Cable Co's Want More Control Over Your Network

Moonshine Coward writes: "'The CAT and the NAT' in latest issue of www.cedmagazine.com discusses Cable labs and their efforts to come up with a 'better' protocol than NAT that allows them more control over devices behind your cable modem. Their upside on this...$4.95 per IP per mth. Their #1 concern...people putting in 802.11b hubs and sharing with their neighbors. Fine in principle and if it gets them drooling enough to speed up the deployment of fiber to the home it might be a good thing. However I can see way too many downsides...not least of which is being nickled and dimed to death..my webcam, cable ready microwave, refrigerator, pictureframe that shows revolving jif's ... each costing me $4.95 p.m. -- all on top of regular $39.95 cost." Note: the article is written from an interesting point of view -- it's aimed at the people who want to collect the additional per-IP charges.

Comments

Re:Two computers makes me a thief?

[Tackhead]

> What right do they have to charge for my toaster? Do they have a contract with *me*, or with *my device*?

Depends on who you ask.

If you ask a /.er, they have a contract with you.

If you ask a pigfscking marketroid who believes (in the words of the article), that "[a] crucial part of the success or failure of broadband home networks will be the set-up and ongoing care processes used to link PCs and consumer-electronics gear", then no, they have a contract with your devices.

...or rather, that "If we can find a way to charge you $4.95/month for your TiVO and another $4.95 for your toaster, we will."

Personally, I have no problem with saying "thou shalt not 802.11 thy neighbors onto thy cablemodem" -- cablemodem subscriptions really aren't priced with a full pipe in mind. If you need a full pipe 24/7, buy a T1 or T3.

But the solution to that problem is monitoring of bandwidth and peak usage. (And yes, the article even acknowledges this -- "until then [when we have the brave new world of us charging for your toaster], all indicators point to DOCSIS 1.1, which includes methods to monitor bandwidth consumption [...] and speed [...]".

Meantime, if CAT asks my firewall "Pardon, NAT, but what's that behind you?", I'll tell my firewall to tell the CAT to go stick itself in a sealed box with a poison bottle and a hammer hooked up to an intrusion detection system, and as far as they're concerned, my network can remain in a superposition of states until observed.

(Of course, that's redundant. Any BOFH knows that every computer network remains in a superposition of states between "up" and "down" until they actually try to accomplish something on one. ;-)

Ellis299@aol.com

[J.C.B.]

That's right a "Technology Analyst" with an AOL address. Fuck, I wonder how much this person gets paid, an easy job, easy money, and you don't have to know shit about what you're talking about.

Someone needs to smack this person with a cluestick. Has this person heard of cable companies that encourage you to use NAT? What does this person think that a gateway running NAT would look like to this fancy new computer counting technology? Has this person actually neworked two computers together, or did (s)he just read "Wired's history of the Internet and NAT, for dummies?"

Exsqueeze me?

[Rand Race]

With NAT-based hubs, cable providers won't be able to see into all connected devices-making remote troubleshooting difficult-because, again, the NAT is speaking for all connected devices. It's the data communications equivalent of, "You wanna talk to her, you go through me"-except you don't even know she's there to talk.

Uhm, Cable droids, that's what my firewall IS THERE FOR!!! Damn skippy you ain't gonna see what's behind my NAT device, you and every NetBus packing, snot-nosed, loser script kiddie out there. My provider has this little numeric string that can be used to gain access to my machines if need be: My phone number.