Comcast Really,Really, Really Doesn't Like Customers

Keeping true to their promise to play nice with Bit Torrent and maintain a "protocol neutral" network, Comcast has devised a new way to manage their network. Can you guess what it is? If you guessed that they have decided to invest money into expanding and improving their network, creating a win-win for them and their customers, you'd be horribly wrong, and most everyone here would laugh at you for such an optimistic and altruist view of America's least favorite cable and internet provider.

So what have they done? Well, exactly what they promised. Instead of blocking just P2P traffic, Comcast now throttles all traffic. All of it. Regardless of source... Yep, they're that smart.

A group of researchers out of University of Colorado at Boulder put together a nifty little study to judge Comcast's neutrality claim, and found that they were indeed being neutral, but not in a positive way. They ISP will now send out fake packets and flat-out forge new packets to disrupt any new TCP connection, wreaking havoc on any internet connection that attempts a high amount of TCP connections on a Comcast link, like Firefox.

Although I can't say that I'm surprised, I do have to say that I am further disgusted. Being a Chicagoan, Comcast is my only real option at the moment, but these continued abuses of me as a customer are making me consider the less desirable RCN just to get away from these idiots.

Broadband Network Management [University of Colorado]
[via: Slashdot]