A month after releasing its plugin that detects if your ISP is performing reset voodoo on your torrents, Azureus/Vuze is claiming AT&T hexes them with the same reset TCP packet curse as Comcast, despite AT&T's explicit statements otherwise. AT&T denies the accusation and points out a flaw in the plugin's method, that it can't tell the difference between naturally occurring TCP resets and artificial ones generated by an ISP. Azureus, while admitting the issue, still says AT&T is full it.
According to their data, "the results show a significant enough difference in the level of resets from one network operator to another, to warrant asking certain network operators to describe their network management practices," and AT&T, Cablevision and AOL are at the top of the heap. In our feature on ISP network management, while AT&T directly stated its "techniques don't include degrading or blocking traffic," they did decline to elaborate on what they did do.
While in Comcast's case, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told a Senate committee they lied about throttling torrents only during periods of congestion and never issued a flat denial, AT&T's repeated, direct counters incline us to believe them. But we still agree with Azureus's goal, to push ISPs to be completely transparent about how they manage their network—we'll leave whether the FCC should mandate net neutrality up to the policy wonks. Besides, it's looking like the FCC is moving toward transparency regulations anyway, if not neutrality. [PC World]