said by espaeth :

If they are implementing an interface into the provisioning system to accomplish this like we talked about a few threads ago, that kind of implementation would indeed take time.

said by funchords :

Forging the RSTs is a wrongful act. After you get caught in "The Real World," you don't get to keep committing wrongful acts with impunity until you figure out what else to do.

said by funchords :

Nobody can license them to do what they're doing. Not BitTorrent, not PublicKnowledge, not the EFF, nobody. They must stop. They must disclose. They must accept responsibility for lying and under-delivering their service.

said by funchords :

Take it offline right now -- today -- and I'll bet that they can figure out a Network Neutral solution before 9 months.

said by espaeth :

Forging RSTs is only about as wrong as cutting in line. It's not a very nice thing to do and it tends to annoy other people in the line, it may violate the social contract but there are no civil or criminal implications.

said by espaeth :

The RFC examples you love to quote refer to unintended consequences of RST injecting by firewalls on unknown header values. The Comcast deployment is a little more specific -- they know how P2P apps respond to TCP resets, it achieves the desired effect for them, and they appear to be taking reasonable measures to ensure that only their intended application target is affected. (not 100% obviously, but I'm sure they try to make it as close to perfect as possible)

said by funchords :

Forging the RSTs is a wrongful act. After you get caught in "The Real World," you don't get to keep committing wrongful acts with impunity until you figure out what else to do.

said by funchords :

That's true of all of the RFCs. Enforcement is essentially the missing part.

said by funchords :

I love to quote the RFCs (those that are the authoritative "Internet Standards") because that's the instruction manual for developers and implementors.

said by funchords :

And Comcast didn't know how all P2P apps would respond -- all P2P apps haven't been written yet.

If the app doesn't exist, how would Sandvine profile it to be able to take action on it?

said by Corydon :

What exactly does "wrongful act" mean?

Is forging TCP RST packets illegal? Possibly, in the context of the FCC's current rules, but that's debatable (and rather unlikely, in my view). More likely, Comcast's methods are legal now, but they want to preempt any further regulation.
...

said by espaeth :

I'm not knocking RFCs, there's a lot of brilliant ideas published in RFC form, but you have to take them for what they are.

said by RadioDoc :

Forging RSTs is only about as wrong as pulling someone you don't like out of line, punching them in the face and telling them if you see them again you'll do it again.

said by funchords :

And even for the ones that are out there, they did not get it right. Remember that I found this after two months of investigation as to why I couldn't upload anything via Gnutella -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week -- 100% blocked.

Their Sandvine "solution" doesn't delay uploads, it blocks them. Comcast's stretched definition of "delay" only works when there multiple copies of all pieces outside of the Comcast.net domain. Comcast, being the 2nd largest ISP in the US, repeatedly prevented a lot of original content from being uploaded. They didn't delay it, they blocked it.

said by funchords :

Forging RSTs is only about as wrong as pulling someone you don't like out of line, punching them in the face, and then blaming someone else for the assault.

said by pokesph :

In some states where Comcast operates, intercepting private data communicaions is criminally illegal (same thing is applied to hackers as well)
Grabbing your packets and FORGING RST's before passing the packets on sure seems like intercepting to me... Hence they ARE breaking the law in some places.

said by Corydon :

I'm not sure if the courts would buy your theory, after all, Comcast isn't interested in the content of your communications.

said by funchords :

Isn't that the hacker defense for kids that break into high-profile corporate or government systems? "I wasn't trying to read anything, I just wanted to see if I could break in!"

said by espaeth :

Yeah, but hackers don't have nifty agreements like this:

However, Comcast and its suppliers reserve the right at any time to monitor bandwidth, usage, transmissions, and content in order to, among other things, operate the Service; identify violations of this Policy; and/or protect the network, the Service and Comcast users.