Comments

• twitter

  2010-11-05 22:40:04

  Microsoft is so desperate to grow Bong's single digit market share that they resorted to 404 spam! The other day, instead of getting a 404 message, Mediacom served me a truly obnoxious javascript redirect to a page with Bong search results. The search results were poor and the reason for serving the page, "Domain not found," was missleading.
  
  I followed the directions to the opt out page but I'm annoyed by the whole thing, which looks like a little wall of China. The ISP monitors all traffic for error messages, then injects a javascript redirect. I run my own domain name server to avoid performance robbing domain resolution spam and because most ISP's DNS is sub par, and targeted for injection attacks. Monitoring all traffic for error messages must take up a ton of resources and must be even worse for performance than previous spam methods. What's worse is that the infrastructure can be used for censorship by substituting keywords and redirecting the desired traffic. Central control is being built into US cable networks that rob them of performance and can be more seriously abused. Only Open Spectrum can fix this problem.

• twitter

  2010-11-06 01:25:23

  Here's another example of potentially abusive web filtering, a company is altering html on the fly for big dumb companies and "Tier 1 telecommunications providers". The service also reduces image size and may reduce. If your ISP picks up this trick, all of your web traffic will come from the ISP's cache of altered web pages with no way to opt out.
  
  This kind of "service" is a huge waste of money that turns internet service providers from common carriers to censors. Better performance would be provided by building out better bandwith networks and the elimination of insecure software like Microsoft Windows.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2010-11-06 04:28:00

  How is that different from what we had in Manchester 10 years ago for example? When bandwidth is expensive there is justification for this. Some countries/continents still have thin-pipe Internet (Africa for example).

• twitter

  2010-11-07 14:32:08

  It is different because they rewrite the html itself, but I'm suspicious of all kinds of internet filtered by others. It's one thing for an ISP to offer a cache to improve upstream performance, it's another for them to run everything through it without telling you. In places where there is no shortage of bandwith, there is little justification for the practice. Others have argued that the equipment is always a waste of money, that money spent on fancy filtering to get a reduction in utilization of existing infrastructure (in this case 30%) is always better spent laying new lines, which typically increase bandwith by multiples or orders of magnitude. "Intelligence" and central control points are dangerous for network neutrality and free speech. ISPs should not have that power over us.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2010-11-07 14:39:23

  Yes, but it's also an opportunity for a lucrative contract with another company whose 'solution' is not needed.
  
  For comparison see http://prof77.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/full-body-scanners-useless-air-security-expert-says/
  
  The TSA's body scanners are not so much about preventing terrorism but about benefiting Chertoff.

• twitter

  2010-11-07 15:37:01

  I suppose my main concern boils down to violation of a simple principle, "In a Stupid Network, the data on it would be the boss." It is telling that 15 years after the writing of that article we still don't have IPv6 widely deployed and legacy media companies are still able to interfere with various kinds of peer to peer communications, like VOIP and file sharing. We should not trust media companies, like Cox and Comcast, to substitute the internet with their cached version of it.
  
  The economic folly of this approach can be seen in the giant aluminum boxes being deployed on streetcorners by various media companies in the US. These are designed to cache movies and other media that the company would like to sell per view to people. The computing power and storage inside these boxes is outmatched by orders of magnitude by that owned by the potential customers by the time they reach the installation site and they are laughable five years later. People are better served sharing the things they care about by peer to peer file services like bittorrent had the companies in question built out fiber instead of boxes but ISPs would rather spend money on revenue generators for themselves.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2010-11-07 16:17:47

  They are instead busy ruining the Web/Internet. It's like the story of the electric car or the rail system in the US. Can they retard progress fast enough?