Fergie's Tech Blog

File Sharers Get Help Spotting ISP 'Throttling' Moves

An AP newswire article by Peter Svennson, via The Houston Chronicle, reports that:

Vuze Inc., a California-based company that provides a popular file-sharing program, is giving its users a tool to help figure out if their Internet service provider is interfering with their traffic.

The Associated Press last year confirmed user reports that Comcast Corp., the country's largest cable company, was secretly disrupting some file-sharing by its subscribers. The company has acknowledged to the practice and said it's necessary to curb traffic that would otherwise slow down Internet speeds for other subscribers.

The "plug-in" Vuze made available as a free download last weekend looks for "reset packets," the tool Comcast uses to break off some connections with computers trying to download files from Comcast subscribers, Vuze said Wednesday.

The plug-in works with Vuze's main application, Azureus, which is based on the BitTorrent file-sharing technology. If the user allows it, the plug-in will send data back to Vuze, which will collect information about ISPs that are interfering with their subscribers' traffic.

Palo Alto-based Vuze said Azureus has been downloaded 20 million times, and an average of 1.3 million users are using at any one time.

posted by Fergie @ 3/26/2008 02:59:00 PM