NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: mangling payload
Such modification is well known, we were able to detect it in our tripwire survey from multiple sources, and as a technique it was developed in 1997 by Fox and Brewer, and made surfing the web over dialup significantly less unpleasant. It is useful when your bandwidth from the PoP or cache to the Internet is good, but from the PoP to the user its very restricted. Scaling down images in particular is a useful transformation, especially when dealing with image-constrained devices, however script modifications can cause problems (such as Javascript overflow), and image distillation is less sensible when dealing with non-display-constrained devices (iPhones, computers). If the user billing is per-bit, Vodafone is saving you money by doing this transformation, but if its flat rate, they are saving themselves money (but could be saving you time). Stefano, go to http://vancouver.cs.washington.edu/ and see what triggers from your wireless connection.