to the ISP (and USENET feed) I used before,

Or should I drop packets from your Sandvine...
Plenty bandwidth's gonna be mine.
Oh, I don't listen to your Sandvine...
MPAA's 'bout to lose its mind,
Honey, honey, yeah...

Tags: comcast

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23 May 2008 @ 10:19 pm

Former Prosecutor: ISP Content Filtering Might be a 'Five Year Felony'

University of Colorado law professor Paul Ohm, a former federal computer crimes prosecutor, argues that ISPs such as Comcast, AT&T and Charter Communications that are or are contemplating ways to throttle bandwidth, police for copyright violations and serve targeted ads by examining their customers' internet packets are putting themselves in criminal and civil jeopardy. (blog.wired.com)

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

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23 May 2008 @ 03:16 pm

Sandvine attacks small Blog P2PNET

p2pnet news -- Blog Archive -- Sandvine menaces p2pnet

“The use of Sandvine’s logo on the page noted above is an infringement of our trademark and copyright,” she said, incorrectly, going on, "I have referred this matter to our legal counsel and demand that you immediately take down the logo and not use it in any manner. We expect it to be down within 30 minutes from now."

Lest there be any confusion, this story is about the
maker of Internet hardware that violates Internet Standards used by Comcast
to attack their own customers in , and not
which is a Cynanchum laeve plant innocently bearing the same name.

Robb Topolski Says:
May 23rd, 2008 at 3:46 pm

Hey Sandvine,

This is to let you know, Sandvine, that use of Sandvine’s corporate identity in a news story about Sandvine’s products is a completely fair use under U.S. law and, most likely, Canada and the U.K. (points of Sandvine’s presence).

The very reason Sandvine would select a particular Sandvine font and Sandvine color is to help non-Sandvine people associate Sandvine’s name in context with Sandvine’s marketplace. While Sandvine is the owner of Sandvine’s marks and names, Sandvine’s name and products are both is in the news and industry buzz.

You’ve developed this Sandvine branding for the public to use to identify Sandvine, and now you dare complain when Sandvine’s name, and the fonts and colors chosen by Sandvine to represent Sandvine are somehow chosen by a reporter issuing news about Sandvine? Why not also take him to task for mentioning your name, Sandvine, which is no more and no less part of Sandvine’s corporate identity (e.g. — they all mean the same thing — Sandvine).

If this Sandvine news report instead carried a picture of “Mayor McCheese” in front of the “Golden Arches,” would Sandvine be more or less pleased about the impact of Sandvine’s “Brand and ID” efforts?

Hey Sandvine? So go pound Sand(vine)!

–Robb Topolski

PS: Get out of the business of selling Sandvine products to customers who want to keep Sandvine’s business relationship with them a secret. Didn’t Sandvine learn anything the first time, or does Sandvine need to lose another 80% in market equity?

17 USC 107

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

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20 May 2008 @ 02:56 pm

MY RANT on the evil done by Cable Companies in this Comcast/Cox/Sandvine deal...

Re: Put the DPI makers out of business? - dslreports.com

I'm not cool with is the Cable industry vilifying P2P and vilifying users who are legally using the service within the bandwidth sold (their tier). I'm also not cool about employing secret technology that effectively takes back the bandwidth that was sold to the customer. I'm not cool with lying to direct questions about it, or hiding facts at an FCC hearing. I'm not cool with selling something called "Internet" and then using methods that break Internet Standard protocols.

That behavior is bait-and-switch and fraud and borders on criminal. (( I'm yelling here, but not at you. )) It reminds me of the rolling-blackout energy crises that Enron created to support higher energy costs. It reminds me of the situation that brought about Sarbanes-Oxley laws.

(click the link above to get the whole message)

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

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19 May 2008 @ 11:46 am

GridNetworks: Comcast Invested in Us, Too

Lewis Grizzard once said, "I have three ex-wives. I don't remember any of their names, I just call them all, 'Plaintiff'!"

You know this story. Comcast was blocking the BitTorrent protocol, which pissed off Vuze -- a commercial concern as they distributed video content that way.

When the heat was on, Comcast married BitTorrent -- shunning her disgraced sister Vuze. It was a shotgun wedding to be sure -- with the FCC holding the iron complete with shells in the chamber. When that failed to appease anger, Comcast hooked up with little-known P2P step-sister Pando -- another P2P sibling to both BitTorrent and Vuze.

Adding to this sordid tale is an even lesser-known P2P cousin, twice removed, who now joins our happy little P2PR family:

For now the extent of [GridNetworks] working with Comcast, as it’s trumped up in the press release, is “collaboration with Comcast Corporation during NCTA Cable Show.” Of course, giants aren’t known for their quickness (or their willingness to disclose future plans).

Pando and GridNetworks are very similar. Both are server-assisted peer-to-peer. Neither one solves Comcasts' last-mile congestion problem (traffic to almost all other Comcast peers would be required to pass through the DOCSIS layer -- the upload bandwidth constraint on Cable networks).

Ferget the Bride. Jus' show me th' cake!

GridNetworks: Comcast Invested in Us, Too « NewTeeVee

Tags: comcast

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18 May 2008 @ 07:34 pm

"Can Comcast and Cox subscribers spell 'class-action lawsuit'? Attorneys can."

Cable ISPs block P2P traffic at all hours - The INQUIRER

If, as the cable ISPs claim, at least 50 per cent of their network load consists of P2P traffic, and if, as this study indicates, they are blocking 50 per cent of that on average, and if, as both this study and FCC testimony have established, that blocking cannot be justified as necessary for 'network management', then the cable ISPs are in breach of their broadband subscriber contracts for rejecting approximately 25 per cent of their subscribers' network transport requests.

By this logic, Comcast and Cox customers ought to be entitled to 25 per cent reductions in their Internet access charges, plus rebates for past overcharges.

Can Comcast and Cox subscribers spell 'class-action lawsuit'? Attorneys can.

Tags: comcast

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16 May 2008 @ 04:47 pm

Worth a Click: "Ballad of the TCP Reset Packet"

http://arstechnica.com/staff/nate.ars/2008/05/16/free-ars-friday-song-ballad-of-the-tcp-reset-packet

Tags: comcast, funny, music, music video, network neutrality, worth a click

Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon

Current Mood:

bouncy

Current Music: Ballad of the TCP Reset Packet

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03 May 2008 @ 07:06 pm

Suggestions for Comcast's Online Glasnost

Dear Comcast,

I'm thrilled to see the likes of Scott Westerman, Frank Elaison, and even Charlie Douglas posting in the blogosphere -- without any hint of that marketing-written, legal-approved scripting.

I've been doing this long enough to see this come and go. You'll get an enthusiastic employee who, in good faith, writes something wrong. Or you'll have an employee having a bad day who says too much about work on his personal blog. As a result, a memo flies out of the corporate belly-button telling everybody to shut-up or ship-out.

Talk happens. The guy in the Comcast van stops by every now and then and we chatter. A desk-jockey at the local office is also someone I talk to about things. Sometimes I ask, sometimes they volunteer, and sometimes they're not sure or don't have all the facts.

But, when that talk is online, there's something called "discoverable evidence" left behind and lawyers are afraid as hell about it. Someone ought to tell the lawyers that this is a business full of people and that people do things. The lawyers ought to be figuring out how to handle litigation in a real company of hard-working but sometimes misinformed people instead of a make-believe company where there are no people to say things wrong. ( Read more... )

Tags: comcast

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01 May 2008 @ 09:07 am

George Ou writes an excellent article re BitTorrent Webseeding

Writes George Ou:

As many of you reading this blog probably already know, Comcast has been disconnecting a certain percentage of TCP streams emanating from BitTorrent and other P2P (peer-to-peer) seeders. This effectively delays and degrades the ability of Comcast customers to seed files using P2P applications. For normal healthy Torrents that are distributed across multiple users and multiple ISPs, losing a few seeders intermittently isn't too noticeable. But for rare Torrents or Torrents that have to originate from a Comcast broadband customer, this can pose some challenges. The rare Torrent becomes even less reliable than they already are while popular Torrents originating from Comcast's broadband network take much longer to become healthy.

While Comcast has stated they will try to move off of their Sandvine system that uses TCP resets by the end of this year, there's no guarantee that they will complete on schedule and there's no relief in the mean time for customers who are having a tough time seeding their files for distribution. Even without the challenges posed by TCP resets, seeding a torrent file is still problematic and burdensome. Not only does the seeder have to turn his/her computer in to a server, they must also allocate significant portions of their upstream bandwidth - as well as their neighbor's bandwidth which they share - to seeding while providing relatively minimal capacity to the Torrent.

http://tinyurl.com/5t8oht

Tags: comcast, p2p

Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon

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28 April 2008 @ 12:15 pm

OUCH! George Ou calls my testimony, "Inaccurate." Offers nothing of stubstance, yet claims victory!

Actually, I'm glad that George Ou posted a rebuttal to the testimony to the FCC, because I do owe him an apology. I misunderstood something and argued back that he was pointing out clearly allowed behavior. After replying the testimony, I see that I misunderstood what he said. In the end, the exchange added nothing to the debate. It's about 75% through this video. Nobody likes to be told that they're wrong when they're not wrong. Now that I've seen the video, I owe him the apology that I gave, regardless of the fact that we both were off track.

Dear George,

I noticed that you consulted with Brett Glass and Richard Bennett before posting your article. You certainly have my permission to consult with me, too. Why should we be on completely opposing sides of this debate? You know how to find my phone number.

FIRST, AN APOLOGY: At the Stanford hearing, you reported that some smart gateway/router devices know when a host behind it has gone offline, and will issue RSTs in lieu of forwarding to the known-offline host. At the hearing, I misunderstood what you were saying and I countered that you were describing behavior covered in the standards. While I don't know of any particular smart devices that do this, if they do (and it makes sense to me that they do so), then I was incorrect to counter you without acknowledging that gateway devices might do this exactly as you described. For that, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY APOLOGIZE. Had I understood your statement (which is clear enough in the video --- the fault of misunderstanding is all mine), the behavior you described is probably not in the standards (AFAIK). However, the device sending the RST is acting as the end point and was instructed to do so by some administrator. It was not a secret. It was not DPI changing the behavior of the Internet. As far as the Internet peers were concerned, the SYN-RST exchange was completely expected. The entire discussion ended appropriately when Professor Peha, countering both of us, made the entire discussion moot when he pointed out that these are not examples of using RST for congestion control. You weren't wrong in what you said. I WAS WRONG to dismiss it as errant and I apologize for doing so.

SECOND: "P2P download typically used 10 to 30 TCP streams at the same time." This is essentially correct, but moot. Also the statement is true only for DOWNLOADING WITH BITTORRENT specifically. It is not true for eMule or Gnutella. It is not true while BitTorrent is only uploading. While partly true, the statement is completely unimportant. The important direction is the upload direction -- because the transmitting host handles congestion control on the Internet, because the last-mile congestion is the congestion we are discussing (this is the uploader's first mile), and because P2P uploads is what Comcast is tearing down. With BitTorrent, only 3-4 streams are allowed to upload simultaneously. This is a major flaw in YOUR testimony to the FCC and other bodies (I'm referring to your article and graphic showing a single connection comparison to 11 connections). Limiting the uploading connections to 3-4 is a specific feature of the BitTorrent protocol designed to prevent congestion by quickly responding to changing network conditions. See http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification#Choking_and_Optimistic_Unchoking to understand how this feature is designed to prevent congestion.

THIRD: ... (see the the linked post for the rest)...

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon

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28 April 2008 @ 08:52 am

How to Handle the Comcast Case without Heavy Regulation?

Respected blogger in an email to me:
As for network management, I agree – and have written previously – that Comcast needs to do a better job of informing users of their policies. But beyond that, I’m less concerned about, say, blocking online video competitors. Comcast is reviled as it is, and large-scale blocking of competing services won’t do it any good in either the court of public opinion or in government offices; more blocking would only result in more pressure and more scrutiny. It’s probably not worth it for them to block in most instances. (And, I should note, if they do, they should obviously inform customers properly.)

But even if they did, that just creates an even bigger incentive for other ISPs to swoop in and steal their customers. Yes, the market isn’t as competitive as everyone would like in some places – but poor service from Comcast will give other companies even greater reason to enter a market, and where local regulations make that difficult, might put pressure on local authorities to open up video and data services to greater competition.

My reply:
There is no "swooping in" because there is no competition.

I live in Hillsboro, Oregon -- we're called the Silicon Forest here because technology has replaced logging as a local industry. We're second only to the Silicon Valley as to the concentration of tech workers -- all of us pretty broadband hungry (it rains a lot here). Edit: My point is that if there was going to be an incentive to invest by additional wireline carriers, it would probably be happening right here!

I own a home where my two choices are DSL at 768/128 (no longer considered Broadband) and Comcast up to 8 Mbps/768 Kbps.
I also rent an apartment here (my adult daughter is using my house to raise her kids) where I have about 3 Mbps/256 as my DSL and the same Comcast choices.

Beyond that, there are no broadband choices without prohibitive consumption caps (wireless).

Competition is a pipedream or a nightmare. Let's say 12 competitors somehow are interested in serving my city. The city isn't going to allow 12 possible wireline competitors to individually tear up the streets and lay down cable or fiber next to Comcast's or Verizon's cable or fiber. The several junction boxes in each front yard would be a crazy site, too. Not to mention the constant stream of litigation resulting from claims of who damaged whose existing lines. Thank goodness it was just a dream -- it's never happened anywhere because people with capital weigh these risks as too likely and too expensive.

I've read your blog and you're quite intelligent and you and I are more alike than different. I'm actually in a position of influence in this debate. I'm asking for:

Promoting the FCC policy statement to the status of FCC Rule or US Law. I want it kept in its current (broadly worded) form so that both people and ISPs are free to approach "reasonableness" without having a politician try to define it ahead of time. As a policy statement, it was originally designed to be unenforceable (Martin said so when it was issued). Even though Martin has changed his opinion on the enforceability, it clearly has insufficient weight with some.
I also want recognition that the FCC supports the established governing Internet bodies that set, maintain, and change the Internet Standards, and that anyone who wishes to change how the Internet works needs to approach and participate with these bodies.

In summary: obey the policy statement, follow the Internet Standards, and the government stays out of it. Violate these and both complainant and ISP can make their cases and the FCC simply adjudicates and enforces.

This is not volumes of regulation -- it's a one pager.

I don't want complete "Net Neutrality." Nobody thinks that their own P2P downloads should have equal footing with a neighbor's 9-1-1 "my house is on fire" VOIP call. The Internet has RFC 2474 (et. al.) which does discriminate based on the settings by the endpoint applications and the presence of congestion. VOIP is sent "top priority and reliability", P2P "background transfers" are sent like 4th class mail and everything else is handled as 1st class mail. The only reasons that ISPs don't use it is (1) they didn't invent it, so they don't trust it; (2) obscure-sounding free Internet Standard solutions don't arrive in 3-piece suits offering demos and lunches to non-technical executives; (3) they are told that RFC 2474 can be abused (always true with any technology) but that another solution is foolproof (always false with any technology). RFC 2474 allows prioritization without the ISP having to inspect packets and make arbitrary value decisions about what should go and what should be blocked.

So, one like mind to another, how would you handle this if you were me?

Comments?

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

Current Location: Hillsboro, Oregon

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17 April 2008 @ 08:38 pm

My Opening Remarks to the FCC Today...

note: I went off script here and there, but essentially, this is what I said:

Network Management and Consumer Expectations
by Robert M. “Robb” Topolski - robb@funchords.com
for the Federal Communications Commission
April 2008 En Banc Hearing on Broadband Practices

Thank you for inviting me to speak on this panel.

For the past 25 years, I’ve been working on Networking protocols, products and
platforms, starting as a hobby and eventually, as a profession. I’ve worked on
projects ranging from Amateur Radio packet BBS systems, to one of the first
commercial ports of the NCSA Mosaic browser to scalable datacenter servers.

Over the years, I have been responsible for ensuring that numerous networking
products behaved according to established Standards.

Another hobby of mine is barbershop harmony.

Over the years, I had collected samples of printed and recorded musical history,
in the old-time Barbershop Quartet style. While trying to use the Peer-to-peer
networks to share this with others, I found that I was completely unable to upload
any of it on the Gnutella network.

Using packet traces and end-to-end comparisons between Comcast and non-
Comcast connections, I concluded that TCP Reset flags were being used to tear
down P2P connections when the uploading peer was on the Comcast network.

Investigating this technology further, I found that it was nearly universally
despised – it’s the same method used by “The Great Firewall of China.” Dr. Sally
Floyd, wrote a paper which the IETF later adopted as a “Best Current Practice,”
demonstrated that TCP resets used for network management are both rare and
harmful (BCP 60, “Inappropriate TCP Resets Considered Harmful”).

As technologists are apt to do, I publicly posted about my findings and
described my tests and results. My findings have since been independently
verified, have been covered in thousands of press articles, and are at the heart of
these hearings on these practices.

The impacts of an ISP behaving this way strike at the heart of the ability to
innovate on the Internet. At the February hearing, David Reed told you that,
“Providing Internet Access implies adherence to a set of standard technical
protocols and technical practices that are essential for the world-wide Internet to
work for all its users.” The entire Internet community counts on that fact, every
day.

I have to know, as a developer, that the Web Browser that I am developing in a
lab in Santa Monica, California will work on an ISP anywhere in Africa. As a
consumer, I expect that Slingbox, which was developed in Israel, will work on my
Cable ISP in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Consumers and the Internet community were harmed when Comcast offered
“High Speed Internet” yet secretly delivered something much less and different.

Consumers obviously got significantly less product than they purchased; and
they applications they tried to use did not work correctly. The developers were
also harmed, as they down user issues that they could not reproduce to debug.

This situation continues today. It has not stopped.

Using RST flags to tear down established and working TCP connections is an
extreme act, having no place in Reasonable Network Management.

Comcast’s interference occurs during all hours of every day, a fact which does
not jive with the idea that it is somehow responding to rare moments of
congestion.

As a ham radio operator, I see this simply as – without regard to the Network
Neutrality implications – a jamming complaint.

The FCC usually does a fantastic job of putting active jamming activity on the top
of their list, however this period of jamming has continued from sometime in 2006
until present day – and this “Jammer” assures us that he’ll stop when he’s
damned good and ready to change his ways to something else yet to be
determined – hopefully by the end of the year.

This is both unprecedented and unacceptable. The FCC should take immediate
action, today if possible, to stop Comcast from using this technology any longer.

The various complainants in this case have asked for certain relief. Considering
those requests seems to be the appropriate and logical next steps in this case.

In such that we have a case of under-delivery of services, restitution is in order.

Most importantly, the FCC needs to prepare. The advent of high-speed Deep-
Packet-Inspection hardware such as that used by Comcast opens up a whole
new set of capabilities – many involving changing the behavior or even the
content of Internet messages.

These products are in the field, now.

Sometimes, this technology can be used for good, such as law enforcement
executing surveillance according to a signed warrant to stop criminal activity, or
a subscriber using the technology on an "opt-in" basis to filter content for his
or her family.

But this technology is very difficult to detect. When used without the subscriber's
knowledge, it's used to change how the Internet behaves or to monitor users
secretly for future marketing campaigns. For the integrity of the Internet
“product,” there needs to be a way to monitor and protect it.

Tags: comcast

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15 April 2008 @ 01:48 pm

Response to: Comcast and Pando to create "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users, ISP

Today, Comcast Corporation and Pando Networks announced that they will lead the industry to create a "P2P Bill of Rights and Responsibilities" for users and ISPs. With an FCC hearing on Comcast's anti-peer-to-peer practices scheduled for later this week, this is hardly a surprise. Once again, Comcast makes another sweetheart-sounding deal, but at the wrong time, and with the wrong sweetheart.

It takes a special kind of arrogance for a company that sells Internet Access to team up with another company that sells Content Delivery and together decide what rights and responsibilities that the world's Internet users should have.

As in its earlier "deal" with BitTorrent, Inc., Comcast's announcement today doesn't change any of the facts it faces: in 2006, it assured Congress that network neutrality laws were not necessary, saying it would not "deny, delay, or degrade" its customers in order to deal with traffic congestion. Within a year it was caught secretly doing exactly that! Even after a long string of deceptive and deflective statements and tactics, Comcast continues to degrade their traffic today.

As was the case in the BitTorrent "deal," neither Comcast Corporation nor Pando Networks represents the millions of customers and other members of the Internet community who were impacted when Comcast secretly launched its anti-P2P attack.

Today's announcement comes less than 48 hours from the US Federal Communication Committee's public hearing at Stanford University. There, the FCC is scheduled to hear from two panels of experts followed by two hours of public testimony on the Comcast incident specifically as well as similar industry practices in general.

No doubt we will soon see Comcast and Pando Networking executives start to explain why today's "deal" signals that Network Neutrality regulation is not needed in the Broadband Marketplace.

Robert M. "Robb" Topolski

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

Current Mood:

amused

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30 March 2008 @ 09:52 am

Vuze Response: BitTorrent Inc. Does not Represent Us

From the Vuze Blog, Jay Monahan, General Counsel for Vuze, explains that BitTorrent, Inc. does not represent Vuze nor its industry; nor do side (non-)agreements made by Comcast control the behavior of other Cable Internet companies. (Agreements made by Comcast hardly control the behavior of Comcast! [see pg 10])

Key excerpts from Vuze...

For years, Comcast engaged in definitional gymnastics by denying that it was blocking “particular companies or applications,” but all the while it was engaging in “man-in-the-middle” attacks intended to interfere with seeding activities of all bit-torrent protocol based applications, like Vuze.

BitTorrent Inc. itself represents only a fraction of the bit-torrent-based applications being used today, and has no control over the many millions of bit-torrent based applications on desktop computers around the world. I have little doubt that Comcast wanted its announcement to be perceived as a sort of universal resolution of its differences with the bit-torrent world, but nothing could be further from the truth.

When we filed our petition for rulemaking with the FCC in November, 2007, we stated that both regulation and meaningful industry cooperation are necessary to protect consumer rights and foster innovation. We still believe that. Whether you believe that Comcast’s cozying up to BitTorrent, Inc. arises out of genuine enlightenment or is just a publicity stunt, in my view it changes nothing in terms of our original Petition.

--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- Hillsboro, Oregon
FCC Public Hearing on the Future of the Internet - Thursday, April 17th - Stanford Univ., Calif.

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

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30 March 2008 @ 08:37 am

BitTorrent Inc. + Comcast = Love, Peace, Harmony -- Not!

When Robb Topolski made the initial discovery that Comcast was interfering with BitTorrent traffic, he couldn't have imagined that it would lead to an FCC hearing or, more importantly, to apparent reconciliation this week between Comcast and the rest of the world. Thing is, Robb doesn't believe a word of it. (Please Forward and Digg)

read more | digg story

Tags: comcast, network neutrality

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21 March 2008 @ 09:38 pm

I Believe in Yesterday ... the ramblings of a cyber-hippie

I Believe in Yesterday ... the ramblings of a cyber-hippie

Yesterday
We made friendships here and far away,
Greed and power brought our judgment day,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There weren't half the sites there used to be,
Deep Inspection hanging over me.
Oh, yesterday came suddenly!

Why'd they cut my flow?
Now it's slow. But they just say,
"You'll do something wrong!"
How I long for yesterday!

Yesterday,
We built networks for both work and play!
Then the bullies took it all away.
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

When they dimmed the dawn,
Progress gone! So now they say,
"Tune in, See what's on!"
How I long for yesterday!

Yesterday
Iron walls could not keep friends away,
World-wide networks gave each man a say,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

by Robb Topolski, a cyber-hippie. Inspired by and dedicated to Karl at DSLReports. Parody of McCarney lyrics to the Beatles hit Yesterday, which has several paradoxical links: including reflection, the 1960s, breaking-up, best (songs/inventions) of 20th century, etc.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20198505-Yesterday

Tags: comcast, funny, network neutrality

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07 December 2007 @ 08:33 pm

Moderate? Comcast Stifling Isn't

"The problem with Comcast stifling BitTorrent by faking reset packets from a participant is not that Comcast is trying to manage its network: it's that Comcast used a technique that if it came from anyone other than an ISP would be considered malicious denial of service, that Comcast still hasn't admitted doing it, and that Comcast bypassed numerous other methods of legitimate network management..."

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23 November 2007 @ 12:14 pm

How Would You Manage Overwhelming Peer-to-Peer Traffic if You Owned Comcast?

This question was put to an anonymous poster on Broadband Reports, and I thought his answer was excellent!

How Would You Manage Overwhelming Peer-to-Peer Traffic if You Owned Comcast?

The anonymous poster responded:

I would communicate exactly what I am doing with my customers.
If there is a usage cap I would state it.
If I block specific types of traffic I would state it.

I would allow users to use the advertised bandwidth for any purpose they see fit within the confines of the TOS. I would then apply boost or other speed enhancements to selected traffic. I would advertise this as speed boost "Enhanced web browsing speed. Get 6/1.5mb with up to 20/2mb Enhanced web speed"

or

If it just does not work from an economical perspective. I would change the TOS to specifically exclude the use of P2P software. I would then block it (I would not do this using RST packets as I believe this to be illegal) I would only allow specific ports. I would also offer an enhanced tier or make the top tier P2P friendly. The lower tier would probably be a marketing nightmare. But they are trying to offer a limited service while selling an unlimited service. So they should come clean.

Comcasts service really is not an internet service when they start blocking certain protocols in any way including forged packets. The internet is based on (RFCs) like the TCP/IP protocol and numerous routing standards. When you start forging packets you are no longer RFC compliant. It then becomes web access and any other services they endorse. But calling it internet service is no longer accurate.

The internet is based on TCP/IP and the routing standards defined in RFC documents like RFC1058, etc.... This includes multiple types of communications based on packets like TCP, UDP, ICPM, etc... Adhering to the specifications based on RFCs has been since inception in the 1970s how one gets on the internet and becomes a part of it. The definition of the internet has been based for decades on RFC compliance and must continue to be based on compliance.

I will not say that comcast can not do what they want with their network. They can do what they want. However they have to do it while complying legally with all of the laws and regulations. Right now they are not. Hence all of the investigations. The FTC should have quite an interest in their misleading advertising. The FCC should be interested in their intentional blocking of communications. The FBI should be interested in their interstate impersonation and forgery of electronic communication. I believe there are fairly strong laws against impersonating a party across electronic communications. This makes it illegal to call someone and claim to be from their bank etc. But I believe it is applicable in this case.

Tags: comcast, network neutrality, p2p

Current Mood:

geeky

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14 November 2007 @ 11:08 pm

Comcast Sued Over BitTorrent Blocking

A California man filed suit in state court Tuesday against internet service provider Comcast, arguing that the company's secret use of technology to limit peer-to-peer applications such as BitTorrent violates federal computer fraud laws, their user contracts and anti-fraudulent advertising statutes.

read more | digg story

Tags: comcast, lawsuit, network neutrality, p2p

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04 November 2007 @ 04:45 pm

What a Month! Articles mentioning me on Google News!