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VPN Clients Not Allowed On Residential Service
wayn3 writes "ComputerWorld reports here that two of the major cable companies have language in their terms of service that VPN clients are forbidden for "residential" class, forcing clients on their "business" offering which is at twice or more times the cost of residential service.
Has any been bit by this, and do those companies consider SSH a VPN client? This would stop me from telecommuting since my company would not be able to afford the business service."
I mean, you're using the connection for business purposes, you should be willing to pay for that. If your company can't afford it, then tough. It's not rocket science. Not only that, if you require 24-7 availability of your systems, you can always install a modem or two and connect that way.
If you require internet access for work, then you get a work account. If you require it for home, then it's a home account.
Hell, if you work from home, get the damn work account, then deduct the cost from your income taxes.
Seriously, who here runs a VPN that doesn't connect to their office? I can't really see a use for a VPN besides connecting widely distributed corporate offices and internal networks, which is most certainly deserving of business-class rates.
Is your company running tools written by ma
What if I'm not using a VPN but just doing research on the web for work? Are the cable companies gonna stipulate that you can't do anything for a business from home, even browsing the web?
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
I can. I have family in the area, some with broadband of various kinds. If we shared files more (which will probably happen in the future), it would be nice if we could be hooked up on a VPN so we could just drag and drop to various locations, rather than emailing. It would be simpler and it would take up less bandwidth (one copy vs one upload + one download).
Hate trolls? Troll 'em back...at home!
As long as people are complacent and accept these kinds of bully tactics from their providers, they really have no standing to complain about it later. Don't like the fact that your cable company wants to be your net.babysitter, and tell you what you can or can't do on the Internet?
Well, rewarding this kind of arrogant big-brother attitude by giving them even MORE money for business-class service is certainly going to encourage a change for the better, wouldn't it? Or, perhaps, you should tell them to shove their port filters, and their DHCP garbage, up their network interface, and switch to someone else who does indeed provides real internet connectivity.
People really need to vote with their feet, and stop agreeing to put on their Internet provider's straightjackets. There are ISPs who will sell you a residential class DSL service, with a static IP address, and let you run servers. That's real Internet connectivity.
Here's the point: Business usage (phone, cable, whatever) CAN be more costly to the provider because these users will scream louder and demand quicker restoration of service when something goes wrong (line failure due to snowstorm, flooding, you name it). They also threaten to sue for lost business revenues due to the company's failure to restore said service in what they think is a timely manner. Residential customers don't bring that baggage.
So, they don't really care if you USE the line for business, because you won't be able to file suit as in the case above -- according to the TOS you weren't supposed to be using it for that purpose anyway. BUT, if you want them to treat your service as an essential component of running your business, you have to pay business rates...which is not wholly unfair IMHO.
It's not funny till someone gets hurt.
I'm a grad student. The resources at the university I attend suck (the gta office has 1 computer in it, a 486 with windows 3.1). If I want to do work I have to either go to one of the big labs (big, not quiet, lots of people, can't get stuff done) or use the small physics lab which isn't equipped worth a shit. The solution? My home machine, which is a $400 alpha running linux. I ssh from the physics lab and do whatever programming I need to do, or check my email, or whatever. End result, if you classify ssh in the vpn category and expect me to pay 10x what I pay for connectivity then you are a fool. I don't have any options here - I've tried to get real machines in the gta office, even ONE machine that's worth a crap in there - it's a lost cause.
Why should that matter? Do you pay more for bus/train/toll because you are going to work, instead of to the movies?
You should pay for the service you're getting: bandwidth, IP address and quality of service. What you do with it is non of the ISP's bussiness.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The choice is not using a different company. The decision is use broadband from THE company servicing your community under THEIR terms or revert to dial-up service.
*IF* you're lucky, you can "choose" between the monopoly cable company's service and the monopoly phone company's service. If you are REALLY lucky, you can get DSL from a CLEC or COVAD reseller. If you are insanely fortunate, you can get wireless service or your buddy next door has a T-1 you can tap into.
I live a few miles from AOL, mci/worldcom/uunet, and many other MAJOR data centers. Yet *my* choices are: Cable modem, overpriced IDSL service, ISDN, or modem. People living in spitting distance of the main MCI center can't even get my limited selection.
There is no choice, the broadband providers are well aware of that fact, and they are determined to keep it that way.
Why should that matter?
Because life isn't fair, and Internet access isn't a right, it's a product.
If you don't like the way Company A sells their bandwidth, don't purchase from Company A.
The Constitution doesn't guarantee you Fair, it guarantees you (and AT&T) Free. Fair is a socialist concept.
The policy says
In reality I have and continue to use ssh for unix connectivity without hearing a thing from them. I've used pptp in the past when I was forced to work on Evil Empire(tm) OSes and that worked fine. I've got some GRE stuff running now between Cisco boxes on cable modem and that is fine as well.
The only thing they really watch for here is overall transfer volume. Use a gig a day every day for a week and you'll get The Phone Call. Other than this monitoring they don't have the time, energy, or hardware to observe/filter anything else.
I'd say go ahead and use it as you see fit
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Are you sure this isn't just their way of not supporting your VPN? There are similar requirements that you use Windows or Mac OSes, Netscape/IE and these rules are simply to shield tech support from alternative OS/browser questions but I've never received a notice to shut off my Linux systems running SSH, CIPE, Apache (not on port 80), FTP, etc....I also don't call their support and ask how to configure httpd.conf...
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
The real trouble here is the arbitrary application of a fee with no real value in return.
In some cases, yes you are right about VPN being a business activity. In many other cases there are home users that can take advantage of VPN access when their employer is not funding it, or provides a nominal kickback that is = to a $20/mo dialup fee. Or perish the thought, you run a VPN host at home so you can grab stuff off your personal machine when away.
I can agree with them nailing bandwidth hogs with a surcharge or higher (expensive) class of service. When I get tier 1 access from a GSP, I pay for volume and service level - and they don't care what the content is. I don't think it unreasonable to pass those charges down within reason.
Sure the phone company charges a higher business rate. But wait! they will put in a bare-bones 2nd line for $10/mo. That often gets used for fax (or dialup for broadband challenged). What they don't give you is a commercial level of service. Go figure.
Airlines charge higher business fares. Maybe because business travelers want to book at the last minute and make 6 itinerary changes during the trip. Cool... you get that extra service for a fee. If I plan a business trip in advance and get a restricted fare, they don't just upcharge because I used my corp AMEX. I just get the cheap fare and get upcharged if and when I need extras like last minute changes.
You Get What You Pay For - just don't charge me extra for crap I'm not using!!!
Bull. Show me stats - real stats that back this up. Residential users actually use more bandwidth than a business user @ home ever would. Gnutella, Browsing heavy graphical sites, etc. Most business users use VPN to check .... email. Maybe access a file server but how many files will they work on at once?
This is typical telco mindset being applied by cable companies - jack up business rates for the same service you provide to homes since you lose money on residential service. Then try to get as many folks on business lines as possible. Same thing happened with dial up - telcos wanted us to have business lines for hoem dialup users into our corporate networks - and we did - why? The IT managers wanted 'business class' support on these lines to get problems fixed faster - like it was gonna shut the company down if manager X couldn't dial in from home on his 2nd phone line and the telco hadn't committed to having it fixed by X hours. (um - what about the first)
I chuckle at all the ISP issues out there - just like banks - the bigger monoliths screw you while you get GREAT service and such from smaller ones. My ISP is a mom/pop phone company that got bought by another company that specialized in running mom/pops. We have excellent service (DSL), great rates, and they are pretty laid back about how you use it (no blocks - not even port 25, etc)
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Well (assuming you're with a cableco), that's not at all true. You contribute to paying for the overall bandwidth usage.
The issue here is that what cableco's want to do is charge by the byte, but they know that they need to market their product as flat rate to attract the mythical "average user" who does nothing but suck pay-per-view content from the cableco's portal (no, idiots, that's a cable TV customer, you already own that market).
So what they are doing (in the UK as well, where I am based) is writing clauses into the AUP's that are designed to prohibit the sort of things that high bandwidth users are likely to do, without actually mentioning bandwidth per se. The aim isn't primarily to stop those activities, it's to limit bandwidth usage either directly (by not bringing in traffic to servers) or indirectly (by punting the high usage customers).
The UK basically has three broadband providers, DSL from the monopoly telco, and cable modems from two cableco's. And that's it. The telco acts exactly like the cableco's highlighted here; abusive, obstructive, restrictive, incompetent and internally muddled. It's impossible to get a straight answer out of them on policies.
In contrast, the two UK cableco's are (currently) behaving strangely honestly. One of the two, NTL, brought in a blanket ban on all servers. In the outcry that followed, they reversed this, and instead made their policy clear; it's all about bandwidth (as above). They acknowledged that they would only pursue those customers who generated an unfair amount of external traffic, like were running a server that was constantly attracting more traffic than their cable could cope with, leaving packets to expire alone and unloved throughout the network. The other UK cableco, Telewest, recently sent out a huge email about their technical policies. It named names internally, it gave usage numbers, server details, it basically treated the customers as intelligent, informed people, and solicited feedback. "Tell us how you want us to develop your network," they said, and I think they meant it. They understand that a prerequisite to having customers is to have happy customers who aren't just sitting fuming and waiting for their contracts to expire. There will probably be some dissenting followups here, and it's certainly the case that NTL and Telewest do screw over some customers, but they are getting better.
So my point is that there are different ways of doing things. Marketing droids can be invited to consider that it's OK to talk about bandwidth usage upfront, as long as you make it clear that you're only concerned with extreme cases and not 95% of Joe Users. Technical guys can be made to realise that if you involve your customers and don't lie to them or dissemble, they will be more understanding when you have problems. Lawyers can be instructed to stick to the important issues when writing AUP's, and not to create sleepless nights for low usage customers who just want to set up secure remote access to their boxen.
Honesty, clarity. It's all we ask for, really. Target the users that are costing you money, do it directly, and don't make vague threats that will just piss off the 95% of low usage customers that you rely on to generate money.
Is that so hard to understand? NTL and Telewest in the UK get it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Having briefly worked as tech support for @Home, allow me to show a brief glimpse of why providers may want to do this.
An inordinate amount of cable internet support calls are VPN related. If you thought that clueless people having trouble connecting to their AOL email was a tech support nightmare, you've not seen anything until you get someone unable to connect to a VPN. A typical call would go like: "Dammit, why can't I get online!" After asking a few questions and running some tests it's made clear that the connection is fine, and they're able to connect through their desktop machine, just not their laptop. "Okay," I'd say, "It's probably just an error in the settings somewhere." I'd then proceed to describe how to open up the relevant controls in NT4 (it was always NT4...) "What? Are you kidding?!" they'd scream "This is my companies laptop and we're not allowed to touch anything on it!!!!!" "That's a problem, then," I'd say. "You'll have to have your sys admin check the settings for you then." "You're fucking kidding me! I'm in Redmond, WA and the company is in Denver! I work from home!"
The story was always the same: dumbass company gives employess laptops so they can work from home, and told them they had to get a broadband internet service, but didn't configure the machines for even DHCP or give the employees the admin passwords to configure things. You'd get that call about 20 times a day.
I'm so fucking glad I'm back in research. :)
Wrong - use your head man. If all of AT&T's customers used 100% their cable modem's capacity 24 hours a day, you would not be getting broadband for $40 a month.
He didn't say he wanted to use his maximum cablemodem bandwidth constantly - he said he expected the 128k he was guaranteed. By my calculations, that's less than 1/12th of the bandwidth of a T1.
What should be in the the TOS of cable companies is total bandwidth allocation. In Austin, Time Warner has nothing like that in their TOS. However, if you use "too much," they will shut you down and make you call in to have the service turned back on. When we asked how much was "too much," they wouldn't tell us - because they want the right to make arbitrary decsions.
A friend of mine tried to determine the maximum upstream bandwidth allowed before a customer is marked as "bad." I forget the exact numbers, but it was something like 10 gigs up in a month could cause your service to be shut off... I could do that with a 56k modem!
That's something solved by language such as "VPN access not supported", not by expressly forbidding it. Not supporting a certain service is a sign of limited human resources, whereas not allowing smacks of money grubbig.
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Oh, goody, someone just finished reading Atlas Shrugged...
If you don't like the way Company A sells their bandwidth, don't purchase from Company A.
How about, if I don't like the way Company A sells their product, I rescind the government granted right-of-way that allowed Company A to dig up countless miles of public and private property to bring their product to me?
Fair is a socialist concept.
So is eminent domain, but without it we wouldn't have any cables (or utilities) reaching our homes at all. If we're already granting corporate monopolies based on one socialist theory, why stop there?
I think what's wrong with the outright ban of VPN by either policy or blocking is that the cable companies are making decisions on what is and what is not appropriate residential Internet usage. VPN can and is being used for non-business purposes.