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Dispute Over IP Sharing Escalates
This story was sent in anonymously, but has several interesting points. The major part of the story is a dispute over
sharing IPs on DSL lines (this is in Korea, keep that in mind). The scariest part is that they cut off service to a customer using their line to run a petition site to get them to change the policy. Disagree with the telcom, and we cut your service! Anyone else see anything scary about that? Obviously I think we should be able to use our DSL lines to host as many PCs as we want up to the bandwidth cap, that's simply our choice. But that's secondary to what happens when you mess w/ the telco!
"We don't care, dHave to care; We're the Phone Company."
- An old Lily Tomlin bit from SNL in the 70s.
carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
I would appear the telco says you are renting the lines, while most consumers feel they are renting the bandwidth. My roommates and I take a 640kbps down line and split it 3 ways... but the way it works out is that each of us almost always gets full speed because we haven't used it all at the same time since we downloaded a few gigs of pr0n when we first got it. This must work out the same way for a lot of Slashdotters.
There are four boxes used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order.
Time Warner's Road Runner actually encourages NAT's -- they'll even sell you special software to do it with Winblows :)
(I think they're just stingy with their cable modems)
"We don't care, we don't have to care; We're the Phone Company."
- An old Lily Tomlin bit from SNL in the 70s.
carl
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
"The scariest part is that they cut off service to a customer using their line to run a petition site to get them to change the policy. Disagree with the telcom, and we cut your service!"
I guess that trolls on Slashdot that disagree with the way the service is run are treated first-class, eh?
Ah, reminds me of the good old days of cable modem service in Palo Alto and Menlo Park...go obtain a cable modem somewhere, plug it in, claim an IP address you know to be in the Cable Co-Op number range, and voila! you're on. Heaven forbid someone already may have legitimately been issued your IP address. The Cable Co-Op response? "We control the distribution of cable modems, so this can't happen". Ever been to Fry's? I know of at least a dozen people who "borrowed" IPs on the Cable Co-Op network to get months of free service, often at the expense of legit users.
Even in the States we have companies with terms of service such as these. And it is easy to detect NAT running, because so many "odd" port numbers keep passing through. However, as long as the user keeps under the bandwidth cap (which is a legitimate business decision to have one) I don't see why the service would be concerned with why the packets are the way they are. Nor have I heard of someone being shut down for NAT'ting out 2-5 machines. I *have* heard of quake servers being shut down, but there is at least one real concern above bandwidth when a user creates a server - they create an obvious attack point for denial of service and other attacks.
Sig under construction since 1998.
Disagree with the telcom, and we cut your service!
What! That's outrageous! Why should the slashdot admins cut off my service just because I disagree with the telecom. I mean, I can understand the telecom cutting me of themselves, but this goes WAY too far!
:)
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Why shouldn't someone be able to split their internet connection with their housemates, pets, whoever? A permanent connection via dsl or cable is expensive enough. I don't see what the problem is for noncommerical usage. I know my cable provider does not allow the sharing of IP's, but seems to turn a blind eye anyways. I agree that you should be allowed to use and distribute the bandwidth you have purchased anyway you like (by distribute I non-commercial distribution).
They're bitching because of people doing NAT?! What would this mean if one were to run a firewall, with a single desktop host behind it?
And likewise, how can they tell? NAT can mangle the packets so they all originate from one host. Micro$oft's ICS does the same thing.
I'm not surprised that the telco silenced the petition site. The petitioners were goofy for hosting it on the aforementioned telco company's DSL network.
Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
and re-selling their high speed access. I mean one customer, may have a couple of boxes at home tied to a network, so the family can surf. but i'd bet a lot of folks in korea are so poor, they wire up buildings, blocks, etc, from one dsl line and are paying the personal use fees. I do think its unfair to not allow 2-3 personal pc's to share a link, and how would they determine if you were NAT'ing? but if you have like 3 or 4 neighbors or more leeching off the same line, come on. DSL doesn't make any money if you're flogging the bandwidth 24/7. Its hardly profitable at all as it is.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
Now, they aren't even able to tell the difference between a site and a newsgroup(sig.kornet.net.adsl)! ;-)
Even in the US, most DSL and cable providers say that you're not allowed to run 'servers' with their bandwidth. Under ANY circumstances, you should be allowed to do whatever you want with the bandwidth as long as it doesn't cause any added liability for the provider. What is really happening is that the DSL provider really doesn't expect to be providing the true bandwidth. Their business model and infrastructure would fall apart if they actually had to provide what they are selling you. In protest, all DSL users should mak out their lines with NON-'server' traffic. Make the providers hold up their end of the deal. We're buying bandwidth, and they had better damn well provide it, instead of hiding behind bogus 'no server' rules.
reads earlier story...
oh... :(
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
I may be wrong, but my understanding of the NAT (Masquerading) used by most devices is that they change the source address of the packets they send so that it looks like the data all comes from the device itself. Certainly the Masquerading kernel option in the Linux 2.2 series kernels works this way.
Surely then, the ISP would not be able to detect a NAT/Masquerading box? It would look to them as though you still have only one PC, but you're just downloading a lot of stuff simultaneously. So why are people bothered by any terms and conditions that these ISPs write into their agreements? You could easily turn around to them and say that you are just running one PC, and there's no way they could prove you wrong short of getting a search warrant!
So where's the problem? Unless I've missed something fundamental, this seems to be a non-issue.
The reason the telcos and cable companies can give people broadband cheaply is that they base the price on "average" use. If people start putting 8 systems on there (and..uh..who would do that?) the average goes out the window. Many companies, I know my RoadRunner service does, will give you another IP (you can get another dynamic) for like $10/month to help cover costs.
But, they also don't seem to mind NAT here. I think they should hand out NAT routers with every cable modem, or integrate it in, just for the sake of security. I know I tell everyone at the office to buy one RIGHT AWAY when they get cable or DSL.
To bad the Anti-KT folks were so clueless to run their Anit-KT site in on a server/link controlled by KT.
Maybe they'll be smart enough to host it offshore for round 2.
Many @homeish service providers here would cut you off if they found you MASQing a bunch of PC's by reason of sheer ignorance if nothing else. They will also add charges for each PC - and use the same stupid bandwidth illogic. Hell many standard service agreements here say they can cut you for running a server.. For my mouth shall speak truth and wickedness is an abomination to my lips.
Stealing IP's is one thing simply NATing is another, as long as I'm not taking any more resources than I'm paying for and am promised then it shouldnt be a problem. I should be able to run my company's LAN off of your stinking DSL. That one ip is mine and if I choose to NAT it out that's my business the ISP is doing the traffic shaping so there's now way for me to go over my bandwidth cap, what are they worried about?
Ok... Taco and Hemos and so on, I have a simple request. When you use an abreviation for something which can be taken more than two ways in common geek-speak please refer to the words which it stands for first...
IP stands for Intellectual Property and
IP stands for Internet Protocol.
I'm sure IP stands for a whole heckofa lot more too, but those are the common geek-speak uses. If you can think of a third, then you definitely need to consider what you are writing...
You say you want a revolution?
But if you're using something like the Sonicwall SOHO firewall that you can set to drop ICMP packets, they might be a little suspicious if they try and ping you, and get no response, whilst all the while the data keepeth flowing.
:)
That and if they track 170 hits to Yahoo! at once, someone at the NOC might be scratching his head saying, "There's something not quite right with this picture".
Akardam Out
Korea != United States.
Yeah, they're not a "communist regime" but they still don't have the US government and things just work differently. Applying your morals to a situation abroad may not be right in all circumstances.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
If it said so in their original agreement with the ISP, they aren't allowed to use NAT. If they wanted to use NAT, they shouldn't have signed up for the service, or tried to cross that clause off the contract. And running your petition off the same service you're bitching about? Come on, guys...
--
--hongpong.com
Is very simple.
IP space wasn't supposed to be a commodity, but it is now, due to ineffective planning (or whatever you want to call it).
An ISP should *only* ever enforce two rules.
1) How much bandwidth you can use.
2) Reserve the right to terminate your account if you cause them grief (spamming, etc..).
They shouldn't say 'don't run servers' 'only one computer' 'only for casual at-home use' etc.... they should simply make the bandwidth rules and prices reflect this.
I don't see anything scary here.
It makes complete sense that a telco would not allow their bandwidth to be used for someone to protest their company. Would you expect McDonalds to be okay with letting PETA protesters carry their signs behind the cashier counter? Of course not.
If someone wants to run a sight protesting the telco, for whatever reason, they should run it on a server that is not connected with the telco.
Duh.
and it was half a decade before SNL!
I explicitly told them that I was going to be placing a firewall and several PC's behind it, and I explicitly told them that if they didn't like that I'd take my business elsewhere. Of course, the had no problem, so all was good. It's a shame you don't find more ISP's like that these days. Of course, I am paying 100/mo for my DSL, but I'm happy to.
not maximum load, which you geeks seem to be pushing.
For instance, telephone lines. The telco's pick a number of lines to allow the maxium average load access, but if too many people call (ie. during a natural distaster or such), you may not get through, you get a message like all circuits are busy. Now I don't know what algorithm they use, but they probably scale to something like 98%.
Now, they could scale expected calls to 99.9 %, but do you want your telephone bill to triple just so once or twice a year you don't get the "all circuits are busy" message? Is that one call worth $1200 USD to you?
So, apply this to DSL, same thing. They figure a high maximum average load, becuase most normal users aren't going to be maxing their download speed. Some will download, some will read a webpage, some won't even use it. The users share the bandwidth, it's a common bandwidth, and if you try to hog it all, well, look up Tragedy of the Commons.
Now, if you want to get your gauranted bandwidth, 24-7, I'm sure a DSL provider will sell you a nice guaranteed business connection, with uptime and bandwidth gaurantees. Just be prepared to shell out several times what home DSL costs, if you don't want to pay that, stop bitching.
For the record, I just got home DSL, and almost immediately asked my DSL provider for 5 IP addies instead of 1. It's a nonimal charge, $4.99 USD a month. Sure, I could have have NAT, but I'd rather pay a little and be honest. I thought being honest and upfront and paying your own way was what Oepn Source was about, but I guess it's really abotu stealing all that you can.
The site's operators plan to open an "anti-KT" site to publicly inform of the injustice of KT's acts of banning IP sharing devices and the shutdown of its site.
The fight should be "Anti-Ban" against all those guys who think only of monopolising and fleecing customers.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
What is really the big issue ?
... private line operators such as KT, Dreamline, Dacom and Hanaro Telecom ban such line sharing...
--zap--
--zap--
If it sais so in the contract you sign with the ISP, then change ISP if you dont like the policy.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Not 3 computers. Or one. If I have 300,000 computers running SETI@HOME, and each of them need to access the internet only once every 3 months (they're slow, okay?), then what's the problem with using only one line. If I'm not supposed to use the bandwidth the telco's have sold me, why don't they just sell me less?
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
When I am personally using dsl or better bandwidth, I am certainly not taking full advantadge of the pipe. So If I use 10% of the pipe or 20% of the pipe, or whatever, the service provider can charge me one third of what he charges a business customer, and still make a profit. Even If I use 30 or 40%, unlikely unless I streaming video 24/7, and doing other things, The average usage for most people probably is around 5 or 10% (all numbers are speculative) and so based on this the service can be priced accordingly.
Now if I suddenly have dozens or hundreds of computers using this line, the bandwidth can max out. If I am the provider, I am possibly charged by the number of bits that go overthe wire. This is where it gets alarming, since I had made my profit calculations based an average usage of 10% and charged appropriately. No suddenly I have bunches of people who want to use the personal private lines for their business without paying the businnes rates. Instead of 10% the usage soars to 50% or higher. This is not a good thing.
The options are either to just charge everyone business rate (no private rates) or to crack down on abusers. The personal rates are offered with this balance between business use and personal use understood, at least internally.
Now some people do not understand this. I suppose when it was only one or two ubergeeks doing this, they could let it slide. But when you start promoting this for everyone, then it messes up the business model.
I supposed you could have some sort of metered service, but I do not know how easy it would be to set that up. Even so metering is an added cost, and might not be practical for someone cutting costs a little thin in the above scenario. (price competition and all)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Disagree with the telcom, and we cut your service! Anyone else see anything scary about that?
It seems to me that things need to flow both ways. Why should a company be forced to provide a service to someone who obviously isn't happy with it? Is that not forcing someone (some company I guess) to do something against their will? I see something far more scary about that. I'm also wondering who should do something about it, consumers? Despite all of the talk people really don't vote with their wallets. On the whole we'll buy the product that gives us the best balance between price and features (or price and whatever it is we want) In the case of DSL we probably only have one choice in the first place so buying from a competitior is not really an option. Government is the only other entity that can force the company to change and they seem to be forcing enough people to do enough things against their will as it is.
A cry goes up when we talk about restrictive software licenses and the thinking it usually along the lines of 'you own it, you should be able to do with it what you want'. I think because a company is essentially faceless we think it is ok that even though they own something, they shouldn't be allowed to choose how or by whom it is used. The bottom line is that they own the servers that run the ISP, they lease the lines, they probably own the modem in the guy's house, but we don't want them to be able to shut off his service. Something about that just doesn't jive.
See my post downbelow.
If you really want gauranteed bandwidth, get a business DSL line. Yeah, it will cost a lot more than a home DSL line that's only promises average bandwidth, but at least then you have a point worth bitching about.
If I had a DSL I would connect as many computers as I'd like (no reselling though) and no telecom company should complain about that, because I am not playing out of the rules; they give me a line with an allocated bandwidth, as long as I stay within the bandwidth I am playing correctly. If they want to charge me a flat-rate instead of charging for bytes, it is their problem.
Can you imagine an insurance company rejecting some long-time customers because they get more sick than average recently?
This is the same, flat-rate for everybody (makes a nice ad) and then if you use too much bandwidth compared to the rest, your line is cut.
Why do you assume that people in Korea are "so poor"? That was true 40 years ago after the Korean war, but not so today. My wife and I here in Canada are using NAT to share a connection, yet I don't consider us to be "so poor". It's just a practical way to use bandwidth. That's how ISPs split up their bandwidth from the telcos to their dial-up customers. That's how the phone companies give us phone lines (splitting up a resource, I mean). People shouldn't be penalized for using the same techniques at home as their providers use to get the service to them.
Is there possibly a face saving issue involved ?
Losing face in most Asian countries is about as bad as it gets, and maybe the TK folks feared face loss when too many petitioners stated the opinion that they run an overpriced, monopolistic, bureaucratic, crap shop!
Surely one of the Asian /. posters is better able to qualify such an assumption.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
If most people would just look back to the 70' and 80's that Ma Bell and most local cable companys used to want to charge you for extra extentions in your house. Our local cable company in the 80's used to have a guy that would come by and check your line for spliters and if he found one he would unhook it and take it with him. It all ended one day when I called the police and got him charged with theft of property. While the telco can't be charged with theft for turning down a line unless there is a law on their side you might still win in court.
The Business Rate is $70 more a month, has the same bandwidth and same amount of IPs. For 1 year and going, they (obviously) haven't seen more than 1 IP address though it's got over 50 users in the building. Of course, the cable company scans the hell out of the gateway, tripping off portsentry all over the place, but no problems. The company is still paying residential rates (US$50.00/month).
Y'know, instead of just selling Business Rate and Residential Rate why don't they just sell by bandwidth?
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Can you imagine an insurance company rejecting some long-time customers because they get more sick than average recently?
No, but I can imagine insurance companies looking at average group expense and calculating out a value that makes them allways win. Thats why many small businesses have really expensive insurance. Only takes a couple of chronically sick people to tip the scales that premiums *have* to go up to keep the agreement profitable.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
Why on Earth should it be other users who have to pay for what certain abusers are doing with their broadband connections? If I'm paying the same as them, then there's no way in hell it's fair for me to be basically subsidising their net access.
In this case, running a Quake server is the same as sending out spam. They both waste valuable bandwidth which others are paying for, and neither should be tolerated.
Johnny, hearing all the sirens: It's the phone company. They know what I did here today.
Venus: What are you talking about?
Johnny: They're coming to get me, man!
Venus: That's paranoia, man!
Johnny: Wake up, sucker, this is the phone company we're talking about! They see everything, they know everything, they got their own covert police force! I'm probably wired for
sound right now! I gotta get out of here!
Venus: Johnny!
Johnny: Don't use my name!!
This occured in Korea, but in the US the part of any business that deals with the public (e.g., everything up to the McDonalds counter) is a "public accomodation" and they can impose very few restrictions on the public in that space. It's not as "free" as a public park, but it's not as restrictive as office or industrial spaces.
The space behind a counter is not a public accomodation and McDonald's could have anyone there arrested for trespassing, no matter what they're wearing, but they can't say anything about a peaceful group wearing PETA shirts in the order line. They can ask protesters waving signs to move on, but only because they're disrupting others and only to the extent that they ask other protesters to do the same.
Finally, telcos in the US are "common carriers" and <b>required</b> to carry all content, in exchange for immunity to conspiracy charges for the same. If a DSL drops a customer's service because he criticized their policy, then that same DSL may find itself named codefendant to a murder conspiracy charge because they permitted other customers to discuss a planned murder.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Luckily, out CATV company has it now so that no cablemodem with a MAC address not on their "valid list" gets to send or receive anything.
i work for roadrunner and we are currently looking into devices to detect the use the NAT. They will allow it but they will also be charging more for the use of NAT.
The same thing happened with telphone usage. When people started using modems, they used a lot more time with the same, flat-rate local service. The phone companies adapted. In some cases, by raising prices slightly. And still, we have unlimited local phone usage for a flat rate here in the US. Why can't the cable & DSL providers adapt also?
First, slashdot is not a payed service, ya gets what ya pays for. Nor is it a public utility. Second, slashdot itself doesn't do the smacking down of the trolls, that is done by the community at large (moderators). Third, anyone can browse at -1 to see all the crap. Fourth, do you honestly believe that the trolls really deserve to be heard?
Wroot
You think you have it bad in Korea? In France we have the dubious honour of having to rely on the national telco monopoly (France Telecom) for the basic DSL line. Then we have a choice of ISP. Two charges, one to FT the other to the ISP.
What's wrong with that?
Well some ISP's (including France Telecom's subsidiary) have managed to solve the problem of nasty thieving customers putting NAT boxes behind their DSL connections and use a PPTP tunnel for your access. So, even though you can connect a NAT box between your home LAN and your DSL modem (and use your NAT box for PPPoE authentication - as this is standard in France), you can *ONLY* use one PC at a time with the PPTP tunnel! Most NAT boxes (like Linksys) allow only one PPTP tunnel to be passed through.
At least there are some decent service providers here that can offer you a service w/o PPTP and allow NAT, but they cost about $15-$20 more per month.
If Korea Telecom were smart (or devious!) they would force all the domestic users to connect via PPTP.
trolling the first world...
If I was the ISP who discovered that a building was sharing one of my connections, I would look at ways to get them to buy a second connection, and then a third etc. until they have as many connections as we would expect. Many of the people in the building may be paying for a service they would never purchase individually and in the long run we could make more money/sell more connections.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
This is from the FAQ from my cable provider:
Q. If I have two computers do I need two cable modems?
A. No. By design, you will use only one cable modem in your house. You should consult with a computer dealer on how to configure a small network using a proxy-type router in your house. We will configure only one modem per residence or business.
They pretty much encourage you (by telling you how) to set up a home network! Pretty good policy.
Hey, you should speak to Easynet UK - they're at least trying to rise above the bullsh!t restrictions that BT have imposed, and they can guarantee 20:1 contention...
But I agree, the situation in the UK is way more poxy than France.
trolling the first world...
Ok.. I did run an ISP and can see where the company is coming from.. if 5 people in a building share one connection as oppose to getting 5 seperate ones then it cuts down on revenue. However as a consumer with more then one computer, i need my dsl router to hook up my machines at the same time with out installing extra software (on in some cases software that doesn't work, like on unix)
It would make more sense for the ISP to cap the transfer rates (up and down) and also limit the the amount per month (like 30gig) they can do this for co-loc. hosts machines why can't they do it for dsl/cable lines? Then charge a rate per month for the data over and above?. People pay for the basic service, they should have a right to do what they want with it.
On a side note, i had a friend who's cable was shutdown cause he was running an insecure port number on his computer. Turned out it was 25, by all means we can't let the user run a sendmail server!!! sometimes ISP's are clueless.
I've read some goofy terms of service for ISP that forbade you from using masquerading. Of course, when you look elsewhere on their web site they sell packages that include the ability to do masquerading. So, basically, they'd be miffed if you bypassed their package (and fee) by doing it yourself.
I don't think it's illegal. You really need to read their ToS and find out what they don't want you doing. If they catch you doing something that they specifically didn't want you doing, they can clobber you.
Ain't nice but I don't think it's illegal. Specially outside the U.S. where some countries have some pretty restrictive telecomm regulations and your ISP may just be the government. For example, I'd hate to be a modem user in Europe; the rates are horribly high.
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Normal (voice) phone line: I consider this a product; you can get a second outlet for no additional montly cost, this makes sense because you can't get any additional benefit out of it, since you can't have 2 people making 2 different calls on the same line. The second outlet is only a convienience.
When you get a second line and have to pay and additional monthly fee, that's fair since you do get extra benefits from that additional service (can now make 2 simultaneous calls, and you get an additional phone#). Any additonal service on each line will cost more per line, again fair since it's two different products
Cable TV: I consider this a service just like sharing IP on cable - Why pay and additional montly fee when by spending a little money once ($15 for a slipper / a bit more for IP sharing sw) you can already get additional use out of it (watching 2 programs on 2 different TVs / multiple computers on same IP).
It's not fair to have to pay a additional montly fee for basically no added benefit - I don't get any extra channels by paying more, and I my bandwidth is still not maxed out.
Basically, if I can take a service and 'extend' it on my own, I don't see why I should have to pay more without them giving me more (which they don't)
AC comments get piped to
I recently enjoyed ringing around the Irish Dial-Up service providers to cost an ISDN dial-up account. I got the price from each provider and then told them that the connection would be used by a network and asked if that was ok. There were basically four providers two of whom said "oh you need a network account and thats about 8 times the price" while one said "oh we have a network account. You don't want it? Ok the normal dial-up is sound then" and the fourth said "why would it make any difference?" and I told them about their competitors policies. Final prices £90/£120 or £750/£850. So on a 64kb line these guys were looking for an extra £600+ per annum to let you use your dial-up account on a network (sorry you got a few more email addresses etc). Not too surprisingly the ISP who couldn't even understand the concept won the bidding :-)
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
No you're not. Only if you connect via BT. I'm using Easynet's ethernet offering, with a nice range of 16 IP addresses, with 4 PCs hooked up to it. Mind you it is more expensive :)
the article does say that Korea has one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world. Maybe their lines are really clogged up to the extent that the company has to find ways to reduce the bandwidth some people are taking up. I've read somewhere that 20% or less users take up more than 80% bandwitdh; this shouldn't surprise anybody here. If i were the company i would conclude that the 'fastest' way to reduce this is to reduce the number of IP sharing clients, just because they are percieved to be using up more bandwidth, which probably isn't that far from the truth. What's riled the posters, imo, is the censorship issue, but the protesters are asking for it if they were going to use that same DSL line to put up their protest site.
I'm so tired of hearing this. ALL BANDWIDTH IS SHARED AT SOME POINT. People with DSL like to say that cable bandwidth is shared. Sure, DSL people have a copper cable from their house to the CO, but once it hits the CO it is SHARED. I have a friend in Texas on GTE. They oversold the CO's SHARED BANDWIDTH so much his ping to his ISP gateway was 500ms.
After months and months my roadrunner ping is 8ms and I still get 300K/sec. I think they are doing a damn good job.
Are you gonna change your Terms of Service AGAIN? Isn't policy controlled by the local cable company? Where are you?
101010b 2Ah 52o
OK - I'm all for creative use of the resources that you can acquire, but WHAT DOES THE USER SERVICE CONTRACT SAY? For a lot of cable service provider contracts that I'm aware of, there are restrictions - no servers, or no pr0n/warez/games servers; no reselling bandwidth; no commercial services; limit to a single residential PC; etc. If the contract says "one PC only" (not one address only) then why shouldn't the service provider have the ability to terminate service that's clearly in use by multiple PCs? Don't tell me they can't tell, 'cause they can - or can have a good guess - and it's not the point. There's no Internet Access legislation that I know of guaranteeing the right to NAT traffic, so why get up in arms? Service contracts and SLA's are not just about bandwidth, even if that's the only thing most broadband users check for....
Free markets rely on the ability of parties to a contract to enforce that contract. If you don't like a particular contract, don't sign up! If you don't like a certain product (contract restrictions included) then buy another. If there isn't any other available, well, that's an unfortunate possibility - or a likihood when a particular clause makes it tough to make money on a product or service. And yes, you have the right to bitch about it in public if no one offers the product or service you want without restrictions you can't live with. But get off your high horse about "how can they DO this?!?!" and work to puclicize and promote productive goals. It's the difference between constructive criticism and whining or rabble-rousing.
On the other hand, many people are connected using wireless networks, based on technologies like eg. Breezenet. This gives theoretical maximum of 1.5 Mbps, and average bandwidth cca 128 kbps. Using wireless connection is the only way to avoid paing to our Telecom. Well, the monopoly was recently removed formaly, but it is still de-facto monopoly.
What is interested about these wireless connections is, that they are not payed per-bandwidth (although you can optionaly pay this way) or per-connection-time, but per-traffic: we pay about 4 Kc (cca 10 cents) for each MB transfered. Customers pay only for the direction with higher traffic, never mind which direction it is, and there is of course some traffic pre-paid (typicaly 1 GB per month). Although the prices are currently little bit too high, I think this is way to go: to let you do whatever you want with your bandwidth, but to pay for it. Because this reflects the way what is really most expensive about running Internet connectivity, and it is not the speed of data tranfer, but rather total amount od data tranfered - especially on high bandwidth networks, where huge downloads can slow down entire networks...
Well, I have even another idea, and it is different pricing for different connection speeds: so you would browse web over relatively expensive high speed connection, and download huge files overnight using some cheap "virtual leased line", with traffic shapped to something simillar to normal modem...
"As the ground for imposing additional charges on users of IP sharing devices, KT cited possible overloading of its telecom networks. "
Ok... so.... If I have a cap of a certain speed up and down.. As a single person I could saturate that line with no overloading and everyone would be happy... yet if I saturate that _SAME_ cap split up into streams behind NAT or MASQ'ing it causes overload??? Last I checked NAT and MASQ don't add that much packet overhead. What am I missing here?
- Napster
- Netmeeting
- ICQ
- etc.
Through a home firewall? I realize you can pass on some ports to a specific machine, but it doesn't work for Netmeeting. It's one of the reasons why I don't use a separate firewall, I just protect Windows with Zonealarm. I also use Windows 98 connection sharing, so my Linux PC, which doesn't need to be a server, has no problems.----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
There are two different things being discussed here - commercial use and complete personal use.
I don't think there is a reasonable arguement for using a "domestic" connection in and for a business.
On the other hand, I can (and do) saturate my domestic bandwidth contantly - whether downloading the latest from LinuxISO.org, game demos, kernel updates - and all within the T&C's of the service.
Further, I can do this all from one PC - so what does it matter if I set up NAT and browse from my wireless-LAN-enabled laptop in my living room (except for making me a sad git). I'm not using any "extra" resources of my ISP by doing so...I'm just making full use of the service I have paid for.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
With Bellsouth DSL service, it's stated _very_ clearly that you are in no way whatsoever to NAT or otherwise share the connection over a private network. As a matter of fact, just mentioning the work 'Network' to a technical support rep is a good way to have the conversation ended quickly.
:^)
Go the extra step and mention that you're running a NAT setup, and you can very quickly find your service suspended.
When I was first setting up my service, I made the mistake of telling the service rep that I had a network car in my system. When I told her it was for access to a network printer (HP 4000TN), it didn't appear to matter. With the network card in my system she was not allowed to help me diagnose my ADSL configuration issue.
I realize that it's different under other companies (Telocity, Mindspring, etc), but going through Bellsouth can give you an up-close-and-personal view of what the article's talking about.
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
The term "IP Sharing" in this article is known as NAT or IP Masquerading to the rest of the world. There are a number of companies selling "IP Sharing" boxes that just do NAT.
.05% to 1% of the available bandwidth during any 24 hour period, and their profit calculations count on this. When approached by a non-mainstream use, they don't really understand how it might impact their severely under-engineered systems, so they get very obnoxious and end the discussion. However, if you are willing to spend the money, you can get a professional grade connection with very liberal ToS, but only over leased lines.
It sounds like users in Korea are wiring entire blocks of flats for network access, sharing the cost of a single ADSL connection. That wouldn't be so bad, but then they put a web server on their connection criticising their operator for banning the practice in the ToS. Big mistake, there are tons of other places to put up your web site, like geocities. If you are going to bash a telecom, do it from another part of the internet, not on the wires they control.
This is just another battle between one business who supplies a scarce service to consumers, and other businesses who supply boxes to relieve the scarcity.
I've been trying to find a supplier of consumer grade internet access (DSL, cable or even dial) who will allow "group" access for small wireless installations. These would be similar to groups in major cities all over the world who want to create an alternative wireless internet, with a number of gateways to the wired internet. This has been difficult for consumer level access, but is possible with high cost professional style leased lines and individual ports on router.
The economics of consumer grade connections means that a restricted (in ToS) connection to a single computer can barely use more than
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Why is everyone surprised by the fact that broadband companies only advertise the advantages of their service (flat rate, max bandwidth, etc.) and don't enumerate the limitations and restrictions (no servers, NAT, etc.)?
While ads (at least in the United States) must adhere to a certain level of honesty, they are no substitute for a contract or terms of service agreement. In addition, many ads contain written or verbal disclaimers which refer you to more detailed information. If you feel that a particular company is "pulling a fast one" with their ad, then it is more reasonable to challenge the advertisement than to expect them to alter their terms of service. America Online is one highly visible example of a case where public outcry [outrage?] forced a change in advertising practices - adding an "availability may be limited during peak hours" disclaimer.
Finally, exercise some healthy skepticism where advertising is concerned. "If it looks too good to be true, it probably is." When was the last time you went to a major fast food chain and actually received food that looks like the product depicted in the ads?
How does one detect the existance of NAT?
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
you got two hits...
Check out the shockwave flash file at:
http://bob.dy.kz/AYB.swf.
The line is from an old Genesis game translated into english by someone that probably didn't speak english...
i am a lefty for sure, though not a Marxist-Leninist by any stretch (more like a secular humanist-socialistic democrat with anarchistic tendencies) and i often find the overall tone of /. posters to be a bit more reactionary and politically naive than i care for... i am NAT'ing my DSL connection, btw, i have three computers in my home that share that puppy. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. ()
DSL can be a weird beast. Most people think they have to go through their telco to get ISP services in reality the only thing the telco dose is provide the physical lines and routing to your ISP.
If you choose an alternate ISP rather than your telco e.g. such as myself your telco has no control on what you do with your bandwidth or how you choose share your connection. It is your ISP and your TOS that says what you can and can't do.
Cable on the other hand you only have one choice for an ISP, which is the cable company. Most cable company's lock down their network and port scan their customers looking for running services. Get caught running a service say good bye to your connection. Also in MHO @home could not keep their network up even if it was in bed with Lisa Boyle naked.
Sig
You know?... DSL is one of many of those technologies that has such incredible potential, but ends up being nearly ruined by legislation or corporate stupidity.
ISDN never really took off mostly due to the INSANE pay-per-bit fee structure... even though it is and was far superior to standard modems.
In DSL's case, It's the STUPIDITY of the local phone companies.. for one thing, the PPPOE (PPP over Ethernet) that many insist on using is unnecessarry, but because phone companies only seem to understand virtual circuits.
I live under 2000' from my local Central Office, and so when Verizon told me my local loop was good for their top level 7.1Mbps down and 640Kbps Up, I signed right up. Due to various issues with their "supported operating systems" and their insistance of using PPPOE that was several versions behind the current level, I ws never able to get it to work and had them cancel the whole thing.
Such potential... such dissapointment.
+++++++++++++++++++++
The Digital Sorceress
trolls are a DoS
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have a business connection through my ISP. I get close to 2Mbs down and 600kbs upload. It has two fixed IPs and services up to 5 machines in my house. (Two dual boot Win/Lin the other three run Linux only.)
The only thing my ISP forbids is subdomain hosting. They have always said that using more than one machine through the connection is fine (even on the basic package) but they cannot offer support.
Supposedly they only support Win and Mac but when I was being upgraded I got cut off prematurely. I called tech support and when the nice lady found out I ran Linux, the whole conversation changed.
"Can you ping the gateway" She said.
Me "no."
Her "I'll get someone on that right away."
Other than this incident I have only been down a total of about six hours in two and a half years of service.
setup your machine, firewall it, start logging all your trafic for a month or so. Then deny all traffic to/from any thing that scanned your system at the telco. this has kept me from getting the same cease and desist letters other ppl have.
-Skrim
Charge by the byte, multiplied by the speed. This is gets away from the "unlimited access" idea that we've all grown accustomed to, but it is the only fair solution that comes to mind. Run all the servers you want, but pay for the privilege. You're the ones driving up the price of DSL as it is.
If a telephone company or DSL ISP disconnects service to a customer petitioning against the ISP's practices, does the ISP gain *anything* from this at all?
Disconnecting a paying user from the service is going to lower their number of subscribers. Bad for the ISP. Bad for the consumer.
If consumers petitioning efforts against the ISP/teleco are causing the ISP/teleco to lose money, then the ISP/teleco needs to fix that. They fix it by fixing their policy. This is one of the many ways that companies improve their business.
Companies have a responsibility to keep their customers happy. Why should I buy DSL service from a company that sucks?
As far as NAT is concerned, if bandwidth is an issue, then they should limit bandwidth. But I honestly don't beleive that bandwidth is the issue. The issue here is that they're control freaks. They've demonstrated that.
In Israel there is exactly the same picture: DSL telco monopoly, multiple DSL ISPs and PPPoE.
...
...
Not many people here know that there is a solution to the problem, I figured it out myself and it is very simple:
Take a hub, connect to it 1)the modem, 2) one special box (let's call it your gateway) you allocate for (NAT/SOCKS v5) and DNS forwarder and 3) connect to the hub also all the computers on your LAN (or other hubs).
Now dial out (PPPoE) from the gateway into the modem's IP. Now you have new IP interface on the gateway with real IP.
Run NAT (or SOCKS v5) on the gateway using for translation the interface established by PPPoE link. Run on it also DNS forwarder.
If you decide to use NAT, on all your LAN machines configure default gateway and DNS server as a local (LAN) IP of your gateway box.
It should work, at least it works for me. Of course, NAT has its problems and not all apps can work with it, and the port mappings are a pain to configure
And if you choose SOCKS v5, well, you'll figure it out
Some words about the current situation here:
As for now, the telco and ISPs do not support multiple real IPs through one modem: the problem is in the modem itself and complementary equipment in the central offices. But I have talked to them about the problem and they turned to be surprisingly supportive, said that they understand the need for multiple real IPs through one modem and promised to do something about it within several months (including replacing the modems with another model).
A web site I work for that does streaming music sends a lot of music traffic to Korea. There do seem to be clusters of clueful in that country.
My ISP (Optimum Online) ever wonders why everyone has an IP of 192.168.1.1 .
ISP Mgr: Hey what number did you give the Jones'?
ISP Admin: We don't assign IPs, it's done with DHCP?
ISP Mgr: How come all of our customers have the same number?
ISP Admin: AHHHH I have to get to the DHCP machine!
---
This
Quite surprising that their newspaper carries Ann Landers, but it certainly does. There's a link to it on the article's page.
I did'nt know this was wrong. I'll disconnect all of my computers from my DSL line that I use for casual surfing and file sharing right away. This will make my internet experience boring, so to spice it up I'll start using that bandwith to the max and download scads of porn and warez to my only remaining computer. *whew* that was a close one.
The Internet is generally stupid
I thought at least one of the largest Telcos has a usage clause that states you cannot create a site using their ISP service to defame the owning Telco company and that this is grounds for dropping the account. Seek and ye shall find...
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
You can't share your TV cable on more than one TV and I haven't heard anyone complain about it. Yes telcom's are bastards, but hey we're the one offering them our Free OS, Free Software, etc. We're helping them save money by using free software and we help them gain money by using their products. Those guys must be laughing their ass off, Digital Slavery?
*sigh*
He purchased rights to use that IP address from the company that owns it. The IP address is property and has nothing to do with the "Open Source ethos".
It's like saying that if I hotwire your car and steal it, I have more right to it than you do because I was there first.
http://public.pacbell.net/dialup/dsl-tandc.html Here's the one for PBI...
That's why I signed up with Telocity. They encourage Linux Servers, firewalls, and NAT. Oh, and no contract.
Of course, it isn't hooked up yet, so I can't tell you about quality. Considering GTE is doing the outside wires, and Northpoint Communications is doing the inside wiring, I assume that it will be a matter of how good GTE quality is -- I doubt the line quality will reflect anything about Telocity itself.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Unless you have more than two arms, you can only do so many things on the internet at once, even if you own 1000 computers.
;-)
I suggest a per-person/per-household cost. ie: 1 person in the household, $20/month. 2 people, $30/month, etc...
This way you can have as many computers as you really want attached, but still pay the same fee (since you should still be using the same bandwidth per person).
That sort of billing would be more in-line with modern cable TV access. A long time ago you had to pay by the television set for cable access. So people bought splitters. Cable co's figured this out and metered lines for resistance (if they really cared enough). So people bought amplifiers. So the smart Cable co's gave up, and simply set the rate per building or household. If you want more than one TV attached to the cable, that becomes your problem.
This is also inline with telephone charges. In some countries you had to rent each phone. Now that phones are readily availible most phone companies have dropped that rule, while raising their per line prices (somewhat) to compensate.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The ISP is counting on the fact that you won't use all your bandwidth, and although you might think that it is unfair to stop people from doing so, it isn't unfair, it makes sense. Here's why:
Think of the bandwidth of a typical DSL. Think if every single one of that ISP's customers was using 100% of that bandwidth at all times. How much bandwidth would that ISP need to have to their upstream provider to cover that? An OC-12? Several OC-12s? That gets expensive. I don't know exactly how it works over in Korea, but in the US, ISPs have to pay $30 out of your $49 a month to the phone company.. that means they're only making $20 on you! That is not nearly enough to cover the kind of connections they would need to have if everyone utilized 100% of their DSL!
The other alternative, other than banning the sharing of the line (btw, as someone pointed out earlier, the problem they have is not with people sharing a few PCs for their family, but rather, neighbors sharing connections. And I could definately see that chewing up bandwidth) is to make it more expensive so the ISP can cover their costs. But, since most people will not use all that bandwidth, it would be unfair to charge them for it! So the "personal use" rate is actually a discount! And what is unfair here is not the ISP limiting your bandwidth, but rather the folks who pay the discounted rate yet chew up bandwidth and slow down the connections of the ISP's other customers. Most ISPs don't mind if you have a reason to use more bandwidth, but they will (rightly) charge more for you to do so.
Josh Hinman
PS: I work for an ISP which recently got out of the DSL business because it just wasn't profitable, for the reasons mentioned above.
It's not clear in the article, but the implication is there, that DSL connections are being shared between groups of users by connecting the neighbors to a dsl connection.
This is a distinction in the use of technology. It's one thing to have a DSL connection shared between several machine in my place, it's another to provide my neighbors access using my connection. Then I'm competing with the DSL provider. Their market is being shrunk be the actions of their customers. They can't sell their service to my neighbors. Why put up with that?
If I share connections with multiple machines in my own place, it's not likely I'll get seperate connections for each machine or that the provider could actually provide them. So there isn't a market for that.
The ToS for my DSL connection pretty much states that, that I won't run a competing business with them. That's fine. I can run servers, connect as many machines as I want and use all my bandwith 24/7. They can deal with that, their pricing models and plans are set to deal with it. I just can't steal customers from them using their service.
Not to say that phone companies here aren't run by a bunch of turds also... but things like this make me say, "Proud to be an American!" :)
Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
Where have you been? Don't you remember the asian economic crisis? ROK got hit just as hard as anybody else and a lot of people are still hurting economically. The asian system of 'guided capitalism' has been exposed as a fraud and a phony and Korea, along with the rest of Asia that followed it is painfully clearing itself from the wreckage. I would expect that bargain hunting behaviors are up all over Asia, simply because that's what happens when anybody's economy takes a huge whack like that.
You sir, are a race baiter.
DB
While I'll admit that the objectivity of the editors at slashdot is often disappointing, you're confusing two issues here.
There is nothing in the article (nor even the slashdot summary) to suggest that this site was shut down because the owners of that address were engaged in IP sharing on that address. Rather, the site was apparently shut down because the owners were running a website that had a petition opposing this policy. (Ok, so the official reason from the telco is that the contents of the site were slanderous to said telco and its employees, and that the site in question had "deviated from its original purpose")
It's rather similar to the difference between the police raiding a marijuana grower and shutting down a website advocating legalizing marijuana.
Ever heard of honesty? If you make a promise, you had better deliver. If I'm promised 128k upload, I expect it. Judgement has to be exercised in the advert and that's not my job. The economy depends on trust. People who violate trust deserve the burn they eventually get.
The cable modem people oversubscribed my neighborhood and have a sucky ToS. Do I blame my neighbors who might be serving Quake? No, I don't. I blame the cable company for oversubscribing or not enforcing their ToS. I'm dumping them for DSL.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
According to New Scientist magazine's "Feedback" column 17 Feb 2001 (see http://www.newscientist.com/feedback/, ntl has the following cable modem "user policy" provision for "abuse of the service":
Ridicule is an appropriate antidote to bureaucratic fever.
BTW, readers in Korea who can't put up their own web sites from their apartments, please read from Eldritch Press the English translation of the classic Korean novel, annotated and illustrated, The Cloud Dream of the Nine, at http://www.eldritchpress.org/kim/cloud9.html.
Eldritch Press runs from my home via ATT Mediaone RoadRunner cable modem service in New Hampshire, USA. Thanks, ATT!
The situation in Korea is that there are thousands of "PC-pang"'s which are basically pay-by-the-hour PC facilities. I would imagine that this would be a perfect situation for a NAT, although I would expect the ISP's to take that into account in a commercial DSL subscription.
Companies that wire up buildings there work on a revenue-share basis with ISP's, so there's no incentive to let tenants share a line or work around the provider.
Possibly the PC-pangs are getting dirt cheap residential service and NATing it to 10-20 active PC's. I can see some reason for complaint with that, but that's more of a commercial vs. residential service fraud issue.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
On the RR help site they list help on how to install ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) and warn that speed and/or performance may degrade. They also state that they do not provide support for ICS or home networks. So... it would appear that it is allowed, but not supported.
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
Originally we were loath to try, since our backbone is priced based on usage. We assumed that if we connected a customer up at 768Kbps our usage might go up that much.
Boy were we wrong! We couldn't even see a difference on our backbone connection in spite of the additional load. After a few days running MRTG on that interface we found out why. The total usage was less than a modem would have been running full speed.
This DSL connection was to a graphic design business with 8 artists connected 24/7!
What we have discovered to be the rule is that most customers don't want bandwidth (yet, anyway!!!) they want SPEED! They don't run servers, they just want fast web page downloads.
I don't know how mulitmedia on the internet is going to change things, but so far we've found the bandwidth doesn't really go up that much. The usage is extremely bursty in nature with orders of magnitude more 0% usage than 100%.
That's why DSL is being distributed at such low costs, because most users don't cause the bandwidth to go up. The phone companies are planning on tax write-offs for the DSL equipment anyway so they aren't worried about it's cost. They just want to keep their service and bandwidth costs under control.
When customers start running servers, the low-bandwidth-usage rule goes out the window and that's why they don't allow them.
If you've got $40/month DSL, you aren't paying for the amount of bandwidth you think you have. If all the DSL users suddenly started downloading service packs, they'd find out that their provider has dramatically oversubscribed their available bandwidth. But in reality that never happens. Same deal with cable modems.
If you need real bandwidth (big company, service provider, etc.) you're going to have to pay for it unless you can "get one over" on your upstream!
Good Luck!
Well, you couldn't really be there first, because it was my car. Therefore, I had to buy/borrow/steal it from somewhere first.
This is why I am verifying MAC addresses along with IP address on my access lists. I take a little more effort, but this will keep peeps from stealing service at my wireless ISP . Seriously, you should be ashamed of yourself..... My ISP depends on each and every customer to stay in business, If a leech on the system starting knocking off IP addresses, I would start tracking down the signal, then use a 400w microwave source pointed at your NIC's antenna!
What does the article mean by IP sharing device? I undertand the DSL customer could install a router between his/her subnet and the DSL box, or maybe a device doing NAT, but IP sharing?
NAT, at least with common Cable/DSL routers, can be easily detected by your ISP.
For the latest DOCSIS modems, the snmp software in them reports the MAC address of the host connected to it.
If this MAC address starts with e.g. 002078, it is definitely a router connected to the modem.
On less conventional systems (such as a cheapo PC with 2+ nics) it is more difficult.
You are not paying for bandwidth. You are paying for speed. Before DSL/Cable there was dialup. People on dialup wanted to get their websites faster. They didn't want to get more websites. They just didn't want to wait so long to get each one. Broadband solves this problem. It gives people the same websites they received before, but faster. This leads to more bandwidth being used, but not a great deal more. On average people use, and are expected to use, something like the bandwidth they used when they were limited to modem speeds. Most modem users don't use up all of their available bandwidth either. If you have a 1.5 Mb Cable/DSL connection, you are likely paying 1/20th the cost or less of that bandwidth. Thus you are not paying for the bandwidth you COULD use. You are paying for the bandwidth you used before, only now, you can get it faster. If you use up all the available bandwidth, you are stealing. Your cable/DSL company isn't trying to screw you. They're trying to provide a service at a very low price point, and hoping everyone involved will be sensible, and not abuse their service by interpreting increased speed as increased bandwidth. If people on average use too much bandwidth, prices WILL go up. Remember that when you tell people to use up all the bandwidth they can, for no purpose. If you want to run a server, nobody is stopping you. Just pay for what you use: get a real T1 to the Internet, instead of using a fast dialup line. --Bill
that you're using an IP sharing device?
Sorry it is probably troll but 802.11 systems recently took a bit of a bashing over poor security implementations.
In reality MAC management isn't so easy. They can change legitimately and keeping the lists up to date is hard work.
See my journal, I write things there
This is what bothers me most about the ToS.. I think its difficult to define a 'single PC' at all any more.
I run 5 machines at home, all of which are used, by me, to do various things. This situation arose simply because i haven't thrown any computers away since i started buying them a few years ago.
Now, i consider all these machines to be my 'personal computer' - I'll usually have an X desktop on my LinuxPPC iMac running X apps and terminals off 2 of the others, some 3D game or a DVD movie playing off the drive in another of the boxes and a 3D animation project i'm working on running on another of the CPU/monitor combos.
I have X terminals and MIDI synths hooked up to the same pool of computing resources too.
All these machines are composed of a variety of networks, including serial lines, IDE interfaces, SCSI interfaces, ethernet, PCI busses, MIDI interfaces, analog audio lines and digital audio connections too. There are CPUs on my ehternet card - surely its a breach to attach anything else to that card over a PCI bus, if you follow the terms of this agreement.
Sure, you could say 'but an ethernet card isn't a personal computer', but how do you come to this conclusion - surely it is possible to use the logic on an ethernet card to do useful computation?
The telco has no right to tell me how to organise my computing resources into a functional machine, and the idea that my 'Personal Computer' is a discrete component is ridiculous.
I can understand a condition like 'you may not resell this service', but i reject the notion that a 'Personal Computer' can be categorized as a single Macintosh or x86 machine, since that is apparently what these (and every other cable provider with a similar service agreement) people are claiming.
I'd really like to see it stand up in court - especially when every major computing institution is quite happy to define a cluster or massively parallel multi-CPU machine as a 'single computer'
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
For that matter, I just receantly wired a complex using Qwest DSL. A guy here with a lot of property has built a bunch of rooms kind of like dorm rooms on it that he rents out to students. Well, he wanted to provide them with highspeed internet access. So he hired me to wire the place for withernet and hook it up to a DSL link. We went with a Qwest DSL line at 960k, and Qwest as our ISP. They have no problem with this, we're paying for the line, what we do with it is our own bussiness.
You may be correct. Many dialups already block outbound at least SMTP traffic because of spammers, and I know for a fact that the local aDSL provider (ZoomTown) blocks GRE and PPTP (and they specifically offer a SOHO service that turns those back on for telecommuters). And "cheap" DSL service, even for businesses, is so unreliable and difficult to manage as to make old school frame relay solutions (e.g. ISDN, frac-T1, on up) much more attractive for the serious telecomms professional, as my recent experience with Cable and Wireless (good idea) and Northpoint Communications (bad idea) seems to indicate.
But rant mode off already. ;)
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Actually, the law DOES require that public accomadations be offered with no prejudice. When renting your house, you cannot exclude Jews, for example. Or unmarried couples, even if it violates your own religon. Private clubs, private schools, are completely different.
Sending someone away because you don't like them
is completely different, unless you don't like
them because of their race. You can send someone away because they have no shoes on, unless they have no feet. (ie Handicaped.)
Why? Because we, as a society, have decided that some group rights trump some individual rights. If the sign on your door says 'Open', then you are committed to backing that up.
rbb
>The law does not guarantee an African American
>the right to sit in a bar full of rednecks and
>Confederate flags. It may, depending on a
>number of factors, but there is nothing in the
>law that forces some guy who runs some tiny
>little bar in Gnaw Bone, Alabama to serve anyone
>he doesn't want to serve. Rights are interesting
>things. These days nearly everything is granted
>the status of a right. It isn't a word to be
>toyed with, rights are very important and by
>attempting to ascribe their characteristics to
>trivial needs we slowly erode their importance.
>Rights don't require an imposition on someone
>else. No one should have to give you anything to
>fulfill any of your rights. Our hypothetical
>bartender could easily ask about his right to not
>serve someone.
None of these is failsafe - and in particular many of the techniques are liable to confusion by emulators like VMWare - but automatic detection can very usefully help build a case for further human investigation.
The side that benefits from exposure of information always wins.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Another good one is:
I went shopping around for other DSL services, keeping an eye on their legal aggreements, and I couldn't find a TOS that didn't make me want to toss. All of them follow a similar formulation, like "you get to pay us money, but we guarantee nothing, you have no rights, and we can do what ever we want".This strikes me as being very short sighted in a number of ways. It seems very unlikely to me that this "we have the right, but not the obligation" business will survive forever, and if they have to go one way or the other, they'd much rather be in the position of never, ever, monitoring content. That's what being a "common carrier" is about, as I understand it.
And further, though this seems to be a quaint and old-fashioned thought in a lot of people's minds, there really is some value in customer goodwill. If right out of the gate, a company starts acting like a jerk, they really can't expect anything like customer loyalty.
Anyway, if you're really bored, I've archived the whole pile of stuff here: Concentric DSL legal agreements.
The scenario you posed is not unlike what I have seen for cable in Mexico. One family in the neighborhood that has the money for the service, splits the line into many other households.
When I was yer age, I had to deliver the data packets myself to the local telco central office! A mile away! In the snow! Ya dang whippersnappers!
Jeez, you DSL people sure are cranky. Try putting up with Bell Atlantic/Verizon for a year or two. You don't know the meaning of pain.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
Dsl, at least here, isn't an unlimited bandwidth medium. If 80 people connect through one networked dsl line, their not going to use up more bandwidth as 1 person using it 24/7, nope, nadda, just not going to do it; at here at least (philly baby). So i say go for it... 80 plp on a std. 640/128 line... they might as well go out to their local run down rat shack and pick up that old 300 baud modem for $1 (with $5 rebate if they signup for long distance service with sprint) and make $4 bucks in the process. Sure, isps could actively work with these plp to get them service, at least dial-up (which would be faster in my example), but i don't think its bad pratice or even wrong. 1 IP addy, 1 lines worth of bandwidth... nope don't see a problem with it. Only way I could see a problem is if the isp doesn't like a user being on 24/7, leeching every damn thing on the planet (like me). I can understand that, but we pay a monthly fee for use of this line. I know in my contract it doesnt say anything about *you may not use your connection to the max, so I do it... even if they didnt allow me i would find a way. In short, *uck it, leech, offer a leech server, connect your whole damn neighborhood, just do it.
Retro Techie
You don't take into consideration the backbone costs. BROADBAND providers bank on low utilization of their network backbone to make profitability. The only way for ISPS to make money is to OVERSELL their bandwidth. Its been like this since day one of the internet. DSL/cable providers bank on the fact that 90-99% of the time, you're link is going to be idle. You really think a node of 255 high speed connections are going to be able to pump full bandwidth? 10 dsl lines at full bandwidth are consuming 15 megabits in theory. do the math. How much does it cost to get a 15 megabit pipe? A lot more than 15 times $39/month right? Take that into realistic abuse patterns, if there are 1000 people pushing 1.5 megabits, wheres the profit? Its a loss. There is no way for ISP's to make money without overselling about 10:1 probably closer to 20:1 of their available bandwidth. This is why the korean (and others, sorry), are abusing their ISP's and i don't blame them. If i'm paying for $10,000 a month for a 15 megabit pipe, i have to be making $30K/month just to break even with overhead expenses (salary,support,building,equipment).
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
Seeing this story reminded me of so many instances in the past when the phone company has directly attacked computer users in general. If you've seen the History Channel special on the history of the internet, the phone company has been the uncooperative and inhibiting side of networking since the ARPAnet. One of the creators of the ARPAnet was demonstrating its uses to Ma Bell when, for the first time, it crashed. The phone company guys laughed at the situation because they believed that the ARPAnet wouldn't amount to anything, and therefor was not a threat to the phone co. From an admin's perspective, that would be very crushing.
;-)
I think this mentality started from there. I've had many instances where the phone company is just hard to deal with when it comes to noise quality in the lines for modem use. Thier phone lines were only made for voice use, and anything beyond that is the customers problem...
Perhaps they only want to make large profit margins with as little service as possible. If a DSL user is not using the bandwidth for just "faster web access" then that is not a customer. That is a user that intends to use the telco system beyond thier contractual agreement. No grey area, just black and white. It's amazing phones have lasted for such a long time.
Perhaps the widespread use of the internet as a free long distance service will change all of that.
IANAL, but I remember an interesting legal case posted to Slashdot some time ago that could be a precedent for this.
Years ago, telephone companies used to do the same thing with phone lines. People were not permitted to connect more than one phone to their phone line. The phone company was meant to do that. The phone company wanted to maintain their service monopoly, so people had to pay the phone company to install extra phones.
Someone, I think it was a farmer in the USA who was a member of a ham radio club, connected a second phone to their phone line. The phone company didn't like this, so the phone company sued.
The phone company lost the case! The farmer enlisted the support of the ham radio club, and was able to fund a good legal defense.
As a result of this legal case, the way telephony is delivered has changed radically. Now, when people get a phone connected, the phone company maintains the phone line only up to the first socket in the home. The customer maintains all the phone lines after that point. The customer can still hire the phone company if they want extra cables installed.
Sound familiar? It should, it's exactly the same as the current controversy with multiple PC's on one link. This suggests that it is possible to beat this restriction by suing the provider under the right circumstances and citing this case (if you can find it) as a precedent. What are the "right circumstances"? That depends on the fine print in your contract, but if yours does not currently have this provision, and your provider tries to introduce it as an amendment to the terms and conditions of service, you could sue them to prevent them amending the TOS.
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Anyone in their right mind will not connect to a high-speed Internet link without a firewall of some kind. Suppose I have a simple setup where my dedicated firewall box connects to the cable modem, and my single PC is connected to the firewall. Am I in violation of their TOS?
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The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
im using CISCO wLan systems with dynamic keys. The key changes every login. Very hard to gain a key that works twice.... Also, I keep a address table on my NAT server that kills any non authorized address, I also have several other security measures that help, but Im not going to publish a security map for any would-be hacker to follow ;)
802.11b systems have been running fast and reliable for me, I hope others have same experience. BTW, my ISP network is only a 63 node system, but we are only 3 months old...
The thing I'm not quite sure about is why it's appeared again now?
;-)
I remember laughing _loudly_ when I first saw the intro, but that was many years ago when Zero Wing got released.
Has it just recently been romdumped or something?
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ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
So then I should make sure that I am running VMware as a possible defense if Roadrunner disconnects my NAT? :)
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"