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Broadband Crackdown
MrPeach writes: "In a move unsurprising to those of us who have had interactions with their so-called customer support, AT&T Broadband and Excite@Home are indefinitely filtering all incoming traffic on http port 80 for residential customers. They could have cut access to those running compromised servers, but instead chose to deny the ability to run a web server to all subscribers to their service. DSL anyone?" DSL won't save you. Verizon is apparently also blocking port 80 for their DSL customers, in addition to blocking outgoing port 25 and requiring use of Verizon's SMTP servers to send email. Verizon is also cheerfully paying fines for screwing over their competitors - the fines will be much less than the extra profit they can squeeze out once their competition is gone.
If the bandwidth is limited, then quota the bandwidth to each user! It's just as possible to eat up the limited upstream bandwidth by uploading large files to Hotmail, but they don't ban that.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Verizon IS blocking port 80 from outside verizon's network, and the reason verizon has been giving its tech support people, is that this is a temporary port block becuase of Code Red.
The block started yesterday, and affects in bound traffic into verizon's network. I can get to my website from other verizon addresses, but not from outside of verizon's net. I couldn't get a specific time frame on how long the block is going to be up, but the tech support people have been told that its not permenant.
Does Verizon have a legitimate concern about Code Red investation across its network? Maybe...but since I'm not running in MS products on my LAN and I take the time to secure my stuff, I'm pretty unhappy that my services get knocked off the net like I'm one of the clueless masses.
The best solution to get Verizon to hurry up and unblock the port is for everyone who has a verizon DSL account to call them and tell them in a very nice calm manner that if the block stays in place, your business will go elsewhere. I was call 25 this morning. Let's see if the slashdot effect works over the phone as well....I want to see the number of complaint calls jump to 2000 in the next 30 minutes.
Verizon Tech Support:
1-800-567-6789
-jef
Not that I like XP. But I can see this causing lots of angery letters...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I work for a regional CLEC out of chicago. We have several thousand installed DSL lines. This is how we have been coping with the Code Red worm... (*as a buisness class of service, we can't be simply turning off all port 80.. many people do host off of our SDSL lines*)
We have a large number of 10.x.x.x addresses for our broadband subscribers. (This saves us the trouble of assigning public IP's to every single customer, because most don't want nor need a public IP). Our NAT server was getting so clogged up with TCP/IP sessions because code red was serching for hosts. (and once it got into the 10.x.x.x network, it has lots of addresses to check.
We simply got a free scanning utility (sorry... I am at home, don't have it here, nor the time to find it. ) After scanning all of our customers, we located around 30 infected computers.) We left messages stating that they were infected, and we were shutting off there connection until they would remove the offending computer..(we could discern the IP itself, and our users are statically assigned, not DHCP thank god..)
Several users were irate as all hell, but the good of the many outwieigh the good of the few correct? Many times the customer simply unplugged the computer and we put them back on. They are then responsible for patching it.. We have been running scans everyday, and have now gotten fewer and fewer code red worms in our user's DSL systems.
I think that this was the ideal approach. Why use a damn sledgehammer when all of about 30 minutes of work allows you to use a use a fly swatter to remove the offending computers.
Blah Blah Blah.
Even if that were true, so what? I bought bandwidth from my ISP and I expect them to deliver that bandwidth. If my machine has a security problem and starts attacking other sites on the Internet, that should be my problem, not my broadband provider's problem. My broadband provider may choose to limit my outgoing and incoming bandwidth to a previously contractually agreed-upon minimum, but no further.
By your reasoning, the telephone companies should listen in on our telephone conversations to make sure we don't do anything illegal and don't make prank calls. Wisely, we have chosen not to place that authority in them, and we should take a similar approach to security with broadband providers.
http://www.eeye.com/html/Research/Tools/codered.ht ml
Ok folks..quick TCP lesson here. The goal is to stop the spread of the worm. What good is cutting off inbound port 80 to already infected servers? This will do absolutely NOTHING to stop those infected servers from outbound scanning for new hosts to infect. Apparently a lot of you were sick the day they taught IP and IP school.
So if you must host something but Excite@Home is blocking port 80, change your Apache config to listen on a different port number.
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Telephone service is not a privilege. The telephone companies are regulated common carriers and are required by law to offer service to the public on a non-discriminatory basis. The conditions under which service can be refused or terminated are set by state and federal law and regulations, not the whim of some telco executive. The same can be said for other regulated common carriers, such as gas and electric companies.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
From a social standpoint -- where our priorities are less about the "bottom line" and more about providing for a healthy, vibrant, diverse democracy -- there isn't an incredibly good reason why web servers or other content servers are prohibited on so-called "consumer" Internet service providers.
In some cases the bandwidth isn't there-- I understand that, however, in general, the speeds are suitable for most people's private soapboxes... further, overall and in general, home servers do little harm to the network, Code Red notwithstanding.
And in all seriousness, I doubt anyone expects strict uptime SLAs or performance guarantees from your local @Home franchise. I'm not suggesting that "consumer-grade" Internet access claims to offer such things or even really ought to... However, I tend to believe that the prohibition on servers is more an effort to control media content creation & affordable distribution more than it is an effort to ensure network stability.
In effect, a ban on servers prevents citizens from competing affordably for so-called "mindshare" with big corporations and others who don't sweat the cost of dual redundant T3 connectivity.
Broadband internet access has the potential to really revolutionize media distribution by empowering individuals to affordably control & create new and innovative media outlets.
On the other hand, most home servers probably aren't even public servers but private servers used for, say, development purposes or sharing files between office & home. These uses are of course even less stressful on the network and certainly more benign.
Meh... just some food for thought.
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
I think that this is a perfectly reasonable response from @home. I work at a large ISP and I've seen how rapidly this code red garbage spreds. The little editorial comment that they can "simply block infected machines" is, quite frankly, garbage. Code Red 2 spreads faster than anyone could possibly keep up with blocking one machine at a time.
Code Red 2 is tearing up bandwidth at these cable companies. Its noticeably slowing down my speeds on my home internet connection. Something needs to be done in a hurry, and blocking port 80 is a fast solution that works.
Instead of blaming the broadband providers, why don't you blame the real culprit in this situation: Windows. Get angry at Microsoft; if it weren't for their lousy code and lousy security this problem would not have been possible in the first place.
> Granted I don't know how much one costs but I
> figure at around $40 a month a group of about
> 20-30 should be able to gets something way
> faster that DSL/Cable and without the bullshit.
We have an LADC line (which while only rated for 9600baud, but can do 768k unreliably via HDSL), that runs 4 blocks. It has a heavy distance limitation. It costs $80/mo. This does not include bandwidth charges. Distance matters. A lot. Too far away? Too bad, you'll either need to 56k lease line (haha), or frame relay, or ptp t1. None of these (well except 56k) are in your pricerange.
> around $40 a month a group of about 20-30
> should be able to gets something way faster
> that DSL/Cable and without the bullshit.
Ok, let's say 25 people @ 40bucks, not including the line charge. that's $1k. Call up qwest, or maybe sprint, or maybe a tier 2-N (because that's all you can afford), and if you live near a POP and you're lucky, maybe you can get a full T1.
Ok, now we have a shared T1, for 25 people (who i'm assuming will all be geeks, and will be downloading stuff late at night...) Assume a T1 can get maybe 160k/s throughput (you can't get 100% util on a T1 w/o severe latency problems), you get 6.4k/s. Congrats, you've gotten isdn speeds, for the cost of approximately $120/mo/person. This doesn't include startup costs. xDSL equipment costs a few hundred dollars on each end, and 802.11b accesspoints are a lot more expensive than the cards (no, airports don't count, their distance sucks) and the costs of outdoor antennas are horrendous, not to mention you'd have to find/hire someone to do the professional antenna install for you. You'd need a router for your shared T1, add another $600 in startup there.
> What happens when the network / connection goes
> down. Either we set up some sort of rotation
> but we need an admin to fix stuff and that can
> be expensive.
Expensive is right. You can get a crappy consultant for $75/hr. Say something significant happens once a month for two hours (that's not too unreasonable, given the current codered/sircam problems, and general maintainence, mailserver/dns crap).
Your cost is now $125/mo for slightlyhigherthan isdn speeds. See why this idea isn't that great?
I'm not a big fan of the quality of service of @home or Roadrunner. But at $40/mo, what can you really expect? Does your cable modem/dsl occasionally do over 200k/s? It does? Guess what, just that bandwidth capability alone, would cost you $1.5k/mo to do.
Actually, it is a feature of the DHCP protocol. By default, you attempt to renew your address lease after 50% of it is gone. If you do not have connectivity to the DHCP server, the client will keep trying to renew the lease until it is able to contact the server again. The client will attempt to renew a lease from the same server that gave it the initial lease. Even if the lease has been expired for some time, the server will still attempt to give the same address. This is default on most DHCP servers. Of course, you can change this and automatically assign a different address each time, but it gives better overall network stability to have clients keep their ip addresses.
Enigma
I'm a Verizon DSL user. My brother and I just got off the phone with tech support. First they tried to convince us that hosting a web server was illegal (after we convinced them that we had seen the ToS which says DSL users are exempt); after about ten minutes of arguing that was changed to "We don't support that." Then they told us that they would not open port 80 for specific machines, and that they would not even tell us ANY details about other ports (like the mysterious 25). I hope to call back later and speak to someone a bit more helpful...
As for why we learned about the port closing from /. long before we heard about it from verizon in a vaguely worded, hidden post, they told us that they didn't send an email because it only affects about 5% of their customers. They also won't notify us when they reopen port 80, however distant that may be. Furthermore, they claim that the vast majority of users who would receive such an email would not care. Still, if I were the average user I certainly would rather hear service/security updates I can ignore than miss ones that might be relevant.
Conclusion: Verizon is at least approaching Evil, if not already there... please let me know if you've had any better experiences with tech support since the start of the filtering!
TildeMan
I'm posting AC because it seems each time I post my opinion on this topic, I lose karma...
I don't see any reason why providers shouldn't block port 80 incoming. The only reason to have that open is to run a webserver -- something most broadband providers explicitely disallow for residential customers. That's one of the reasons why a "business" account usually costs a lot more, even for the same speeds.
Just because they let it ride up to now, doesn't mean they have any less a right to block it now. If they'd been doing this all along, I'm sure most people wouldn't be complaining now.
Sure, it's nice to run a webserver at home, but residential service doesn't usually come with any kind of real uptime guarantees, etc. It just makes more sense to either get a business account, or get a real webserver (lease one, or use a shared provider, whatever).
With the amount of port 80 requests in my firewall logs on my cable connection, I would welcome a block on port 80 personally. I've already bored of looking at 'dir' listings and deleting files on these idiot Windows/IIS machines... but seriously, it's time to put this thing to rest and move on. And get a webserver.
It also creates an artificial market-- why would I buy "business class" bandwidth or co-locate a server for a site that's adequately hosted on broadband for a fraction of the price? We're not talking "enterprise, mission-critical, ecommerce" web applications or anything... we're talking about noncommerical, nonprofit media forums.
I run a site that gets maybe 100 hits a day, is frequented by only a small group of 15 visitors. However, we have very complicated custom web applications the drive the sorts of things we do... free or paid shared hosting is not an option. Nor is it a real possibility to shell out money for co-location or "business class" bandwidth for this sort of thing -- that of course generates no profit. The idea that the home user should settle for less (yanno, the idea that a 5MB, add-riddled, censored, GeoCities account "is good enough") -- that only big corporations should have access to high quality server applications -- is disturbing. It reinforces the idea that the Internet is here for business-- not for culture, not for recreation, not for academia, not for the free exchange of ideas.
Access to the tools big business uses is a real possibility with broadband since a lot of hobbyists, enthusiasts or professionals working in their spare time can put together a lot of the same things that corporate and "ecommerce" sites can...
As I say, I'm not claiming that broadband needs to come tethered to the sorts of service levels that corporate folks are expecting-- nobody suggests such a thing... but there's no good reason to limit people to Geocities because... "pfah! if you're serious, you'd co-locate in an Exodus data center."
That argument is pretentious and elitist. I get no Darwinian thrill from seeing only the moneyed have access to technologies all of us could use, enjoy and share at minimal cost.
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
And what exactly is a "server"? Is accessing your Pilot calendar remotely using a server? Is using an FTP client a server? What about identd? What about my PC vendor's remote Windows support system? Is running a client connection to establish a VPN to some other host on the Internet and poking out a server socket on that machine "running a server"? Let's be concrete please, because my TOS don't actually say. They are so vague that the provider can make up what they mean whenever they like.
And especially don't start with the geek indignation, because consumer broadband is not meant, nor sold, under the pretense of running home servers.
That would be true if broadband providers fully owned all the rights of way and infrastructure. They don't. They tear up public streets and use public spectrum only because the communities where they deliver service let them. They can be kicked out if they don't satisfy the needs of the community. And peer-to-peer and servers are crucially important in particular for non-commercial and non-profit uses.
Furthermore, for broadband providers to try to control whether you may run a "server" is the beginning of content controls. The next thing you know, you'll only be able to connect to the commercial sites of your provider's choosing.
Broadband providers should be legally required to provide universal Internet connectivity and set rates and limitations based on bandwidth and volume only. Possibly, there might be two rate structures, one for non-commercial and another for commercial customers. But providers should have no business deciding what content or packets travel over their networks, as long as the packets are properly addressed and their format is according to spec.
@Home and others had the exact same philosophy that we did, "we really don't care, unless it starts to become a problem." We (as in the ISPs), were quite lenient (yes, i have a webserver running at home) because we believe in the exact same things you do, we're geeks too.
But frankly, you guys failed. If everyone had just patched their servers regularly, and knew the least bit about their computer, and wtf it was doing, then this would never have been a problem, and we wouldn't have to do such rediculous measures such as this. Yes, i think this is a rediculous measure, but so is leaving your computer unpatched for any decent amount of time. So please, stop deflecting the blame when really you yourselves (or your friends who don't patch) are at fault.
you know, t1s and t3s have been around for a while. it's just that in the old days you had to Know Things to get access to them.
now, the idiots have broadband. is this better? I am not sure. I suppose in a way. I now have DSL whereas a few years ago I was running SLiRP on my university's sun box for free 'net access.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Could you provide a URL for what you are quoting?
The explanation given and the clause given as an excuse are (quoting from the above links) an extremely long stretch in IMO:
Why Can't AT&T@Home Residential Customers Run Web Servers?
The AT&T@Home residential service offering is a consumer product designed for your personal use of the Internet. Customers must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services, nor represent (in the sole judgment of AT&T Broadband) an unusually large burden on the network itself.
The benefits and privileges available from the AT&T@Home, and the Internet in general, must be balanced with duties and responsibilities so that other customers can also have a productive experience.
Under the terms of the AT&T Broadband Subscriber Agreement customers are not to restrict, inhibit or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person to use or enjoy the AT&T Equipment or the Service. See Prohibited Uses of Service (g) in the AT&T@Home Subscriber Agreement.
The clause referred to:
g) restrict, inhibit or otherwise interfere with the ability of any other person to use or enjoy the AT&T Equipment or the Service, including, without limitation, posting or transmitting any information or software which contains a virus or other harmful feature; or generating levels of traffic sufficient to impede others' ability to send or retrieve information;
So, where do they get off filtering a small, low-bandwidth server that doesn't do what "clause g" prohibits?
In 2001,worm was happening.
Customer1: What happen?
Customer2: Somebody set up us the port filter.
Computer: We get mail. Customer1: What?
Customer2: Email client turn on.
Customer1: It's you !!!
Cable Provider: How are you, gentlemen ???
Cable Provider: All your TOS are belong to us !!!
Customer1: What you say???
Cable Provider: You have no chance to host, make your time.
Cable Provider: Ha ha ha !!!
Customer1: Move boxen.
Customer2: You know what you are doing?
Customer1: For great serving,
Custoemr1: Move every boxen.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I am an @Home subscriber in Seattle. Here is the truly hilarious service they provide.
- As an @Home user you are not supposed to do anything business related, including someting as simple as sending email to your office.
- If you want to do business, you can easily upgrade your cable @Home connection to an "Excite@Work" DSL connection. Except that @Work simply isn't available over most of the @Home coverage area.
So they tell you to upgrade to a product they can't sell you. Hilarious.
I would happily pay more for @Home CABLE service if they would give me a fixed IP and not block servers. Not that they are at the moment, but I smell trouble on the horizon. That Qwest DSL with the month-to-month pricing is looking better all the time.
[root@gamara log]# grep DPT=80 messages | wc -l
3722
code red hits, all from other @home users. All W2K/IIS 5.0 users. The ip's I've looked into all have the default pages up too. I've even tried running "dir" commands on a few through the "root.exe" backdoor code red installs, incredulous that it would work, and yes.. thousands of wide open NT boxen. This hasn't even seemed to slow down yet, despite the wide spread publicity which leads me to believe that a large percentage of those stricken are either totally clueless, don't realize they have IIS running (?), or flat out don't care which leaves the ISP little choice. And it may be my perception, or unrelated factors, but my net connection has certaintly seemed more sluggish over the last week, perhaps as a result of upstream saturation, something @home doesn't have much of.
So I would agree, blocking port 80 is the most practical way of defeating this and it should have happened earlier. It's that or ban all microsoft operating systems as a public hazard :)
However, use of so-called "shared" or "virtual" web hosting services limits greatly the sorts of applications you can create and run. It also limits your ability to administer your machine and configure the applications you use the way you see fit.
Some hosts are more forgiving than others, but, for highly specific development environments any shared host is less than ideal. Also, censorship considerations by [corporate] hosting providers may also be a concern...
Further, shared web hosting says nothing of other content servers which may be unavailable completely or available in shared configurations only in highly restricted circumstances.
BRx.
Life after capitalism? The participatory economics project
99% of cable modem and DSL subscribers do NOT need to run servers of any kind. By leaving them open across the board you open the door for this kind of worm to propogate across misconfigured systems where people have gone and accidently installed IIS or even an unpatched UNIX box. Does that mean you shouldn't be allowed to run servers period? No! What should be required is for your to sign a consent statement that says you are responsible for any damage caused by attacks taking place from or to your machine and will pay any cleanup costs needed to deal with attacks against a server on your network. There should also be a formal risk assessment and penetration test conducted against your server setup to determine if it is indeed ready to be connected to the Internet. Too many people are putting these god damned buggy open machines on the Internet and then bitching about censorship when an ISP filters them. If people would take responsibility and make sure their systems are constantly updated it wouldn't be an issue, but most DON'T. And no, I'm not talking about the uber geek average Slashdot guy who upgrades their kernel every night to the latest version and has a cron job setup to do an apt-get update. I'm referring to Joe Average who installed his first Linux box to fiddle with or the guy who installs IIS during the Win2k install because it was there and he wants a full install of the OS. These people should not have full unfettered access to the Internet. You guys are starting to sound like the people I have to deal with who absolutely demand to have complete unfiltered access to the Internet so they can run whatever god awful program of the day they've come up with as a business requirement that is blocked by the firewall. Netmeeting anyone? Oh, you want to punch IPSec holes through the firewall? Uh huh.. no... FTP??? You want an FTP site on your desktop? Uhhh.. no.
And for anyone complaining, read your TOS first. As several other people have pointed out, it specifically prohibits running servers, and allows this in other ways as well. You're not guaranteed an unbreakable or complete Internet connection for your $35 a month.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Sure it pisses them off. So they call you up and say "Why can't I access the web?". And you look up their ISP and say "Because your computer is infected with a worm that is taking up significant bandwidth and trying to infect other computers to do the same. If you fix that, we'll let you surf the web again."
At least if they're pissed off, they'll go and get the fix so they can surf to their pr0n again.
[TMB]
I noticed this happened around 5 am yesterday morning (Tuesday, August 7th). Well I didn't notice it, I just tailed my apache logs and web requests seemed to stop coming in around that time. None the less, I got into work that day and noticed I couldn't access my personal web page... NOTE: Personal, not commercial. I put pretty pictures, that I've taken with my digital camera, on it. I was however able to ssh into it and ftp into it.
What was going on? I got scared for a second cause I thought perhaps they started enforcing some term of their service, but it wasn't until I got home and (not so thoroughly) skimmed through their TOS that I realized running a server was not against their TOS, as a matter of fact they worded it so JUST dialup users cannot run a "server of any kind", and it seemed to be fine for DSL users.
So I call up Verizon, talk to a couple different people, none of which knew a single thing about anything. One tried to accuse me of violating the TOS, and I told them it said I'm allowed to run a server in it. She shut up immediately.
Another told me that since I wasn't patched against code red, my internet service was being blocked. I told her I wasn't using a Microsoft operating system therefore I'm not affected by it, and even if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to apply the patch. She told me that because I didn't apply the patch, port 80 was being blocked. Again, I explained to her I wasn't running a Microsoft OS. In the end I think I explained it to her around 5 times... hopefully she knows a little more about computers now.
Finally I got to some guy who was somewhat intelligent, although he did call Linux, L-EYE-NUCKS, he seemed to have some understanding of how to press buttons. I asked him why port 80 was being filtered, and he told me because Microsoft had recommended they block the port. (BTW, I totally agree with someone else that commented on this, who said that because of Microsoft building insecure web servers, we are paying. That is fuct) I asked him if there was anything they could do to unblock the port for me, like put me on another subnet and give me a static IP (I'm a sneaky bastard), or put some kind of flag on my account. He told me that for the time being there was no work around, however he would post a memo and suggest to their tech team they find a way around the port blocking for users who are patched, or not running a Microsoft OS. I asked how long the filtering would stay in place ... he told me it would only last for another couple hours. Right there I told him I didn't think that was true, but he insisted it would only last another hour or two, MAX... port 80 is still blocked.
I just thought I'd contribute this tid bit. I have Verizon DSL in Northern New Jersey, in Essex County. Again, their TOS did not prohibit running a server, unless you are on a dial up. I would post it here, but there is also some clause in their TOS that prohibits reproducing it, so if some brave soul wants to post it below this, go right ahead =]
I need to get a higher paying job so I can get a T1 and then just have to deal with UUnet fiber-optic cuts because of train wrecks.
SuPz.orG
> servers rather than limiting data volumes, I'm
> all ears.
Because 99.9% of security issues comes from someone running an unpatched redhat box at home.
This is not something tier1 tech support can handle, a real sysadmin has to look at it, figure out where it's coming from, and figure out what is going on. That costs money. Say it took collectively 30mins of peoples time to figure it out, already that has costed more than what you've paid for this month's service.
The AUP would not be this stupid or strict if these things weren't a real problem. But they are. Until people (not necessarily you), get the brains to keep their computer up to date and know what's going on, the ISPs will have to keep these stupid provisions just to protect their ass.
Its great. So instead we just let the network FLOOD. But good thing we aren't blocking port 80, that would SCREW over like what, .1% of our cusomters?
What, me worry?
The hide behind clause will most likely be the one that says 'you may not run a server in connection with the @Home residential service'. http://home.com/support/aup/
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Actually, cable and DSL providers are already blocking port 80 (and most lower ports) for months. I am a Charter cable customer. When I first signed up, all ports below ~1500 where blocked. (With the expection of 53, 113, and a few of others) Customers where forced to use there proxy server. Even outbound port 80 was blocked.
After complaining for 4 months about it. and many phone calls to there head techs and managers. I finally won. I proved to them why blocking all of those ports was insaine. I simply wanted to run NTP on my machine. (Well, my entire LAN, but they didn't know anything about that :) Which requires 123/UDP.
As the months went on, more and more ports started opening. One thing that they have relized is that people will run servers regardless. People who abuse it (setting up high traffic sites) will be shutoff. Personally, I think its insaine. I should have the right to run a personal site, as long as it doesn't get out of hand. If it did get to that point, I wouldn't be hosting on cable.
So, they blocked the ports. I wonder how long it will stay. I would be very carefull, they may use this as an excuse to keep the ports blocked.
Working with the large companys his difficault, tring to convince them that they should unblock them. I can kinda of understand there postion. But, then again, it kinda upsets me.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Verizon *DOES NOT BLOCK* outgoing port 25 *OR* port 80! I've been running my own mail server off the standard DSL offering, $40 a month, for almost a month now and never one hint of problems. I can send mail anywhere. I can telnet to port 25 on any Internet-accessible mail server.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but if Verizon blocks outgoing port 80, wouldn't that put a bit of a dent in most popular web browsers?
For the love of God, try to be a little accurate! There are plenty of real problems to bitch about!
"Honey, it's not working out; I think we should make our relationship open-source."
The journey is better then the end.
Now they're doing the sensible thing to contain potentially hundreds of thousands of machines running IIS (Mostly run by people who probably have no idea about worms and the like anyway - even if they knew they were running a web server in the first place).
Seems pretty sensible to me, although my DSL ISP has no problems with me running servers, so I'm happy either way..
It would mean them having to to do real work shutting down accounts of those who are not smart enought to run a 1mo old patch on their systems. I't makes me angry, because if there was another option for a high speed connection, I would have done it a long time ago. All day I have recieved calls from clients wondering if my dev machine dropped off the web. I called att and what they acually said was "when we installed the service, we set up with NT Based systems because it was the fastest way to get it working, not because it was the most secure", then the tech followed with "all of our servers have viruses",, I'm not sure but it sounded like she was'nt too happy with her job..
Seriously people... Most, if not all, broadband providers prohibit running servers from home accounts (it's definitely that way for @Home users, even if they do generally turn a blind eye to small time web servers). They generally also have some sort of clause which basically doesn't guarantee unlimited or uncontrolled inbound or outbound access. For that matter, most broadband (and thinband) providers provide a clause which basically exempts them from any sort of service level agreement.
Signing on with a domestic oriented ISP means that you are essentially "users" on their network. Blocking inbound port 80 access is a good starting point for at least protecting their internal network segments. If you were running what is essentially a DHCP/DNS/proxy service for thousands of users, wouldn't you at least take this step to protect the integrity of your network?? (I admit it doesn't begin to solve all the problems, but...)
If you want to run your own "mini NOC", then pony up the cash and get ISDN, a T1, or something faster put into your basement. But if you are subscribing to a consumer grade ISP's offerings, don't be suprised when this happens. And especially don't start with the geek indignation, because consumer broadband is not meant, nor sold, under the pretense of running home servers.
The @Home customer agreements never allowed servers, particularly web servers. There's a valid technical reason, too: Cable bandwidth is asymmetric. There's typically a downstream pool of about 27 Mbps (depending on settings) shared among all users, while the upstream pool is more often in the 2 Mbps or less range. This comes about because upstream has to fit into the narrow patches of usable spectrum below 40 MHz, while downstream just fits among the TV channels between 50 and 750 MHz.
So stick a server out there, get Slashdotted (or even just get mildly popular), and the upstream bandwidth is wiped out for your whole neighborhood (technically, the area of your optical conversion node and CMTS channel). This is a big risk, so the cable companies don't take it. Instead, they do give you some free hosting space at their data centers.
VeriZontal has no such excuse -- ADSL has little upstream bandwidth (they typically provision only 90 kbps) but it's your very own, and they end up with a huge surplus of upstream bandwidth at the back of the DSLAM, where all of the traffic is aggregated. It's downstream that can congest easily. They're just being shmucks as usual. But if their customer agreement doesn't allow servers, then that's the deal -- commercial-grade DSL services allow servers.
The real problem they're addressing (even VZ) is Code Red II. Web servers that get infected will probe their own networks like crazy looking for others to infect. This creates congestion. So shutting off port 80 stops the worm. Crude but effective. See the recent LinuxPlanet column about Charter for how a cable company won't admit that its infected servers are causing huge congestion. The author suggests blocking port 80!
Imagine if the phone company checked your lines for "business use" and shut you down unless you got a business contract.
Or how about the power company, charging you differently depending on how you use the power, and limiting you to, say, 10 amps peak if you don't have a business contract.
I wonder if it isn't appropriate to have a little (eek) government regulation when it comes to these things? Like not blocking any ports for any customer unless it is clearly marked in advertising or something?
I always wonder when my ISP will decide, for the good of all customers, to shut down this or that port or filter or monitor traffic. They'll probably not even notify me, they'll just update the terms of service buried in their web page someplace.
The average American is a mere couch potato which the corporations feed information to the unwashed masses the same way the inhabinents of Huxley's Brave New World were fed soma. The average consumer has nothing to say unless what they have to say is under corporate control. While people running web servers were tolerated when what they did was not attracting the attention of the corporate suits, they are being cut off by those who feel that people really shouldn't be running personal web servers.
I am also annoyed that, while Apache and other UNIX web servers are able make a web server without countless remote root exploits, all UNIX users on these cable modems suffer because Microsoft did not make a secure web server.
Thankfully, this is easy enough to work around. E.G:
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
From their service agreement.
AT&T Broadband does not allow servers to be connected to the cable modem. This means that no computer in a personal network can be used as a server.
Hmmm, sounds like a pretty good clause to hide behind, eh?
IANAL... But I play one on
While Road Runner isn't blocking (my cable modem light is still going nuts even when my computer is off); it is part of their Terms of Agreement: no e-mail servers, no web servers, no port scans.
If you want to run an e-mail or web server, get a business line ($295/month w/1 IP; $325/month w/5 IP).
However, they have been turning a REAL BLIND EYE to all of the above. I get port scanned daily and it looks like 30%+ of the machines on my subnet are running a web or mail server. (According to my *cough* port scan *cough* of the subnet.)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Not so simple, actually -- I tried this today because of the block, and it works fine in many cases, but there is a hitch.
Let's say someone is looking at "http://foo.ne.mediaone.net:8080/bar/fred.html", and this html file contains a reference to another file, be it a CSS file, an image, an anchor -- whatever. There are three possibilities I want to consider.
In the first, if this reference is of the form "http://foo.ne.mediaone.net/bar/ney.html", it's obviously not going to go to port 8080, but people rarely use absolute references like that, so let's move past that to the more interesting cases.
In the second, if the reference is of the form "ney.jpeg". Here, everything works fine and the client looks for "http://foo.ne.mediaone.net:8080/bar/ney.jpeg".
In the third, with a reference like "/css/rubble.css", you'd like to think that, since the parent URL is in http://foo.ne.mediaone.net:8080, the client would go for "http://foo.ne.mediaone.net:8080/css/rubble.css", but no! It looks up "http://foo.ne.mediaone.net/css/rubble.css" (and spends a long time timing out because of the block).
I have no idea why this is, but it seems to happen in both Netscape and IE. Haven't had time to investigate it thoroughly, so if anyone knows anything about this, I'd appreciate the info.
Granted, many people running Win2K or NT and IIS might not realize the service is running, their computer is infected, they are part of the problem.
This is what we've run into at my company.
What our security team did was scan for infected IIS servers and shut down those specific customers.
We then contacted them and informed them to patch immediately once we turned them back on. We also warned them that we would scan again that evening and would not hesitate at shutting them down a second time.
About 50% of those contacted had no clue they even had IIS running. This made it very frustrating.
If anyone can explain a good reason for banning servers rather than limiting data volumes, I'm all ears. I think it's either a combination of laziness and sloppy thinking on the part of the providers, or a desire to force the "users" to also be "content consumers" rather than "content providers". Hanlon's razor, I believe, favours the former explanation.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Definitely not all. MediaOne (now AT@T Broadband) never prohibited it. I understand your reasoning, but if you chek the TOS, many companies do not explicitly prohibit running your own server, and some even explicitly permit it.
What AT&T (at least the Roadrunner service) prohibited was duplication of their services. You weren't allowed to run as an ISP, and they also reserved the right to shut you down if you used up too much bandwidth. You weren't allowed to run a commercial web-server, because they sold web hosting.
I don't disagree with their decision, as inconvenient as it is for me. I can just have my webserver listen to a port that is not 80. I don't even know if MS IIS supports this, but luckily I'm not running IIS.
Think about it this way: if the virus was actually eating enough bandwidth and resources to affect the general home user experience, they would get complaints from those users. Maybe they will open the ports back up. Ha. that kind of stuff never happens. oh well... guess I have to look for a new ISP (maybe speakeasy.net, even though ovad is going belly up...)
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Or, alternatively, consider this translation: "It is a known fact that upstream bandwidth in a cable network is an extremely scarce resource. At the market's current price point, we are forced to have a modems-to-headend ratio that only permits a typical web surfing workload on the upstream. The decision to actually enforce the no-server policy was made only after empirical data was gathered, proving that even a single file-sharing server could severely disrupt the service level for hundreds of other customers."
(Disclaimer: I have no association with @home)
You might have a leg to stand on if @home was bringing in huge profits and denying you features just to bring in a cent more. But guess what, they aren't, and those downsides of cable modem service are precisely what's enabling them to offer it at the price you are paying now.
Don't like it? Tough. Go out and buy some real Internet bandwidth. It will cost you at least $200 per Mbps per month, in addition to the circuit costs.
Marko Karppinen
[Rummaging in drawer for flamesuit...]
"They could have cut access to those running compromised servers, but instead chose to deny the ability to run a web server to all subscribers to their service."
Honestly, if I was in the position of the ISP, I would just have cut off all port 80. It makes perfect sense, from a business perspective, that is.
[donning flamesuit...]
I mean, do you really expect them to sift through millions of accounts, determine which ones were compromised with CodeRed IIS servers and block them off? And this list would have to be dynamically maintained , of course, and more port 80s continually blocked because Code Red II is still on the loose. And the ISP couldn't discriminate. If they decided to block all compromised IIS, they'd have to keep up with each and every server running.
It would simply be a logistical nightmare where thousands of hours of work are diverted from network administration, support, maintenance, etc. It wouldn't work. They'd probably have to start up a whole new management division to keep track of it. And then their support people would continually be taxed by calls from people who are getting blocked when their neighbor's Apache box is still serving up pages.
And even if they did do this, how would they correct for human typos in the blocking tables and correcting for all of it, verifying that it was an error, etc?
So Which would you prefer? An ISP where you could just run a proxy and keep your server running, or one that throws all their support staff into keeping the IIS boxes under control and doesn't have the people to actually manage/administrate the network/support so your site wouldn't be available half the time anyway?
In an ideal world, they WOULD block only the people who didn't patch their IIS servers and got infected. But unfortunately for *everyone* it just doesn't work that way.
[peeks out from flamesuit helmet... do I have any friends left on /.? ;-]
This has propably been said but iam an Optus@Home customer in Aust and it firmly states (about 6 times) in the user agreement, FAQ, member pages and help sections that you cannot run a server on the web, this is in breach of the AUP and you get immediate disconnection.
So if this is the case then why the story ? why the complaints ?
ignorance is no defense - when you sign up for any service or contract you read the terms and conditions - thus you dont have these problems.
End of story - if its not acceptable and you do it you get thrown off - i cant see anything fairer than that and whingeing about it happening is like ignoring the warning on a chaisaw that says dont cut off your leg and doing just that !!
(of course in the US you could sue the company as stupidity is no exclusion - get the right jury and get lucky)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
Partially quoted from:
Which states: And furthermore from the same document: Did anyone else get notification before port 80 was blocked? The above policies certianly still seem to be in effect; they're still posted and they clearly imply customers may run HTTP & FTP servers at their own risk.roadrunner.techtalk.general
3B709BDA.3480@mediaone.net.invalid
chelm@mediaone.net.invalid wrote:
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.