Slashdot

Most people, at least Slashdot readers, have heard or read that Comcast is allegedly using some sort of packet shaping or packet inspection to "delay" BitTorrent seeding (uploading in BitTorrent parlance). Downloading works fine, but seeding is nearly impossible unless one enables encryption. I've seen this myself—I attempted to download Ubuntu 7.10 and let it seed last weekend while I was out of town for a wedding. After two days, I had completed the download, but I'd uploaded a mere 28 MB. There were more than 5,000 seeds, too.

Here's where it gets fishy. The day prior, I'd downloaded Ubuntu 7.10 on a Windows® box with uTorrent. It seeded just fine—uTorrent enables encryption by default. However, I used another computer to seed during the weekend, one running KTorrent on Kubuntu 7.04. Encryption was not enabled. I enabled it remotely (ssh tunnel to vnc), and suddenly, the seeding started. In the next two days before I returned, I'd seeded more than 2 GB.

So, this brings me to my actual question, or petition for assistance. How can I tell if Comcast is actively injecting RST packets as the AP and TorrentFreak have confirmed? How can I test this, other than by watching peers attempt to connect vainly?

I want to conduct the same tests so that I have the results for myself. There are three local newspapers in my area which service Comcast customers, and a well-written, data-backed letter to the editor might get enough people in a furor to actually call the local Comcast office and complain.

I have more or less decided on what I'm going to do for my undergrad capstone project: a router distro with a focus on LAN party software. It will act as a NATting router, DHCP, DNS, BitTorrent, IRC, DC++, and Web server, and possibly some others (XMPP, etc.).

Although I haven't decided what distro I'm going to use as a base, I'm leaning towards Linux From Scratch, more specifically Hardened Linux From Scratch. Hardened is more geared toward routers and other network-edge devices.

I'm also going to draw a lot of package ideas from DD-WRT. I've recently become involved in that project (some wiki maintenance and forum activity) and I'm slowly building toward being able to compile my own firmwares (still a long way off, though).

I should have a wiki up with more of my ideas within a couple of weeks. I'm really excited about this project.