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Restrictions That @Home Places on Their Customers?
David Hansen asks: "I want to see what problems other Slashdot users have had with @Home restricting their service. We all know that they block the SMB ports, and probably for good reason. But did you know that they won't let you access certain other machines on the @Home network? And why don't they mention any of this in their acceptable use policy? My mother and father are both @Home subscribers in the same city (different subnets). I have Linux boxes acting as firewalls in both places which cannot ping or otherwise contact each other. I can ping them both from an outside location. I discovered this and the SMB thing the hard way. What else doesn't @Home want us to do? Do other ISPs do this also? BTW, I can reach @Home users who are in other cities." I've noticed that ISPs have been filtering lots of ports in the event that users will put up servers. Do you feel that ISPs should make a list of ports that they filter available to their customers?
I am in Australia, and the broadband providers here have even more restrictions. You can only connect two other machines via NAT, no servers, etc. Why can't we have a internet service that says "here's your IP number, here's 1.5 mb/s down and 0.5 mb/s up, do whatever you want with it". Somehow I don't think that is going to happen. What we need is a totally free and noncommercial internetwork for the people. You would just share the costs. 10 or 15 100BaseT cables along the streets. I have heard of some small towns doing this. Anyone got the URLS? David Findlay nedz@bigpond.com
The single biggest restriction: transfer rate caps. 1.5-2 years ago, my transfer rates peaked at 10Mb in / 5Mb out; these days it's usually 1-2Mb in / .012Mb out. The worst part is that that 12KB cap is a hard limit; while the only server I ever ran (back when they allowed you to I had my personal web and email servers) probably transfered 5MB per day, I used to really like the ability to transfer large (10-100MB) files between home and work.
They've thrown away the huge lead over the DSL providers they used to have in San Diego; on the bad days the service feels worse than ISDN. I'd switch if anyone else offered service in my area.
Amazingly, they even enforce that 12KB/s cap on outbound transfers for business accounts. Pay them $300/month for a connection and you can get *twice* the performance of your old modem.
but they haven't noticed yet, and i have it set up so it's not likely they will, unless all of a sudden tons of people start hitting it (which isn't gonna happen...there's nothing on it for them to go to). Mostly mail, but also some web and ftp. I think it's ridiculous that they even try to stop people from running servers (after all, you're paying to connect to the internet...you should be able to do whatever you want with the bandwidth you're paying for). Also, me running my mail off my server makes it so it actually uses less bandwidth for them, and is much more convenient for me (able to use procmail, etc).
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
Either way, I've got mine in writing.
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I also live in the San Diego area, yet instead of a 12kb upload mine top out at 40-50kb and my friend who has had @Home since '95 (When @Home was introduced into his neighborhood) gets 40-50kb also. I know someone who was running a server (Warez) and was using lots of bandwidth (50 users x 50 kb) at a time. Cox@Home gave him a warning and that was the end of it. Cox@Home says that you can't run servers, yet they only scan for NNTP every 20 seconds (or so it seems). P.S. - Never install their software if you run windoze. It contains software monitoring and all kinds of other junk. Even the installers tell users not to install it now. -Daniel
With the ever-growing masses of ignoramuses getting cable and home DSL, just stop and ask them "why are you switching to cable (you retarded aoler)?" and they'll answer "For mp3's, warez, movies and porn". The other half of the problem is that the ISP's don't want to spend bazillions of dollars upgrading and extending their fragile little networks. They just want to cash in on the added subscribers and tell them "Well it's faster than 9600 baud, which is the highest speed the phone company guarantees". I get 16kb upstream (but more than enough downstream - avg 350kb/sec), that amounts to about 1 megabyte per minute. Add a little cynism and I'd be better off burning a cd and mailing it home than trying to ftp it. Why are things like this ? because these retarded ISP's need some way to impose their unjustified 10x price hike for commercial access (which really isn't commercial quality to begin with).
Let me explain this with a metaphor : car sales. Say you have an old treacherous Toyota salesman with two brands of cars on his lot. One is the economy model, it's a V4 engine and no extras. The other is the luxury model, which is a V4 engine with gold-plated spark plugs and automatic everything. It's the same crap with better spark plugs that give you a 4% increase in raw horsepower (which will equate to cleaner gas consumption that might register on high-end monitoring gear). However the luxury model costs twice as much as the economy model. So you tell the guy "Hey! This is the same car. I'll just buy the economy model and add power windows, and buy the spark plugs at a garage on my way home.". He politely replies "You can't do that. If you buy this car, you'll need to sign this EUA that strictly forbids you to use better spark plugs. If you do, we'll charge you the difference for the luxury model."
That's what ISP's do. If you want the slightly faster pipe and higher-quality bullshit when you call tech support, you pay the huge bucks for their so-called "commercial" package. If you just take the home package and try to use it like a commercial pipe and they find out, they call it a "breach of license" and the law allows them to charge you full price or sue you for fraud, whichever is more rewarding to them. And now with all those nifty little backstabbing finely-printed DMCA clauses, they can legally laugh at you when you sign their horrible service contract that includes "I will not hold MoroNet liable for any inconvenience or interruptions encountered during the use, misuse or inability to use the service." and "MoroNet retains the right to revoke service to any entity who is suspected to be abusing the network and/or related hardware and software." Which means that although you pay them every month, they are absolutely not obligated to give you anything in return. It's just a mere "coincidence" that they grant you an IP address.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
...the phone company putting a payphone in your house. You can make all the outgoing calls you want, but you can't receive calls.
As far as I know, my RoadRunner service isn't currently blocking any services. My OpenBSD firewall gets regular hits on all the good ports.
Here are the snippets from their policy:
The policies are pretty bad, but it seems like they adopt a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude in practice, at least locally. I've only heard of one person getting kicked off RoadRunner and he was running a ftp server with MP3z or warez.
I too just stumbled onto this. For whatever reason, one can suck all the bandwidth possible by using Napster, Mojonation, gnutella etc...but try a legitimate application such as VNC, and forget it.
It makes absolutely no sense to me. They disclaim away all possible liabilities from have an insecure box, but take these measures?
I suspect it has something to do with residential vs. commercial offerings. While this is all hypothetical, I'd guess that for some fantastically huge monthly sum, you can get 'business' level service which is actually usable for something other than the internet staples: porn and music.
No sig is worth reading.
Everytime I fire up ye olde news client, I get a scan from authscan.blah.home.com. I assume rather than simlpy blocking the port they choose to scan you and should a hit be detected, they shall let you know about their displeasure in the matter. I've not noticed any sort of scanning on any other port so I can only assume that if there is something else they feel that strongly about you *not* doing, they've simply blocked the port out. For the record, I'm able to contact my other computer which is on my network using a different ip address. And I'm able to do it over the internet, not just through the local ip address.
I wonder if they screwed up and forgot the :-)
ip classless
and
ip subnet-zero
directives in their router configuration
I ran into the same problem when I used to have @home. My friend and I (both on @home) couldn't ping each other's PC's. A quick traceroute revealed it to be a routing error in @home's network. I tried calling tech support, but got lots of confused idiots trying to tell me to change my proxy settings, re-install Windows, etc.
It might not be an even @home plot against peer-to-peer sharing, it might just be plain old-fashioned incompetence!!!
BTW, I now use Sprint BroadBand direct (wireless). I'm getting much better speed and reliability than I had with @home for about the same price!
Optus@Home in Australia doesn't restrict the number of NATted machines.
They don't allow servers, although AFAIK they don't block ports, just scan you and kick you off.
Tom
I have discovered a wonderful
Haven't you ever seen an Acura Integra? It's just a Prelude. Same whiny little engine with half the cylinders missing and pointed the wrong way in the engine bay. Huh? Please tell me you're a troll.
Nope. I'm one of the most devoted automotive fans you'll ever meet.
Actually they have the same number of cylinders and point the same way in the engine bay.8/2=4. Half the cylinders missing. One half of the "V" sliced off, at that. Ugh. Like a mastectomy.
Same engine? Uh uh. Different displacement, different casting, different mounting points... same manufacturer though, that's about it.Different casting? Oh, that's news to me. Okay. I recind the "same engine" bit. But if the engine is still transverse-mounted and only four cylinders, it's not a real man's car.
You can't performance drive a front-wheel-drive car. Why is it that most cop cars are rear wheel drive? No torque steer! No MacPherson strut effects on your ackerman angles! Predictable behavior when you lose traction on one of your drive wheels!
The advantages of front wheel drive are cost of manufacture, weight (primarily for fuel economy reasons), and disposability (hit a curb, write off the car). Not reasons to be proud of a FWD car.
I've only seen one transverse-mount rear-wheel-drive car, and that was the Pontiac Fiero.
Besides, I've never seen a real man driving *any* Honda product.
Let's face facts. You hang around a good biker bar, or something like that. You won't hear conversation like "Ugh! Wow! He must be a tough dude. Look at his '94 Civic!"
"Ugh! Wow! He must be a boring, disposeable accountant! He's in a 1971 Hemi Cuda!"
And neither of them have the ever popular "V4" touted in the original post<grin> I let that one slide, too.
There are differences between the normal and marquee manufacturers. Significant ones in some cases although they could be termed luxuries, but if you want 'em you gotta pay for 'em. The Cimarron debacle... well I think Cadillac would prefer if that wasn't ever mentioned again.Whole-heartedly.
If they'd simply called it a Cavalier with the optional heated leather seats, I don't think anyone would have cared.
Actually, my daily-driver 1976 Dodge Ram has heated leather seats. They come in very handy in Toronto winters. (They're out of a 1997 Lincoln Town Car - I had to ditch the truck's bench, it was wrinkling my suits.)
My current car very well might fit in your trunk but you gotta catch it firstNo problem. A Chrysler 440 out of the box will easily haul a New Yorker in the 14-second range. (Remember, this is before Corporate Average Fuel Economy and emissions laws!) Lightly modded, I've seen a '72 New Yorker (different grill and tail lights, but that's about it) blow the doors off a Buick Grand National. And Grand Nationals are fast - my advice is that you should avoid challenging them at stoplights.
Further, keep in mind that my car gets just over 6 miles per gallon. The engine runs under thermostat almost all the time (except when I crank the Mopar Airtemp A/C on a hot day), the exhaust blows under 15 PPM hydrocarbon, so all that gas is going somewhere...
Old tech doesn't mean slow tech. These aren't computers. ;)
(It's a *lightly* modded NSX... not the fastest thing out there but still pretty fun)."Modded" = "tuned by" stickers all over it? Heheheh.... Wanna race my truck for pink slips? I've got a buddy who runs a scrapyard, after I blow your doors off, I'll take your car, run over it with the front end loader, toss it in the back of my truck for winter traction, and then take on your buddies.
Big stereos and stickers do not a racecar make.
If you're in the Toronto area, you also want to stay away from 1980 Chevettes, too. I've shoehorned a Buick 3.8L V6, TH-350, and Ford 8.8" diff with 4.91 posi into it. It pulls a solid 12.3 on the 1/4 mile, and it looks dead stock. You wouldn't want your girlfriend to notice that the rusty old Chevette you thought you left at the stoplight was still beside you.
(Speaking of sleepers, this is being typed from a Pentium-II 350 on an Asus motherboard that has been stuffed into a "Triton 8 MHz TurboXT" case, connected to an old NEC MultiSync 3D, and has a Compaq Deskpro 286 keyboard attached. No one will steal it...)
I love surprising people.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
@home has issues with too many wannabe hackers, so they lock down alot of things....unfortunately, when a hacker that is originating from an @home account is reported, they completely ignore it.. I usually get max 200kbytes downstream..... don't do anything as far as upstream.... also my NNTP downstream NEVER surpasses 80kbytes a sec.... might be a new cap in my area....
The SMB blocking (and Windows file sharing, for that matter) is quite obviously done for security reasons, and I can't say I blame them (@Home) for doing this, since the majority of their customers are not exactly tech savvy and have no idea how to secure their own systems. As for not being able to connect to other computers in your city, I've found that this is usually a routing issue, but not always on @Home's. Try adding a static route to the other subnet through your gateway - worked for me.
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Bryan Samis
http://www.thesamis.net
Oh, Earthlink is now starting to block port 25 on outgoing connections, so you can't connect to any SMPT server other than earthlink's. A few other ISP's are doing this too.
Absolutely. That is a definite FWD advantage.
Your disposable cars are that way because they're uni-bodies, not front-drive.Oh yeah, monocoque construction makes a car a lot tougher and more expensive to repir.
But so does front wheel drive.
If you hit another vehicle, for example, your engine, transmission and differential are all involved. Not to mention the usual basics like radiator, steering, etc. Because the drivetrain is crammed into a tiny space rather than spread out under the car, it's a lot harder to fix.
Further, because most of these front wheel drive cars use MacPherson strut suspensions - which are simple, compact and cheap but have little room for adjustment after a collision - you generally end up with a damaged car that can't be made to track properly without welding in new inner fenders and strut towers. Most rear wheel drive unibodies (and full-frame cars) use double-A arm front suspensions, which are a lot bulkier but have more linear movement in all planes as well as being a lot more serviceable after damage. Instead of attempting to change a bent strut tower, you generally end up changing a bent upper control arm.
It's very difficult to get the necessary energy absorption for crashworthiness with a body-on-frame.Rest assured, I'm well familiar with unibodies. Consider that three of my vehicles (my 1974 Valiant, my 1971 New Yorker and my 1980 Chevette) are unibody.
As for vehicle safety, what you say is true. But I prefer to avoid hitting things. If I've had even one beer, I don't get behind the wheel (but I'd be legal to 4). While I own a cellphone, that is never turned on in the car or truck. Never. My stereo is never cranked up loud enough to prevent me from hearing the rest of the traffic around me, my vehicles are always in top mechanical shape, and I always concentrate fully on the task at hand. And if I'm feeling sleepy, even if I'm only ten miles from home, I'll pull over, flip down or across the seats, and take a nap.
My driving record? Flawless. Ten years, no accidents or moving violations. And yet I drive a long way to work every day, taking a freeway that is second busiest in the world (after only the Santa Monica Freeway) and have for a number of years. And, this despite the fact that I've been known to shred my rear tires into clouds of smoke every now and then.
So, what if someone cuts me off?
Nice thing about a vehicle that won't buckle - surrounded by a sea of vehicles that will buckle - is that if some jackass in a Prelude cuts me off and I hit him, I'll win. He'll absorb my impact. I'm sure he'd do body damage to my truck, but I doubt he'd do much structural damage. Even if he did, I'd fix it in an afternoon with a hyrdaulic ram to straighten the frame back, my MIG welder to gusset it if there was any sign of fatigue, and then a quick tweak of the eccentric bolts on my upper control arms that set my camber and caster.
Unibody is stiffer than a frame; this gives better drivability.Depends on the frame. Compared to an I-channel or C-channel body on frame, for sure. But most of the finest luxury cars today retain a body on frame, using a box-section frame. The penalty? Gas mileage.
The benefits of a full frame, which kept them around for so long? The structural members are fractional inch steel plate stampings, not thin sheet measured in gauge. Less corrosion. Less metal fatigue. And the structural integrity of the car is more dependant on sheer quantities of steel, rather than the shape imparted into the metal by a stamping press.
Tangible benefits? You see a lot more 20-year-old Caprice Classics, Ford LTDs and other full-frame vehicles driving around than you see of 20-year-old Fairmonts. Easier to fix, too. And it makes sense to make a car last. The environmental cost of making a car is a lot more than the gains of replacing it at half of its average lifespan with one that is only incrementally cleaner and more fuel efficient. So it makes sense to take good care of a good, solid car, keep it well-tuned, and maintain it.
Other benefits? Cost to the manufacturer. One basic frame can be readily adapted to serve a large number of vehicles. Chevy S-10 and Astrovan shared a frame, for example. Easy to redesign a car based on slapping new body panels onto the existing rolling frame.
It's nearly impossible to get rid of squeaks unless the whole car is welded together. Again, this means unibody.Or good body-to-frame mounts.
It's even more difficult to get rid of road noise with a unibody's welded structural members carrying every vibration to the passenger compartment. Don't you get sick of listening to your wheel bearings when you're on the highway? Body to frame mounts damp that.
Not to burst your bubble, but judging from your past posts your opinions are set in concrete and facts are nearly irrelevant to you anyway.Ahhh, yes, I know who this is: it's the self-proclaimed automobile expert speaking from the depths of his many hours spent watching Shadetree Mechanic. Afraid to post from your user account? Can't afford the karma of an off-topic debate? I can.
Listen, I was wrenching on cars 15 years ago as a kid. I've worked on everything from Tercels to (once) a Testarossa. My roommate and best friend of 11 years works at probably the world's foremost professional automotive restoration shop.
While I'm neither a professional mechanic nor am I an automotive engineer (but I am an SAE member, go figure...), I know that you're neither one of those things. I've written columns in automotive magazines from Car Craft to Car and Driver. You, sir, are simply someone who spells better than most, perhaps could manage to change a fanbelt by the side of the road, and has been incensed when I insulted your idea of a fine automobile.
Unless you can actually come up with solid facts - not those refutable by any freshman level high school automotive class - I think you really should sit back and not comment, lest you continue to display your ignorance and short-sightedness.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Anyone with any experience in engines knows that 200 horsepower at 6000 RPM implies 175 foot-pounds of torque. In other words, either you are the sloppiest so-called engineer on the face of the earth, or you're a troll.
Horsepower is torque measured over time.
The measure of time, in this case, is RPMs.
You do the math, brainiac.
And there's more than one way to measure horsepower. I suggest you avoid the glossy ads in the car magazines: to look impressive, those are generally in *brake* horsepower.
Serious calculations of engine power are always done in torque at a specific RPM or kW of output energy; horsepower is way too vague. And if you have to use horsepower, use SAE Net. It's a lot less vague.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
RoadRunner in Austin, TX has a "no public server" policy. You can run a server, as long as it's password protected. I have had an ftp server running for months, but it doesn't allow anonymous access. I have not received any complaints from RR. I also run an SMTP server, but it only allows access from internal PC's. Plus, my firewall blocks all unused ports.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Crankshaft power into a brake is power, period
No, that's not where the automotive measure of "brake horsepower" is from.
That's the measured or calculated force required to stall the engine. Essentially, the reciprocal of all the output power of the engine as well as the inertia of the rotating/reciprocating mass.
Sorry, *you're* wrong, and I'm done debating with you, I've got better things to do. Like driving worn-out valve guides out of a cylinder head.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.