For those of you too lazy to click the links, here’s some excerpts:

Comcast has been “caught” blocking BitTorrent traffic in some areas, according to tests performed by the Associated Press. The news organization claims to have confirmed that Comcast is blocking—or at least seriously slowing down—BitTorrent transfers, regardless of whether the content is legal or not. If true, Comcast’s actions have serious implications for sharing information online, and by proxy, Net Neutrality.

In two out of its three tests, the downloads were blocked altogether, while in the remaining test, the download started after a 10-minute delay.

AP believes that the reason for the block and delay was due to reset packets being sent back from what claimed to be other torrent users—including the AP’s second computer. “However, the traffic analyzer software running on each computer showed that neither computer actually sent the packets,” wrote the AP, indicating that the packets were sent by a mysterious middle party. Further, the AP says that when it performed traffic analysis on another computer torrenting files over Time Warner Cable, over half of the reset packets came from the addresses of Comcast subscribers. This is curious, since Comcast’s 12.4 million subscribers only make up about 20 percent of US broadband subscribers.

Comcast’s actions also have implications for net neutrality. But that’s no secret, as Comcast has been among the plethora of ISPs that regularly oppose net neutrality legislation. The ISPs like to argue that, by allowing all Internet traffic to pass through the pipes equally, they could lose money because of overall network slowdowns. But customers pay for broadband service for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is so that they can get full, high-speed access to the content of their choice.”Initial investigations suggest that Comcast is interfering with some subset of protocols, rather than interfering equally with TCP/IP traffic generally,” the EFF’s study says. “We have seen definite interference by injection of RST packets into certain classes of BitTorrent and Gnutella TCP sessions.”

“Initial investigations suggest that Comcast is interfering with some subset of protocols, rather than interfering equally with TCP/IP traffic generally,” the EFF’s study says. “We have seen definite interference by injection of RST packets into certain classes of BitTorrent and Gnutella TCP sessions.”

Comcast has been extremely secretive about the scope and extent of its traffic management activity. The company provided instructions to its employees specifying how they should respond to consumer questions about P2P interference. Employees were informed that discussing the specifics of Comcast’s P2P blocking with anyone outside of the company would lead to termination.

You get the idea.

Now, what I’m interested in is whether Telkom does the same thing. Here’s the tool with which to find out, and here’s the guide on how to go about using said tool. I’ll run some tests over the weekend, but they probably won’t turn up much as I have an unshaped SAIX line. Then again, if unshaped SAIX is being affected as well, can I ask for my money back?

My ADSL was ordered on the January 7th – the closest date to my return from Australia that I could get to a Telkom store. (Was told that actually physically going to a store was a better alternative to ordering over the phone or online). After giving them a few weeks, I phoned their call centre on the 29th (last week Monday) and was told that it would be installed on February 3rd and that a technician would call me later in the week to confirm a time to do the installation. So, I’m thinking “OK, great!” – but the week goes past and I hear nothing. I called them again last Friday (was planning to call them the day before, but that was the day that I was sick) and was now told “no installation date has been set”! So, I went from having an installation date to not having one. Typical bastards. On Monday this week (the day that my ADSL was originally scheduled to be installed), I phone their useless call centre again, just to see what was going on, and I got the same excuse.

Right, I thought. Flame time.

Off I went to Hellopeter and left a complaint. The Telkom staff that actually know what goes on (I’m surprised such people exist) read those comments and respond to them, and sure enough they phoned me up, promising to find out what the problem was. Not too long after that, I get their excuse – they apparently needed to upgrade the infrastructure in Kloof (and I have noticed some Telkom vehicles in the area around my place lately, so they were obviously doing something). After another call to their call centre this morning (and spending 15 minutes on hold listening to their rubbish canned music), I was told that the estimated time for installation is now the 18th.

Now, why couldn’t they have told me that they needed to upgrade their infrastructure in the first place? And why couldn’t their call centre tell me what I needed to know? Seems like it’s a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Telkom is so useless, it’s almost like they WANT to go out of business when Neotel starts up.

I’m hoping that they’ll keep their promises this time, but then again, this is Telkom that we’re dealing with. My friend Craig has also ordered ADSL at his place in Glenwood about three weeks after my order was placed; at this rate he’ll have his before I get mine.

I’ll keep you all posted as to further developments.

1. A new cellphone. My four year-old Nokia 3310 is pretty much on its last legs.
2. An MP3 player so that I won’t be totally bored while waiting at airports during my Australia trip. (3½ weeks to go!)
3. An ADSL modem for when I get that much-needed upgrade next year.

That stupid cellphone of mine nearly made me late for BarCamp, as I had to get emergency repairs done to it (it stubbornly refused to read any SIM cards). Fortunately, BarCamp was running on African Time, so it didn’t make too much of a difference in the end.

(As for BarCamp itself, voyager42 has written about it better than I will ever do and Karnaugh has all the photos.)

The MP3 player isn’t as critical as the other two, but it would be nice to have some music to listen to on my trip. My only real requirement is that it must be able to hold several trance livesets, and that means nothing smaller than a 1GB model (which should do me just fine). The ADSL modem has been ordered, and I’m just waiting for it to arrive – it should come either later this week or first thing next week. I’ve been looking at ADSL service providers and found two offerings for a 4GB unshaped option for around R500 per month. I could get a 10GB shaped option for the same price, but I don’t generally download very large files (unless I need a Linux distribution and if I’m too lazy to make the great trek to the nearest Freedom Toaster) and besides, you need an unshaped option if you want to do online gaming. Which means that I can finally join jerith’s Neverwinter Nights posse.

I’m going to end this post. There’s a student behind me, and he’s watching what I type, which is kind of freaking me out. Yes Greg, I mean you.