NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Brits' Failed Heavy Metal Censorship Attempt Disrupts Wikipedia Edits
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In message <493C9D8B.9060203@reed.com>, David P. Reed <dpreed@reed.com>
writes
>The techniques used to mess up the communications with wikipedia involve
>*massive* tinkering with communications - redirecting packets based on
>protocol and content.
They try and avoiding doing that, because its rather expensive...
>The so-called ISPs are hardly providing "Internet Access" in the usual
>sense of the term. Instead, they must read all communications, identify
>the target site (Wikipedia), identify the target protocol (http) and
>tinker with the content of selective communications.
... what they generally provide is a two-layer system, with the first
layer selecting port 80 traffic going to particular IP addresses, then
the second layer matching URLs within an HTTP proxy (which may or may
not cache as well).
The actual mechanics of the redirection may involve fiddling with DNS
results; adding more specific (/32) routes to the internal BGP for
customer facing routers; or leveraging the capabilities of proprietary
cache management protocols such as WCCPv2
>Perhaps the same techniques might be used to identify people who want
>to, for example, send email to people who are in a different social
>caste,
very droll, but the technology doesn't stretch that far. In fact it's
all rather dumb, and is easy to circumvent, or indeed attack [see my PhD
thesis for many of the gory details]
- --
Richard Clayton <richard.clayton@cl.cam.ac.uk>
tel: 01223 763570, mobile: 07887 794090
Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, CB3 0FD
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