We are sorry, the test failed due to a problem.

The connection to the measurement server timed out. This can happen if it takes too long to load the applet.

It’s the result that matters, not the method.

You downloaded a torrent and it got to you. You did not determine if your download had been throttled because you cannot quantify it by downloading – you need to inspect raw packets to find the resets that comcast use as their mechanism to limit it.

You draw a false conclusion that a website that is currently ‘busy’ has problems – did it ever occur to you that the website operators, by limiting the number of concurrent tests are ensuring that any results they do obtain are not affected by overutilisation?

Your article is what we in the professional tech world call ‘Intellectual Masturbation’ – zero in-depth analysis and conclusions drawn on false assumptions and proven through shoddy testing methodolgy.

Comcast DID say they were doing nothing – the Network Neutrality Group that many /.’ers are involved with have verified and documented it. When caught they changed their story to ‘we’re delaying’ -> a euphamism for ‘we’re actively resetting bittorrent connections so that it takes the end use longer to download something’.

The issue is not and never has been ‘comcast are blocking ALL bittorrent traffic’ – but they are actively interfering with it. We don’t need any other proof beyond the forged packets themselves to know that comcast are interfering.

To use one of Mr Glass’ style of overexaggerated analogy – The community has reported a rapist and have caught the rapist on camera – while the rapist’s supporters are screaming ‘He didn’t murder anyone!’.

The second point I didn’t mention above is that I’ve tried to contact Peter Svensson, whom Richard dubs “Free Press’ personal reporter,” and give him accurate information about the practice of P2P throttling by ISPs. I got through once and spoke to him for a few minutes, offering him more data if he was interested. But he never contacted me, and has continued to write stories which are biased and inaccurate (and which repeat false statements made by Free Press). Therefore, Richard’s characterization appears (alas) to be quite accurate.

The “study” by the Germans didn’t measure BT throughput, and that’s the important statistic.

This report only confirms that individual TCP connections are being blocked; it’s being misreported as BitTorrent being blocked. BitTorrent uses dozens of TCP streams so blocking a few of those streams has the effect of slowing down BitTorrent thus “delay”. Furthermore, as TCP streams are broken, BitTorrent will naturally open up more connections automatically within seconds of connections being broken.