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!

Comments

Funny line in here...

[lambda]

"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?

Borrowing IPs on home broadband in Palo Alto

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

A disgrace

[MartinG]

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!

:)

I think theres a difference in sharing computers,

[rigor6969]

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.

Pricing based on average use....

[NetJunkie]

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.

Confusing stance

[Prophet of Doom]

I am confused. Why is it that Taco supports a guy who chooses to use his DSL connection in a way that isn't agreeable to the company that provides the service but when the company wants to exercise their ability choose the customers to whom they provide service we get

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.

Re:I ping flood the FUCK out of IP squatters!

[raju1kabir]

When I bought a second static IP address, it seems that some squatter was already using it. Bastard!

Quite so. For a couple days I had a squatter on my home IP address, who parked an HP JetDirect box on it, of all things. Now that just ain't smart. I don't like wasting paper, so I made sure my PostScript art was concise, persuasive, to-the-point, while containing graphic visual aids to overcome any potential literacy gap. The printer disappeared quickly after that.