Comcast made headlines recently for slowing down BitTorrent transfers, but other ISPs have largely escaped scrutiny, If you’re wondering whether your ISP delivers the service you pay for, you may want to run a Web application called Glastnost. How does it work? Simple:
Our test sets up a series of BitTorrent flows between an end user’s host and 5 PlanetLab servers. We collect the packet trace for each flow on the server side, and we closely monitor both end points for any error conditions that might cause a flow to be aborted. If a flow is aborted by a control (RST) packet that was not sent by either of the end points, we report the flow as being blocked by some ISP along its path. If BitTorrent traffic is blocked to all test servers, it is very likely that the blocking is done by the access ISP.
The application was developed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute. They’re collecting all the data into a huge map that shows where ISPs do and don’t block BitTorrent.
Glastnost made headlines yesterday, which doubtless drove an unusual number of people to the site. I got a busy message when I tried to run the test, but I’ll certainly check again.
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