<OT> How do ISPs work?

[Tony Alfrey]

james at jamesmcdonald.id.au wrote:
>> Coming into this thread late, but yes, an ISP can do this and much
>> more.  Comcast has become notorious for interfering with their
>> customer's internet usage.  See the recent debates on network
>> neutrality.
>>
>> A quick-n-easy way to determnine whether Comcast is fscking you over
>> is to install the User Agent Switcher, and make Seamonkey identify
>> itself as IE.  If the problem suddenly goes away, then Comcast is
>> screwing with you:
>> http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/
>>
> 
> A lot of the highend kit the ISP's are using these days does deep packet
> inspection and proactively throttles P2P traffic and a lot more.
> 
> If we can sniff the urls in traffic using tcpdump you can bet your
> pu-nar-nies they will be able to do that and more.

Except that if they *are* doing this, their deep packet inspection is 
pretty deep packet stupid because all I'm trying to get (often) is the 
bloated, pop-up-ad-contaminated front-page for the bloody NY Times.
Maybe this is why I've had really poor results with bit torrent (and 
have sort-of bagged that).


-- 
Tony Alfrey
tonyalfrey at earthlink.net
"I'd Rather Be Sailing"