[ NNSquad ] Re: Google Hijacked -- Major ISP to Intercept and Modify Web Pages

[Sean Donelan <sean@donelan.com>]

On Sun, 9 Dec 2007, Robb Topolski wrote:
> Allow me to disagree, as there are plenty of messages available for use.
>
> > The post office adds stamp to letters with all sorts of messages about
> > postage due,
>
> ICMP TTL or timer expired enroute -- or whatever mechanism currently
> used to notify users of bills due

Then someone would complain that ISPs broke traceroute by "hijacking" TTL 
expired for billing problems.


> > return to sender,
>
> ICMP no route to host

Application and IP stack programmers seem to ignore these messages and 
don't show them to the user.

Instead of framing the message in the same window such as the Google 
cache does showing archived pages (google also modifies the page with
"highlighting")

<http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:W5f1MsHEF5cJ:lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad+nnsquad&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us>

would it be better to pop-up a separate window.  However, many applications 
have "pop-up blockers" so the user will never see the message.


> > The telephone system has
> > multiple types of busy signals
>
> TCP RST in response to SYN

People complained that the network sent the TCP RST instead of the remote 
host. Isn't that exactly the problem that lead to the creation of this 
forum?  It swings back and forth, someone always complains and suggests 
exactly the solution that someone else complained about previously.

Should ISPs be allowed to send TCP RST much like a "all circuits are 
busy--please try you call later signal?"  Should host programmers respond 
to ICMP Source Quench instead of ignoring it as most hosts do now?


Application programmers tend to abuse the standards process just as much 
as network programmers abuse the standards process, not implementing the 
full standards, deliberately breaking parts of the standards, or just 
deciding some of those messages are "ugly" and either don't show them
to the user or replace the error message with a "friendly" message which
hides the real information.

Can an application programmer violate network neutrality by ignoring 
network standards?  Should this group be looking for those problems too?

              [ Note that Google's banner, etc. on "cached version"
		 pages is totally appropriate.  These are
		 Google-cached pages being served by Google that may
		 not even be up to date (and are only displayed if
		 the user selects Cached page versions).  Whether
		 that caching occurs at all is under Web sites'
		 control via the appropriate directives.  It would be
		 irresponsible if Google did not display such cached
		 pages in a manner that made their status completely
		 clear.  This is utterly different from an ISP
		 modifying the displayed data coming to a user
		 directly from another Web site.

                                       -- Lauren Weinstein
                                          NNSquad Moderator ]