EFF Releases Report, Methodology for Spotting ISP Interference with Internet Traffic

We know about the report by the Associated Press that showed that Comcast is blocking P2P traffic through the use of packet forgery, sending reset packets to interfere with file transfer. Wednesday the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a technology rights group, released not just a comprehensive report on Comcast's activities, but a document that can be used to help you test for packet forgery or other forms of interference by your own ISP.

The report, available in .PDF form here, goes into extreme detail on how AP and the EFF have conclusively determined Comcast's culpability in blocking Internet traffic.

And how do you test for interference? Once again, the EFF goes into great detail here, but this isn't something for the casual user of the Internet.

You have to download and install a program called Wireshark. It comes in several flavors, including Windows, OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc. Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer that you will use to analyze traffic.

You'll then have to run through several steps, including removing any router from the equation, if possible, as network address translation will interfere with the testing. And that's just the start, as there are several steps and analysis to go through --- none of it difficult, but it will prove time-consuming.

Still, it's great that the EFF went through this effort in both analyzing Comcast's activities and providing users with the tools and documentation to analyze their own ISP, if they desire. Although other ISPs such as Sympatico have admitted to filtering, Comcast continues to deny it --- and if other ISPs do the same, we users may have to prove to them what they won't admit.