Slashdot Mirror

marcan writes "Comcast users are reporting 'connection reset' errors while loading Google. The problem seems to have been coming and going over the past few days, and often disappears only to return a few minutes later. Apparently the problem only affects some of Google's IPs and services. Analysis of the PCAP packet dumps reveals several injected fake RSTs, which are very similar to the ones seen coming from the Great Firewall of China [PDF]. Did Google somehow get caught up in one of Comcast's blacklists, or are the heuristics flagging Google as a file-sharer due to the heavy traffic?"

RFC writes "In a move that may be indicative of modern ISP customer service, Time Warner has announced the introduction of packet shaping technology to its network. 'Packet shaping technology has been implemented for newsgroup applications, regardless of the provider, and all peer-to-peer networks and certain other high bandwidth applications not necessarily limited to audio, video, and voice over IP telephony.' As the poster observes, this essentially renders premium service useless. The company is already warning users that attempts to circumvent these measures is a violation of their Terms of Service."

Ant writes "In Scott Dunn's Windows Secrets, he describes his informal tests of well-known computer security vendors when it comes to subscriptions and renewals. These days, most antivirus and other security products come with a subscription to update your virus definitions. He also explains ways to opt-out, users' comments, etc. Seen in EGeezer's Broadband/DSL Reports security forum thread. Always read those end user license agreements (EULAs)."

Aaron writes "Broadband Reports notes how Maryland was working on a law that would force ISPs to show exactly where they offer service and at what speed. The goal was to help map coverage gaps, since FCC broadband data is worthless for this purpose. Cable and phone company lobbyists have scuttled the plan, convincing state leaders the plan would bring 'competitive harm,' 'stifle innovation,' and even close local coffee shops. Of course the real reason is they don't want the public to know what criteria they use to determine the financial viability of your neighborhood — as they cherry-pick only the most lucrative areas for next-generation services. The Center for Public Integrity is trying to obtain the unreleased raw FCC penetration data, but these companies are also fighting this tooth and nail."

Doc Ruby writes, "As reported at GigaOM, 'Infinera has bonded 10 parallel 10 Gb/s channels into one logical flow while maintaining packet ordering at the receiver,' bridging 100-Gbps ethernet over 10 10-Gbps optical WAN links. Infinera's press release is here. Further from GigaOM: 'The experimental system was set up between Tampa, Florida and Houston, Texas, and back again. A 100 GbE signal was spliced into ten 10 Gb/s streams using an Infinera-proposed specification for 100GbE across multiple links. The splicing of the signal is based on a packet-reordering algorithm developed at [UC] Santa Cruz. This algorithm preserves packet order even as individual flows are striped across multiple wavelengths.' We're all going to want our share of these 100Gbps networks. The current network retailers, mainly cable and DSL dealers, still haven't brought even 10Mbps to most homes, though they're now bringing fiber to the premises to some rich/lucky customers. Are they laying fiber that will bring them to Tbps, or will that stuff clog the way to getting these speeds ourselves?" Rumors say that what runs over Verizon's FiOS is ATM, to support their aspirations for triple-play.

An anonymous reader writes, "Karl Bode of Broadband Reports takes aim at supposed telecom experts and think tankers who profess to love the 'free market,' but want to ban the country's un-wired towns and cities from offering broadband to their residents. If you didn't know, incumbent providers frequently determine towns and cities unprofitable to serve (fine), but then turn around and lobby for laws that make it illegal to serve themselves (not so fine). They then pay experts to profess their love for a free market and deregulation — unless that regulation helps their bottom line. A simple point: 'Strange how such rabid fans of a free-market wouldn't be interested in allowing market darwinism to play out.'"

Doug Muth writes "According to this article over on DSL Reports, yet another spyware author, iDownload, has been sending out cease and desist letters to sites that classify their iSearch toolbar as Spyware. Some research reveals that yes, iSearch really does take over users' computers. A search on Spyware Guide also turns up a writeup on iSearch."

Just another Coward writes "DSL Reports grabbed a copy of the lawsuit threat letters sent by the MPAA to the bittorrent website owners. This latest document was sent to a Torrent site called 'demonoid.com', which is now offline."

Ron Harwood writes "First, Linksys was violating the GPL by not releasing their source for their Linux implementation on the WRT54G wireless router and WAP54G access point. When this was rectified, third party firmware started showing up. Well, now it looks like Sveasoft (one of the third party developers) has decided to restrict access to their modified source code to subscribers - that also will need to pay $49 for a CD rather than being able to download it." The thread summary at DSLReports only makes it clear that this is all very complicated.

Ron Harwood writes "First, Linksys was violating the GPL by not releasing their source for their Linux implementation on the WRT54G wireless router and WAP54G access point. When this was rectified, third party firmware started showing up. Well, now it looks like Sveasoft (one of the third party developers) has decided to restrict access to their modified source code to subscribers - that also will need to pay $49 for a CD rather than being able to download it." The thread summary at DSLReports only makes it clear that this is all very complicated.

zachlipton writes "DSL Reports has an interesting question posted: should users with pirated copies of Windows be allowed to download security updates, such as for Sasser? Apparently, without a valid CD key, users cannot download these updates. Do they get what they deserve, or should they be allowed these updates through Windows Update in order to reduce the impact of these worms on the rest of the net? Should security updates only for worms be made available to pirated users, or also updates for issues that while not posing a risk to other internet users, would open the pirate up to a security hole?"

zachlipton writes "DSL Reports has an interesting question posted: should users with pirated copies of Windows be allowed to download security updates, such as for Sasser? Apparently, without a valid CD key, users cannot download these updates. Do they get what they deserve, or should they be allowed these updates through Windows Update in order to reduce the impact of these worms on the rest of the net? Should security updates only for worms be made available to pirated users, or also updates for issues that while not posing a risk to other internet users, would open the pirate up to a security hole?"

mdeb writes "Broadband Reports has a story on the FCC opening up a portion of the 3.6 GHz spectrum. "This initiative would reserve 50 megahertz in the 3.6 GHz band for unlicensed wireless Internet operations. Setting aside this spectrum would make it easier for vendors to build devices that would work across all Wi-Fi frequencies and create new wireless Internet opportunities in rural America. The new proposal would allow transmissions at power levels higher than currently permitted for Part 15 unlicensed devices.""

mbathgate asks: "In the world of residential academia, cell phone proliferation is so immense that at many schools they've pulled the plug on landline long distance service, including mine. I have a cell phone, but I can't fax through it, and dialing 29 digits for every fax is a real pain (few faxes are local, especially in Los Angeles). I need a finger-saving solution, but I don't want a web or email-based service, for a number of different reasons, mostly legal and security-related (please save me the flaming - the decision is made). VoIP looks very attractive to me, though, with a 100baseTX port in my room connected to a huge pipe. Slashdot has covered switching to VoIP before, but the focus has been mostly voice calls. I've hunted around on a few different sites, but haven't come across anything which assures me that VoIP would work for my situation. I need a solution for high quality outgoing calls to landlines which can connect to my existing fax machine (RJ11 port). It must be Mac OS X compatible or OS-independent. An incoming number would be nice, since it would let me receive faxes without being there to manually press 'Receive', but considering our anal-retentive firewall policies, getting it to work outgoing would be a good start. Does Slashdot have some experience with faxing via VoIP that they'd like to share?"

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a great Associated Press story on Comcast's invisible caps. The company has been threatening and then cutting off customers who 'abuse' their so-called 'unlimited' service by downloading too much. But Comcast won't reveal what the limits are. DSL Reports has been tracking this for a while, and it's good to see the mainstream press catch on."

An anonymous reader writes "Here's a great Associated Press story on Comcast's invisible caps. The company has been threatening and then cutting off customers who 'abuse' their so-called 'unlimited' service by downloading too much. But Comcast won't reveal what the limits are. DSL Reports has been tracking this for a while, and it's good to see the mainstream press catch on."

Kylow writes "Last year, Slashdot publicized our efforts at DSL Reports to pursue a group of spammers who had spammed our forums. The Slashdot community immediately pitched in to help, and the publicity wiped the sites owned by the spammers off the internet. Fast-forward to today, and the popular yet often draconian block-list SPEWS has added DSL Reports to their blocklist due to the activities of other websites hosted on NAC.net. DSL Reports users are less than happy. This is hardly the first time SPEWS has been accused of going too far."

Kylow writes "Last year, Slashdot publicized our efforts at DSL Reports to pursue a group of spammers who had spammed our forums. The Slashdot community immediately pitched in to help, and the publicity wiped the sites owned by the spammers off the internet. Fast-forward to today, and the popular yet often draconian block-list SPEWS has added DSL Reports to their blocklist due to the activities of other websites hosted on NAC.net. DSL Reports users are less than happy. This is hardly the first time SPEWS has been accused of going too far."

We had to do a little sleuthing today. Many readers wrote in with problems that turned out to be related. A certificate which Verisign used for signing SSL certificates has expired. When applications which depend on that certificate try to make an SSL connection, they fail and try to access crl.verisign.com, the certificate revocation list server. This has effectively DOS'ed that site, and Verisign has now updated the DNS record for that address to include several non-routable addresses, reducing the load on their servers. Some applications affected include older Internet Explorer browsers, Java, and Norton Antivirus (which may manifest itself as Microsoft Word being very slow to start). Hope this helps a few people, and if you have other apps with problems, please post about them below.

Kyle writes "Over at DSL Reports, We are currently pursuing a spammer from the West Palm Beach, Florida area. This wouldn't normally be news, but we think Slashdot readers may be interested in just how successful we have been. What's more interesting is that the spammer appears to be posting in the thread."

Kyle writes "Over at DSL Reports, We are currently pursuing a spammer from the West Palm Beach, Florida area. This wouldn't normally be news, but we think Slashdot readers may be interested in just how successful we have been. What's more interesting is that the spammer appears to be posting in the thread."

Masem writes "A rather interesting debate has been happening in Kansas recently that has been mirrored across the country, in that the baby Bells have been trying to urge state governments to remove the restrictions for them to offer their lines to outside parties; in exchange, the Bells have been promising to develop a strong broadband network in the state. (See, for example, this and this story on DSL Reports for efforts in Missouri and South Carolina.) However, the legislative commission in the Kansas House of Representatives that oversees the telecomm industry has voted against such deregulation, citing concerns on monopolies and competition, despite heavy lobbying by SBC in favor of the bill. SBC has stated that they will now put their broadband deployment plans in Kansas on hold, but look towards the outcome of similar discussions on the same bill on the Senate side of the Kansas Congress."

Masem writes "A rather interesting debate has been happening in Kansas recently that has been mirrored across the country, in that the baby Bells have been trying to urge state governments to remove the restrictions for them to offer their lines to outside parties; in exchange, the Bells have been promising to develop a strong broadband network in the state. (See, for example, this and this story on DSL Reports for efforts in Missouri and South Carolina.) However, the legislative commission in the Kansas House of Representatives that oversees the telecomm industry has voted against such deregulation, citing concerns on monopolies and competition, despite heavy lobbying by SBC in favor of the bill. SBC has stated that they will now put their broadband deployment plans in Kansas on hold, but look towards the outcome of similar discussions on the same bill on the Senate side of the Kansas Congress."

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm sure everyone here is already aware of the impending demise of DirecTV DSL. The latest twist is that, apparently, they're not going to want subs to return the DSL gateways, at least that's the buzz in the DSL Reports DirecTV DSL forum. If true, this means that we'll have around 170,000 of these things floating around, just begging to live again in some other capacity. So, what can be done with them? Seems a shame to let such neat little boxes go to waste. Does anyone care to come up with some creative ideas on how to hack them and make them do something useful?"

genrader writes "broadbandreports.com just posted a news article which had an interesting story about the new ADSL2, which should be approved in 2003. They say it should be backward compatible with current hardware. It seems pretty interesting. ISP-Planet has the featured in-depth look at it, so you might want to see if it is of any intrest to you."

genrader writes "broadbandreports.com just posted a news article which had an interesting story about the new ADSL2, which should be approved in 2003. They say it should be backward compatible with current hardware. It seems pretty interesting. ISP-Planet has the featured in-depth look at it, so you might want to see if it is of any intrest to you."

Maleko writes "PenTeleData, once an innovator in broadband internet service, (was one of, if not the first cable internet providers in the USA) has decided that their customers need to disable P2P uploads or face possible filtering to stop uploads. DSLReports has the story." While an interesting solution on the part of the ISP, it will definitely increase the number of "leechers" on file-sharing systems.

Maleko writes "PenTeleData, once an innovator in broadband internet service, (was one of, if not the first cable internet providers in the USA) has decided that their customers need to disable P2P uploads or face possible filtering to stop uploads. DSLReports has the story." While an interesting solution on the part of the ISP, it will definitely increase the number of "leechers" on file-sharing systems.

Slashback tonight has an important correction about the role of the Apache Foundation (none) vis a vis yesterday's ".NET for Apache" post. Also, another view of the recent DRM (stacked) roundtable in Washington, a review of Red Hat's new beta, and more. Anyone who has successfully downloaded the new Mandrake beta want to comment on that?

Those guys did not ride in with us. Sascha Schumann of the Apache Software Foundation wrote to correct the story presented in Monday's post (".Net for Apache"), writing "this is _not_ a joint Apache Software Foundation/Microsoft stunt. It has not been approved or endorsed by the Apache Software Foundation, nor does it require any of those acts -- it is a deal between two private companies, Covalent and Microsoft."

Fly on wall video, anyone? kikensei writes: "DSL Reports has a story summarizing last week's DRM round table that was stacked with corporate panel members. You can read it here. It presents a much more apt framework for discussion than the overly sensitive, passive account from Al3x that defined our discussion last week."

Dancing in limbo, limbo, limbo. Earlier this month, we mentioned Red Hat's new beta, called Limbo. wiredog writes "From eWeek, a review of RedHat 8.0 beta. With gcc 3.1,the latest versions of GNOME, Mozilla and OpenOffice, and Apache 2.0"

The force is strong in these metallic boxes. Verizon Guy writes "CNet is reporting that Industrial Light and Magic, the group responsible for rendering the special effects in the Star Wars films, is moving away from their proprietary SGI/IRIX/RISC based systems and is instead moving to Dells running Linux. This will give them 100% performance at 20% of the cost."

Here's a link to our post with the recent Linux Journal article on same; look for more on this soon.

Wear name tags, please. mpawlo writes "Slashdot meetup day is only a week away. Some 4 500 people have already signed up to meet all over the world on Thursday July 25, 2002, 7 pm. We need more fellow Swedes to meet in Stockholm and I guess the same goes for other cities."

An anonymous reader submits: "You should know that RoadRunner is quietly blocking the use of Kazaa in certain markets. Particularly in Texas, they have some sort of port scanner in place which scans for Kazaa activity and then disables use of that port, rendering the program completely useless. Grokster, iMesh, and all other FastTrack programs are similarly affected. Yet RoadRunner is not disclosing the practice in any way. Not only that, I'm troubled by the possibility of them arbitrarily choosing to block other programs in the future. If this becomes more widespread, they will have many angry (and former) customers." The poster provides these four links to forum postings with more information: one; two; three; four.

An anonymous reader submits: "You should know that RoadRunner is quietly blocking the use of Kazaa in certain markets. Particularly in Texas, they have some sort of port scanner in place which scans for Kazaa activity and then disables use of that port, rendering the program completely useless. Grokster, iMesh, and all other FastTrack programs are similarly affected. Yet RoadRunner is not disclosing the practice in any way. Not only that, I'm troubled by the possibility of them arbitrarily choosing to block other programs in the future. If this becomes more widespread, they will have many angry (and former) customers." The poster provides these four links to forum postings with more information: one; two; three; four.

dslknowitall writes: "It appears that http://www.dslreports.com is first on the crime scene regarding DSLmonster.com's scam to offer free broadband access for the price of only two spam's a day (remember winfire, anyone?). "If you remember back on December 18th we raised the warning flag concerning a DSL provider known as DSLMonster.com, who's business stank of illegitimacy. With a website made up of plagiarized portions of other providers terms of service, and a qualification system that claimed it could provide service to locations like "the dark side of the moon", it appeared to be a scam waiting to happen." Not only a well written piece but lots o' backgroud too!"

dslknowitall writes: "It appears that http://www.dslreports.com is first on the crime scene regarding DSLmonster.com's scam to offer free broadband access for the price of only two spam's a day (remember winfire, anyone?). "If you remember back on December 18th we raised the warning flag concerning a DSL provider known as DSLMonster.com, who's business stank of illegitimacy. With a website made up of plagiarized portions of other providers terms of service, and a qualification system that claimed it could provide service to locations like "the dark side of the moon", it appeared to be a scam waiting to happen." Not only a well written piece but lots o' backgroud too!"

Masem writes: "In a rather interesting study at DSLReports, it was observed that email addresses published on a web site recieved spam within 8 hours of being posted, showing how aggressive the harvesters are working. In particular, a special link was set up on the main page that by following the link, the site generated an email address that was trackable to the IP that called the link, and not published anywhere else at any time. In the specific case, in only 8 hours after the email address was created, it had recieved spam; since that time about 9 months ago, it's gotten around 100 pieces. Given the time and source of most of the emails, the authors believe that they've simply got someone at one end of a home broadband pipeline using open relay mail servers, and most likely being paid to redistribute spam on the email addresses they harvest."

phillymjs writes: "A co-worker of mine resigned today. His new job at Comcast: Hunting down 'abusers' of the service. More specifically, anyone using NAT to connect more than one computer to their cable modem to get Internet access- whether or not you're running servers or violating any other Acceptable Use Policies. Comcast has an entire department dedicated to eradicating NAT users from their network. We knew this was coming since this Slashdot article from two months ago, but did anyone think they'd already be harassing people that are using nothing more than the bandwidth for which they are paying? It makes me very happy that my DSL kit arrived yesterday, and I'll be cancelling my Comcast cable modem early next week." Earthlink and Comcast have both been advertising lately their single-household, multi-computer services (and additional fees) -- probably amusing to many thousands of broadband-router owners, at least until the cable companies really crack down.

ronmon writes: "DSLReports has discovered evidence of a creative Spammer / Data Miner who has managed to glean email addresses from their member's information pages. Apparently someone has gotten around to writing a script that decodes obfuscated addresses like imasobATspam_centralDOTcom, which was only a matter of time. Server logs show well over half a million requests from several IPs in a specific block and they have been advised that they are in a good postion to prosecute. They're asking for legal help, so any of you good hearted lawyers out there looking to boost your karma, here's your chance :)"

ronmon writes: "DSLReports has discovered evidence of a creative Spammer / Data Miner who has managed to glean email addresses from their member's information pages. Apparently someone has gotten around to writing a script that decodes obfuscated addresses like imasobATspam_centralDOTcom, which was only a matter of time. Server logs show well over half a million requests from several IPs in a specific block and they have been advised that they are in a good postion to prosecute. They're asking for legal help, so any of you good hearted lawyers out there looking to boost your karma, here's your chance :)"

Myrv writes: "There is an interesting thread over at DSL Reports discussing Phoenix Technologies new BIOS. This BIOS contains the PhoenixNet Internet Launch System . ILS resides safely within ROM and is activated the first time a user launches a PhoenixNet-enabled PC with a Windows 98 Operating System. When the PhoenixNet ILS detects an Internet connection, it makes contact with the PhoenixNet server and delivers user-selectable services. These services are delivered to the user as hotlinks on the desktop and in the web browser or, as applications that PhoenixNet automatically packages, downloads and installs. It's 3 a.m., do you know who your motherboard's talking to????" We've gotten a couple of submissions about this - another submitter pointed out this thread and this description by Phoenix. Phoenix has apparently been kicking this idea around for a while - see this old Slashdot story. Does anyone have any more information?

Myrv writes: "There is an interesting thread over at DSL Reports discussing Phoenix Technologies new BIOS. This BIOS contains the PhoenixNet Internet Launch System . ILS resides safely within ROM and is activated the first time a user launches a PhoenixNet-enabled PC with a Windows 98 Operating System. When the PhoenixNet ILS detects an Internet connection, it makes contact with the PhoenixNet server and delivers user-selectable services. These services are delivered to the user as hotlinks on the desktop and in the web browser or, as applications that PhoenixNet automatically packages, downloads and installs. It's 3 a.m., do you know who your motherboard's talking to????" We've gotten a couple of submissions about this - another submitter pointed out this thread and this description by Phoenix. Phoenix has apparently been kicking this idea around for a while - see this old Slashdot story. Does anyone have any more information?

vt@home asks: "It so happened that I have to find a provider again. @Home is not available at my current location, US West says my location is not good enough for DSL, yet, many DSL providers (Verio and Bazillion, to name a few) claim that they can provide me with at least 144K connection. It's alarming that most of the people who have any opinion about DSL, have a negative one (see DSL Reports for one), and the positive opinions look suspiciously like stroturfers. Additional points of concern are the 1 year commitments, and the unusually long time wait time before the service is activated (4-6 weeks on paper could turn into months). So the question is, what is a reliable source that rates the DSL providers? Do you guys have anything to say about your DSL provider, no matter good or bad? If you ever switched from the cable modem to DSL (or back), how was it? Responses about Phoenix Metro will be much appreciated."

As someone personally suffering in DSL Limbo, I can understand vt@home's frustration. I ordered my DSL way back at the end of July and was told "6 weeks" by the company that's offering DSL in my area. Of course, it's now nearing the end of September and although I was promised that Bell-Atlantic (now Verizon) would make the necessary connections last Friday. It's Tuesday and nary a Verizon truck in site with my line. I can't blame the company I initially signed up with. They made the offer in good faith, but we both have been screwed by the local telco. Strike withstanding, I figure I should have seen someone by now, yet I haven't. This story is not unusual in the pursuit of DSL.

So if you have DSL, please share your experiences good or bad and tell us what you think of your provider. If anything it might help the next person in search of broadband prepare for the long waits and the excuses if their service isn't delivered as promised.