VUZE, the vendor of BitTorrent based file-sharing program Azureus, is offering a plug-in to help users detect whether their Internet service provider is actively interfering with their peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic.

Last year The Associated Press and others caught Comcast secretly disrupting its subscribers' P2P file transfers by sending reset packets to the computers at both ends of connections. The bogus reset packets are apparently generated by equipment made by Sandvine, which other large ISPs in addition to Comcast have reportedly purchased and installed on their networks.

Vuze's Azureus plug-in detects resets and reports them to the user. If the user permits, the plug-in can also send reports back to Vuze, which will collect data about which ISPs are stealthily blocking their customers' P2P file transfers.

There are other ways besides reset packets that ISPs can and do interfere with, err... manage, traffic flowing over their networks, and the Vuze plug-in won't be able to detect those. But those mostly involve slowing traffic, not blocking it.

Vuze, which is based in Palo Alto, California, says that its Azureus software has been downloaded 20 million times and that about 1.3 million people are using it at any one time, on average.

There's a bit more here. µ