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

No Server Policy is a good thing

[Jeppe Salvesen]

If you're not allowed to run a server, and get a worm, the company can be reasonably suspicious that the open port is a backdoor, and then contact you.

If you let people run servers, they'll get hacked since they don't know what the heck they are doing. Then you'll have a bunch of compromised machines in your network that could be activated in a DDOS attack, or used to start worm attacks, or whatever.

Thus, restricting servers is pretty much a good thing. If you want to run a server for a few friends, make firewall rules that let them access and no-one else. This is reasonable secure if your friends are truly your friends, and will go undetected by the cable nazis.