Actually 4294967296 couldn't ever appear as the maximum value you can fit in the protocol field is 1 less than that... my problem here was I couldn't manage to keep the 2 numbers I was comparing (the one in the article and 2^32) straight haha! This was mistake was noted by a commenter here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41963745

That said you're ultimately right that my upstream provider is filtering the 4294901866 value from the article as well anyways for the reasons you stated.