[IP] Re: Comcast and University of Colorado

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Karl Auerbach [karl@cavebear.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 4:20 AM
To: David Farber
Cc: ip
Subject: Re: [IP] Comcast and University of Colorado

David Farber wrote:

> From: Douglas, Charlie [Charlie_Douglas@comcast.com]
> "I can confirm that we have not made any shift in our network management policy ...

Orwell would have like this bit of Newspeak.

The idea that forging the IP addresses of communicating internet peers
to fool each of them into believing that the other has lost TCP state is
"network management" is about the same as calling censorship "speech
management".

I have been working in the field of network management for more than two
decades.  And I have never once heard anyone express the idea that
forging IP layer identities is within the scope of that endeavor.

What Comcast is doing is *not* network management.

We can disagree and debate whether what they are doing is or is not an
improper usurpation of identity or a legitimate technique.  But we ought
  to not mislead ourselves and others by letting it use the name of a
well established and broadly accepted area of networking technology.

                --karl--



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