Monday, August 04, 2008

USA - detecting bandwidth throttling

Switzerland: EFF Software Helps Track ISP Bandwidth Throttling
see also switzerland software

Switzerland - The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to thwart ISP bandwidth throttling and other devious practices that threaten the idea of network neutrality. But the FCC and other groups that oversee such matters often lack the tools and technical prowess to even know when ISPs are up to no good.

To lend a helping hand and put some more power in the hands of everyday users like you and me, the EFF recently released Switzerland, an open source software tool for “testing the integrity of data communications over networks, ISPs and firewalls.”

“Until now, there hasn’t been a reliable way to tell if somebody — a hacker, an ISP, corporate firewall or the Great Firewall of China — is modifying your Internet traffic en route,” says Peter Eckersley, EFF staff technologist and designer of Switzerland, in the press release.

Eckersley goes on to say that Switzerland is “designed to make general-purpose ISP testing faster and easier.”

Although Switzerland is currently an alpha release and only works on the command line, it does offer a nice looking set of tools that can detection packet modifications or injections as they travel over your networks.

That means if your ISP (Comcast, for instance) is using anti-P2P tools, like those from Sandvine, or otherwise tampering with your internet traffic, you’ll know about it.

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