After years of complaints, Comcast is disclosing its (kind of) Unlimited Internet Service and Always (sort of) On Connections are, in fact, neither.
An today summarizes:
The company — the country's second-largest Internet service provider — also said it was justified in using "reset" packets to break off communications between two computers.
Comcast sometimes inserts these packets in the data stream to kill a file-sharing session. The move "fools" each computer into believing the other computer wants to end the connection.
And my favorite quote:
The return addresses of Comcast's packets indicate they're from one of the file-sharing computers when they are in fact from Comcast.
What the heck? If I was a Comcast customer today I would switch to DSL so fast it would make their collective heads spin. This is called "spoofing" when anyone else does it. If the FCC doesn't fine the bejeezus out of Comcast I will be disappointed. You don't get to turn off the connection because your pitiful little network can't handle the traffic, you upgrade the friggin network!
Andy