Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

EFF Releases Software to Spot Net NonNeutrality

Posted by kdawson on from the reset-this dept.

DanielBoz writes in with word of the EFF's new initiative to help consumers detect if their ISP is spoofing packets. From the press release: "In the wake of the detection and reporting of Comcast Corporation's controversial interference with Internet traffic, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a comprehensive account of Comcast's packet-forging activities and has released software and documentation instructing Internet users on how to test for packet forgery or other forms of interference by their own ISPs."

3 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If it's Comcast... by Raul654 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If packets start showing up at one end of the connection that were not send by the other, they had to have been added en-route. This can occur naturally, as a result of IP-level fragmentation in the network, or it can be done deliberately, as Comcast and the great firewall of China do. IP-level fragmentation occurs because a packet is too large and it is being cut into fragments to improve performance; as I understand it, in practice on the real internet, it's actually pretty rare. On the other hand, if those packets that mysteriously show up are TCP-resets, then it's (IMO) an entirely reasonable assumption to make that they were put there by someone wishing to interrupt the traffic stream.

    --


    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
  2. RTFA by hal9000(jr) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your post demonstrates unequivocally that you did not read the article or if you did, you didn't understand it.

    Take two packet traces, one from you your computer one from a friend while your two computers are talking. Then compare the TCP sessions captured by each for differences. Differences that don't matter are fragmentation and re-ordering, for example. Difference that do matter are TCP resets, ICMP unreachables, TCP FIN's that are received by one side and not sent by the other.

    Sheesh, I can forgive not knowing how networking works, but to post inflammatory comments when you are obviously ignorant is, well, ignorant.

  3. Re:If it's Comcast... by Gerald · · Score: 3, Informative

    In the traces I've seen the RSTs come in pairs, with the sequence numbers differing by 12503.