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Cable Companies Saying No to WiFi Sharing
blastedtokyo writes: "According to this story from CNet, Time Warner Cable is going after people who share their wireless connections via NYC Wireless or other public share networks. All we need is a warchalking symbol that conveys 'I'm a lawyer who doesn't have time to figure out how to set up a WEP link.'" This might remind you of a story posted the other day about other ways cable ISPs are trying to lock down their networks.
Fault loves the past, worry loves the future, but content enjoys the present.
It was about time that the cable companies started trying to lock down their services. Everyone else is. Music, Radio, Phone, now cable. Go figure
"Greed is for amateurs. Disorder, chaos, anarchy: now that's fun!"
If they are worried about people giving bandwidth away. Instead of chasing off potential customers. Why don't they just charge for bandwidth usage like a lot of them are anywaiz. That way, even if someone gives it away using wireless, they get their money and everyone is somewhat happy.
Plus, it doesn't give them the evil ogre look when they just try to make a profit. (At least not as much so.)
~ kjrose
I don't see the problem. Anyone who allows access to his network, competes with the ISPs at a price they cannot match, while they have to pay the increased costs for the extra band width. It's either this, or paying per byte.
I own a small ISP, so I fully agree that it's within ISPs rights to limit the connection to only those who purchase it for consumer grade services. If you're a business or reseller customer, you can purchase a T1 or higher cost/bandwidth circuit and do whatever you want with it. If a ~$50/month residential user ends up giving his access to the whole neighboorhood, there won't be any money to run the services. We all know free Internet doesn't work. So suck it up and pay for your own service so you can have reliable and decent service from your providers.
Hrm last time I checked banthwith from a carrier was still running 200 a month per megabit I severaly doubt that your paying that. Broadband as compared to a T1 is a fallicy it's a modle based on oversubscription to make money becuase consumers generaly arent willing to pay the full costs and the cable co dosent expent them to be 24/7 kaza etc users.
If we had reality in pricing (or the tier 1's would lower there costs to tier 2 but as they are going under I doubt it)
No sir I dont like it.
Because they base their pricing on "average use". You giving away your connection is not "average use" and you against your contract. Want to give away your connection? Go buy a T-1 with no usage clause like that. What? It costs a lot more? Sure does.
Think of it this way. Bandwidth is limited and an increase of bandwidth use increased the cable companies cost.
For example, assume you are on a fixed electrical plan (they have them in Omaha, I don't know if they have them elsewhere) and you start giving electricity to your neighbors for free. Would that be wrong? If so, why isn't stealing bandwidth just as bad?
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Flamebait...oh well.
Sure, you're paying for your connection, but what about everyone else piggybacking off of it over WiFi? Sounds quite a bit like the one-apartment-stealing-cable-for-the-building situation to me. Sure, Time-Warner or whomever is paid $40 or so a month for the service, but what about the $1200 from the other 30 apartments that get it for free?
-----rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
As an Apple Airport user with a secured station who is looking to get into cable internet in the next six months, this is a critical question for me to answer. Guess I need to talk to my local cable company personally.
And isn't this why they cap our bandwidth? If it was really costing them so much damn money, they'd either charge us by the MB, or give us slower caps on our modems. Instead, they're just shutting off anyone who does it, instead of changing their system to work better. When you combine greed and laziness, it's incredible what companies will do to their loyal customers.
I don't share my wireless network with anyone. I have it on my laptop and my pda (The awesome despite some performance issues e740) and I have my AP set up thanks to Linksys's update to only allow those two to connect via WEP and MAC address. So if they tried to connect to it, they will see it, but they will also not be able to connect. That is unless the Cable Guy is a hacker too, which I doubt (what hacker would want to do that job!). Besides, don't those freaks who share it know that they risk their own systems by running it unencrypted and unrestricted?? Also, they lose the ability to do cool stuff like acess your desktop data amd hardware from PDA or Laptop(if they turn on sharing, anyone can see their stuff...stupid move). They also can't share printers like I do with my laptop! ;)
Gorkman
Many cable companies seem to think that trying to restrict their users from wireless solutions is a good idea, but AT&T seems to have the right approach.
i p.asp
http://www.attbroadband.com/homenetworking
redirects to
http://www.computers4sure.com/linksys/store/att_z
If you drop in your zip code you will see that AT&T not only doesn't deny you wireless but in fact offers a one-stop-shopping for wireless products from Linksys.
So, while this specific article is about sharing your wifi with people that don't live in your apartment/home/discarded fridge box, I have to wonder if AT&T will even care about such sharing. They're pushing wifi as a solution, so they have to expect this sort of thing to happen...
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
The basic problem here is that some people feel the need to "bring it to the masses" - for whatever reason. I see a couple of solutions:
1. Turn off the service on these thieves.
2. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and place a cap of some sort on their monthly transfers or bandwidth.
3. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and charge them for usage accordingly.
4. Acknowledge this is happening and set up a public information infrastructure, where the cost would be shared by businesses, providers AND taxpayers. This is akin to setting up public streetlamps, wastebaskets, water fountains, etc. The public has shown an interest in this type of thing, so it's alternately good business and good public policy - something you don't see too much of.
PERSONALLY - I prefer the fourth option.....
I help organize the Houston Wireless Users Group, and the PhotonSphere, a site dedicated to wireless freenet advocacy. A few days ago, we received an email from the Electronic Frontier Foundation concerning what is happening in New York. Basically, the EFF is searching for regional and local ISPs who have Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs) that allow you to do what you want with the bandwidth you purchase from them. If you are familiar with your AUP, please visit The Sphere and post what you know so that we may pass this information along to the EFF. The full letter from the EFF may be found here as well.
Because rightly or wrongly, many PHBs fear that attacks over wireless networks would subject them to legal action by the victims of said attacks.
I do not understand why they are doing this. Are they losing money? Why? After all, their costumer agreement is either one of:
- Guaranteed bandwidth with a fixed charge
- Pay-per-MB, or
- A mixture of both.
Thus they charge for the traffic on their leased links, regardless of wether it is generated by the costumer or Wi-Fi free-riders.Another point is that they lease the link on a particular costumer, and the costumer can do with the link whatever he pleases. If only the costumer can use the link, then that means his family/friends/flatmates cannot?? I think this is absurd.
In the end, it is up to the costumer himself to regulate traffic on his local network. If he gets charged a lot, or his connection is slow because there are a lot of free-riders taking advantage of his open Wi-Fi system, then he can limit access (by allowing only specific MAC addresses to connect). I think this is easy enough.
Also consider this. When a company hires a leased line/ADSL connection, they do not face a limit on the number of terminals they will have connected to their LAN. What does it matter to the provider? They still get compensated for the increased traffic.
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
Customers saying "Fuck Off" to Cable Companies
...someone got a bunch of people together in midtown manhattan who had cordless phones and said, "Hey - I have this great idea, why don't we all share our phone lines with each other? It'll be great, and bring wireless phone service to underserved areas." While I think the practicality of this is a bit daunting, just bear with me for the purpose of the analogy.
I admit that I don't know a whole lot about NYC Wireless, but if I'm getting the gist of things from their page, they essentially want to have everyone possible share their 802.11b bandwidth so the internet can be free and wireless for all. As altruistic as this sounds, I have to agree with the ISPs that this presents all sorts of problems as far as network security and is perfectly within their rights to limit.
Read your service agreement with AT&T Broadband, or Road Runner, or Time Warner, or whoever you go through - chances are there's some clause in your contract that tells you not to subcontract the service out to others. If you want to run your own ISP, or offer wireless broadband to all, that's for you to decide - but they're perfectly within their rights to tell you to go scratch and get your own T1 from another provider.
(I should add that I'm a law student, so my fate is sealed as far as the lawyer jokes go.)
That's my purse! I don't know you! -- Bobby Hill
They're not even going after unsecured APs in general.
They (and they have made this clear in the article) are only going after those who publically advertised their open APs on the NYC Wireless site.
As long as you don't publish your name on a site advertising that you're giving away free wireless, you're fine.
And as to NYC Wireless, etc. - They simply need to anonymize their operations so that AP providers can't be linked easily to cable modem accounts. Right now, the site is providing a name and address, which makes it easy for RR to bust them.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
At my apartment, I have two room mates, we share the cost of a cable internet connection, between the three of us there are 8 computers (i have 1 laptop for taking to class, one workstation, and two servers) and between the three of us, we have over 80 gigs of mp3s, 150+ movies, and anything else under the sun. we also have WiFi for the laptops, so where's the line drawn, when does it breech the contract? what's the difference between sharing with my two roomates, all of which are bandwidth hogs, or my elderly neighbor who wants to check her email, and cruise around on the net? most people aren't anything like me,
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
This kind of stupidity, along with the crackdown on "bandwidth hogs", is all due to the shortsightedness of those creating the subscriber contracts and AUPs. If the ISPs would simply provide clear policy on bandwidth usage and set something that both their customers and they could live with, this kind of witch hunt would be unnecessary. We have cable modem providers banning servers regardless of whether they are public or private (for the subscriber's use only). They are banning 802.11 because they think it might cause a bandwidth problem. They block ports for applications ranging from web servers to P2P networks.
If there is a usage limit, spell it out. If you want more money for more usage, publish a price schedule. But quit targeting early adopters who are just using their connections in new and innovative ways.
Mine says I "may not connect more than 5 computers at a single location" and that I can't "resell the Service or any portion thereof," but it doesn't say anything about giving it away for free (assuming fewer than 5 computers at a time are connected).
Telocity is great. I have nothing bad to say about them.
Whatever they say they'll do, they can't have any control. If they say you cannot share your connection how will they be sure that you are not sharing? Even using an regular eth connection with your neighbor, what can do?
Once the data arrived your computer you can pass it anywhere you want, you can send it through your eth connection our wifi, or whatever, you can even throw it back to the internet. The point is that They can't do anything, simply because then can't know what you are doing with all the data arriving in your computer.
What amazes me the most is that the Cable Companies seems to don't know this. Why don't they know it? What is happening? Do they only recruit lawyers? Don't they have technical consulting there? Don't they have a employer with a QI 90+ to tell them that it probably won't work and the best is to consult somebody who knows what s/he's doing?
This shows the quality of the service we are buying, we, nothing more then geeks, know more about their bussiness then themselves.
Shame...
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
Cable companies don't have the resources to go hunt down casual sharers ("casual" being defined as up to at least 17 college students in a house - I set up an IP Masq server for a bunch of friends, and that's the # of users there - TW never cared, and never went after ANY of the 329820442234 apartments using it.
In fact, despite the contract saying it was verboten, TW employees would hang out on the Linux support forums and sometimes even give unofficial IP Masq advice. (This was the Ithaca, NY area)
The difference in this situation is - The users that got "the letter" advertised on the nycwireless site that they were running an open AP, saying, "Hey everyone, feel free to use my cable modem."
If it's for yourself and your friends, they don't care. If you're providing unmonitored open access to strangers, that's a different story.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
We're paying them for our connection. Why do they care what we do with it after that?
Because their efforts to pigeonhole human beings into predictable consumers who do only what they anticipate, and nothing creative, is failing, and with it quite possibly their flawed business models.
These are the same people who misguidedly think that bandwidth is something that can be "stolen" (never mind the dictionary definition of the word) and would probably accuse you of "stealing" temperature if you went to a shopping mall to enjoy the warm air (in winter) or air conditioning (in summer) without buying anything.
The fact that you can't steal temperature, any more than you can steal bandwidth, doesn't seem to bother the purveyors of such newspeak in the least, and such nuances as the fact that you might be guilty of loitering (in the shopping mall example), or of violating the terms of your service contract (with your ISP), but not stealing, seems to be completely lost on such people.
One can only hope the FBI, who in many such instances have become judge, jury, and executioner (or at least "fine levyer" in the form of stolen, or seized, equipment) eventually catches on to this and starts putting their resources into fighting real crimes, rather than one-sidedly settling contract disputes extra-judicially.
In the meantime, expect "theft" to become an even more abused word than "terrorism," if it hasn't already.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I used to know the owner of a cable company. He used to scream and yell about how everybody was stealing from them, and the government was raping them. Cable companies are super paranoid about losing a dollar anyway. If you have ever seen the cable commercials that ask you to turn you your neighbors in for cable theft. Yet they have managed to raise rates on us, and restrict service further.
Epilogue - He sold his share in the cable company a couple years ago, for 90 million dollars. And this was a "small" cable co. in West-Virginia.
For the ISP/customer relation, the one and only question is the contract between them. Is bandwith sharing prohibited or not.
If it is, WIFI or not, the customer is wrong.
One more annoying aspect is the fact that more and more law enforcement agency ask ISP to keep log of connection informations. This lead me to think that WiFi enthusiast sharing their connection, acting as local ISP, need something like the WGAP.
What's this ? The Wandering Guest Access Protocol is an idea I work on in my (few) spare times since a few month, permiting for a user sharing bandwith to deny responsability about some part of the traffic emanating from his network, notably by using an authentication of the Wandering Guest using its network. But there are so many legal and technical challenges I doubt I can publish any lifetime soon a satisfying presentation. Anybody wanting free WIFI networks being acceptables to the establishment must think about legal aspects. Else, the post 20010911 effect will provide the perfect excuse for the telcos to remove competition.
They can be sure you're sharing their service ONLY IF YOU ADVERTISE IT PUBLICALLY.
Only people who advertised their wide-open APs on nycwireless got "the letter" - And TW said they're not actively hunting down 802.11 users - These particular users, in TWs own words, "Waved a banner in front of us" saying they were breaking their TOS.
TW found out because they effectively TOLD TW they were breaking the rules.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
NetJunkie writes:
Because they base their pricing on "average use". You giving away your connection is not "average use"
So? The whole point of an average is that some people use more and some less. If three machines are using my connection, then I am using more than "average use", but that in and of itself doesn't give them the right to retaliate.
and you against your contract.
Not necessarily, that depends on the contract. My contract explicitly allows me three connections. If I'm within that limit, they should not care; if I go over it, I expect them to complain.
Other people with other providers have other contracts. Some of them might have contracts that say basically, "here's a connection, do whatever you want with it".
The issue is whether or not the usage is within the terms of the contract, not whether or not it's "average use"; and you don't know the terms of the contracts in question. If your service contract specifies that you must not exceed "average use" then I would tell you your contract is fundamentally flawed and you should look for another provider (or renegotiate, if possible).
Want to give away your connection? Go buy a T-1 with no usage clause like that. What? It costs a lot more? Sure does.
T-1 lines generally come with usage clauses too, and whether or not they restrict sharing or reselling connections or bandwidth depends on your ISP. Also, there are many more (and cheaper) options than a T1 for internet access now, many of which have laxer usage policies than your typical consumer-grade Cable Modem or DSL contract.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
You may wish to look into some things before you run your mouth and call people thieves. If your ISP allows networks, than this is perfectly legit. You pay them for the service, they provide it. If they give you unlimited bandwidth and permission to run a network then they have no right to cry when you use it.
do not read this line twice.
Do you think you should be able to bring some friends to share your plate to an all you can eat restaurant? Or that you should be able to take home as much leftovers that you can carry?
The Internet is comprised of systems connected to the net via others that are already connected. These systems then extend the net by connecting new entities via their connection and so on down the line. This continues for as long as someone is willing to share their bandwidth, usually at a price. Without a specifically written contract, I do not understand how these companies can view this as an illegality. It is precisely what they themselves are doing.
Unlike cable television access theft, where it is the duplication of data that is being sold, bandwidth is a limited commodity and you cannot use the exact same bits that are being used by whomever you gave them to. It is more analogous to allowing a guest of your home to use your telephone. As that guest is taking up the entire "bandwidth" of your phone for their conversation, you cannot use that same phone line yourself. I don not believe that phone companies could legally establish the practice of fining or disconnecting your service should someone other than yourself use your phone.
There is no law that states that it is mandatory to be a Fortune 500 company in order to resell or give away bandwidth you have purchased. This behavior is a very good example on how the Internet is being altered and stunted by the corporate machine who now views the net as their property. They now feel that not only do they have rights to your data, what you can or cannot send or download, but also in the manner of how you allow data to eventually be placed on your wire.
OK all you free market weenies you weren't even born when Ma Bell made you pay for every phone extention in your own house. They metered the voltage on the line and if they detected a drop the operator broke into your call and told you you were breaking the law and needed to pay for the extra extensions.
Is that the hill you want to die on?
I'd like the job of driving around with an omni on my roof wardriving all the cable modem territories looking for wifi sharing. Document the node, send it off to legal, keep driving.
"Can you share it now?" "No" "Good"
Get paid to wardrive! Nifty. And hey, I've got experience!
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
If people keep piggybacking off consumer broadband connections, then it will just force the ISPs to go to a bandwidth metering charging system. So unless you want to pay per megabyte instead of the 'unlimited' service you currently get, stop letting people use your consumer connection. And when the ISPs _do_ go to a per megabyte charging plan, don't bitch here about it and wonder why they are doing it. I'll just point you to this article.
If i've paid for the bandwidth, why am I not allowed to shove it over WiFi and have a few mates use it? What is the difference between that and a Linux box running IP Masquerading hooked up to a home network?
Unless they are charging people for using the bandwidth (ie. reselling it) then once they've purchased the bandwidth then they're pretty much free to use it how like like.
(unless the terms and conditions they signed in the first place expressly disallow this)
2. Acknowledge the fact that this is happening and place a cap of some sort on their monthly transfers or bandwidth.
I'm surprised there isn't a default monthly cap at the moment. It could be set to something very high that would cause a problem for only a select few people but would easily knock out WiFi sharers.
Mind you, if they advertise unlimited bandwidth then this is going to be a problem. I do however see the side of the network company who offer bandwidth only to find that they lose a number of customers simply because one person is sharing out his.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I'm with NTL cable for my internet connection. We can run servers just fine, with some slight restrictions (webservers must not be high traffic or pornographic, ftp servers must be password protected, and no VPN)
This is from their AUP...
17. Servers
(i) You are solely responsible for the setup and security of all servers that you may run on your PC. You are also responsible for all traffic that may pass through your PC. Please note that your account may be subject to immediate suspension or disconnection without notice, if any security breaches do occur or any server causes any degradation in network performance. You should also note that running servers on your PC may cause your own connection to operate in a less than optimal manner.
(ii) Webservers: see Para 8, Websites (this referes to them terminating your connection if there is excessivly high traffic, or pornography)
(iii) Remote Access: All remote access ( FTP; SSH ; PC Anywhere etc) must be password protected & the address must not be publicly advertised.
(iv) Game: If the game in question has a password/IP access restriction option this must be used. Your IP address must not be publicly advertised on Gaming sites etc.
(vi) Other: You may run other servers but be aware that ntl reserve the right to restrict access to them should they cause network problems or should we receive complaints.
(vii) We may, at our discretion, run manual or automatic systems to determine your compliance with our User Policy (e.g. scanning for "open mail relays"). You are deemed to have granted permission for this limited intrusion onto your network or machine.
Please note that should we receive any complaints about any server that you may be running that your Internet access may be suspended without notice pending further investigation.
18. Use of Virtual Private Network (VPN)
As stated above, the ntl Internet and/or Interactive Services are for residential use only and we do not support the use of VPN. If we find you are using VPN via the ntl IP network we may instruct you to stop using it and you must comply with this request. This is in order to prevent problems to ntl (eg network performance) and other Internet users.
I run a webserver and ftp server and have had no trouble at all with them. It's a great service!
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Why do people immediately want to involve the government? Would you quit trying to spend other people's money?
The cable companies should, rightfully, either shut off service or charge by the byte. Frankly, charging by the byte is ludicrous for the residential sector -- virtually everything is moving to flat rate. Consumers like flat rate because it allows you to budget far more easily.
Want a "public" wireless network? Start a company, decide how much it'll cost, and bill subscribers appropriately. No, it's not this pipe dream of a free-for-all wireless network where you can plug in anonymously and do whatever you want. Maybe it'll be viable in 10-15 years, but right now it's not.
I have Road Runner here in Minnesota, and they don't seem concerned about me running mta/sshd/httpd/nntpd*. In fact, they just emailed me to let me know that my current version of sendmail is vulnerable to the percent hack. Good for them.
* if you're running sshd, why are you exposing your vncserver rather than ssh-ing in and port forwarding?
--
E_NOSIG
Zelet asks:
Think of it this way. Bandwidth is limited and an increase of bandwidth use increased the cable companies cost.
We both give them money and cost them money. Balancing those two and coming up with a profitable pricing schedule and service contract is their job, not ours.
For example, assume you are on a fixed electrical plan (they have them in Omaha, I don't know if they have them elsewhere) and you start giving electricity to your neighbors for free. Would that be wrong?
If I paid for an unlimited amount of sharable electricity, then no, it wouldn't be wrong. I would be very surprised to get such an agreement without paying at least the GNP of a small country for it, but if I had such an agreement, I would expect to be able to use it.
To bring the analogy a bit closer, if I had a contract with my electric company that said, for $100 per month, I could draw up to 500kWH of power and do what I like with it, then why shouldn't "what I like with it" include sharing it with my friends and neighbors.
If I could get a similar contract for $80/mo, but with a clause saying I couldn't share it, and I decide to save money by going with that contract, then I couldn't legally or morally share it.
[Disclaimer: Above numbers are for illustration only, and do not necessarily represent reasonable usage or pricing]
If so, why isn't stealing bandwidth just as bad?
This isn't stealing bandwidth, the people sharing the bandwidth are paying for it. In exchange for $X per month, they get Y bandwith and some other contract clauses. Provided they remain within their contract, nobody should care what they do.
In some of the cases where the Broadband ISP's are "cracking down" they are cracking down on actual contract violations, that's fine. In other cases the broadband ISP's are going "hey, we didn't think of that" and rather than eating their mistake, they are taking it out on legitimate paid customers who are operating within their terms of service. That is NOT fine.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
These companies should not be free to decide who their customers are. And should not be free to decide how their services are used. They are providing a public utility under a public license.
This is not like buying soap or corn flakes. This is like getting electric service and using it for whatever I damn well like. Their are bandwidth issues to be accounted for for sure, but that is it.
These are just a bunch of greedy bastards that want to charge me hundreds of dollars a month for services that have virtually no real operating costs and could be provided for with a minimum of techical knowledge
But apparently we are going back to the days when Ma Bell takes 30 years to implement touch tone service or call waiting or the next great thing and then pat themselves on the back (and charge us an arm and a leg) for a job well done. Jeez... I can't wait to be charged per email or per authorized web page I load into my next generation cell phone that costs me $300 and displays ads from the phone companies in the middle of my 911 call!
Just a few years ago these same companies were arguing that people shouldn't be able to hook up their own phones to the network because of the risks. Now we see that the risk was that people would take it upon themselves to revolutionize communications first with BBS and then with the inter connected internet and email, thus circumventing the big bells.
People easily forget that the phone company didn't want the internet and it was Congress and the Universities that forced it to open it's lines to data traffic. Let's not let them put in tolls at every corner. Keep the air free.
What kind of a headline is that? It's about as obvious as "Ice Cream Company Declines to Pass Out Free Ice Cream" or "Soda Retailer Declares 'No Free Refills'"
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Today's Top Deals
People (especially those who reads slashdot!) like flat fees, unlimited time, unlimited bandwidth.
As I'm sure everyone knows, bandwidth is not free. The cable companies price their product selling for typical household (or business, on different pay scales of course) use--of course variations in use do exist, but those who just use email balance out the power users (or the file sharers) etc.
If people want to share their connections with everyone and use that much more bandwidth, I'm sure the cable companies would be glad to charge you much more for your connection--maybe if we got some petitions going for per bandwidth charges we could get the cable providers to ok this! Anyone interested, I think this could work
Cable Subscriber: What the fuck is their complaint?
Cable Exec: Well...see...we did some math and figured that we could sell cable internet services for $n per month and make a profit doing so. Our original calculations were based on assumptions about average customer usage. To make a long story short: we fucked up. It turns out there are people using WAY more bandwidth than we ever bargained for...and we find our profits unsatisfactory. So, we are rectifying our prior mistake. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere...
Your mention of securing machines brings up a very good point relative to this. You can expect that, as wireless products get easier to work with (right now the stats on ease of use with Wi-Fi are appalling), they will be showing up in more homes. How many of these folks will have clue one about how to set these networks up to prevent roaming access? How many will really care?
In the end the providers will try to prvent this excess usage from happening, but they can hardly take on all of the people who simply forget to lock down their networks. They'll take on those who advertise, but then with the growing volume of wireless networks, will people really need to be advertising? You'll just go to wherever you want, whip out your roaming software, and be on-line. If anything your problems getting connected will likely be tied more to interference than lack of open networks.
Overall I'd expect that there will be a slight increase in overall network usage because of this extra roaming and this will end up causing a slight increase in prices and a balance will be achieved. The providers will go after egregious abusers and the rest of us will happily roam without them ever noticing.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Hopefully people will do just that, and said fuckup Cable Execs will realize the problems inherent in harrassing their own customers. If they are worried about people using excessive bandwidth, why not just meter or cap the user's bandwidth to a given throughput per month? Done right, most people wouldn't even notice it was happening.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
...perhaps not "the Deity of your choosing" but "a Deity of your choosing"...That way, Ganesh or Vishnu, you could pick either one without making your choice mutually exclusive.
Wait.... what if TW offered two different plans.... one for individuals who want unlimited bandwidth at a flat price, one for people who want to do whatever they please with their connection and are willing to pay by bandwidth?
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Capitalism works on competing businesses raising capital and dividing markets. The resulting competition gets companies, and individuals, moving forward.
Consumer broadband languished for years until both cable and twisted pair solutions were available. This means you can buy residential broadband from either your cable company or from your phone company. Or you could try Covad, Speakeasy, Wifi Metro, or other services.
As any good market, the top broadband player will make most of the money, the second player will make a reasonable return, the third player loses a little money and hopes someone pulls an Enron, and everyone else has a dream. The market isn't yet mature, and there are business uncertainties about marking the boundry of the market and dividing costs. This is how people get into arguments on owning the loop to the phone company's Central Office, or the home owner owning the right to move the drop cable to a cable overbuild, or the right to dump the ISP side of an internet connection and pay only for physical routing.
It's also how people argue about costs. One way of looking at wireless internet nodes and household private networks is that they all usurp service and place undue burden on the provider; an open network is theft. The other way is to view the service as providing a utility, like power, to a residence; an open node is like running an extension cord out to the front yard. The market will sort this out.
SBC nee Pacific Bell doesn't mind if you run a local network or open node, and has a long history of not worrying about extra phone extensions. Cable companies have a long history of worrying about cable descramblers, people using cable for two televisions in the house, and people using cable for public display. The terms and enforcements follow the corporate histories.
Who is correct? Let the dollars decide.
Chasm/Thaila
P.s.: Looking for a Silicon Valley SE to sell products to developers? Email me at jobhunt@truegift.com
The buffet analogy is perfect in this case. In your toll bridge case, the car would have to expand or contract based on the number of people on board, which it doesn't. Think of it as a gate of a certain fixed width and you're selling tickets for people to pass through. Five fat people can pass through side-by-side, or ten skinny ones. Would you rather be selling five tickets or ten?
Ideally cable providers should be throtteling bandwidth and providing bandwidth service levels. If they sell you 1.5Mbps for $50 a month, you should be able to download at 1.5Mbps all year long, every second of the day. But then you shouldn't be able to ever burst 6Mbps. However, this isn't the case with most providers. Comcast provides me with what they term a peak of 1.5Mbps, but in actual fact I often get much, much more than that. Depending on the time of day and day of week, I can max at 6Mbps. If they're not having a bandwidth crunch in my area, that might be fine, but if they're hurting and still not capping the bandwidth, whose fault is that? Certainly theirs. I don't know if bandwidth throtteling is such a technically challenging issue, but it seems that enforcing download caps in MB/month rather than bits/second is taking the easy way out.
This is why I use DSL. The phone company doesn't care. You pay for some speed down, and some speed up. They are just passing it onto whatever ISP you choose. I use a Linux Friendly ISP myself. They could care less if I setup a website, or serve games. I can put as many computers as I want. If I want static IPs they'll route a many as I want to pay for (I use a /28 myself.) As long as I don't send spam or have an open relay they are cool with it all.
Most traffic patterns are very bursty, somewhat less so, if you aggregate foerign "freebee" Wifi traffic with your own (and that's generally the problem, because the traffic models break). There are times when I'd want to suck data flat out for a short period of time (downloading the latest GNU/Linux distro, for example), and I'll be damned if I have to suck that data through a bandwidth-capping straw. I like my 768kb/s downstream DSL speed for that, thankyouverymuch.
Of course, the US$80 a month I pay (includes $15 for a dedicated pair 'cuase I'm too far from the DSLAM to ride on top of POTS) is nowhere near what it costs to deploy 3/4 of a T1 line, so using that bandwidth flat out is out of the question. The presumption is that, over the course of a month, use will average out, despite the bursty nature.
Now, compare that to a modem capped at, oh, 128 kb/s. Flat out that's 41-1/2 gigabytes over the course of a month. A recent check of the past 6-1/2 days traffic into my home LAN via the firewall showed 149 MB. This works out to 269 bytes per second, about 700 MB over the course of a month. I haven't downloaded any new distros lately, so lets add, oh, 1.5 Gig to that (multiple CDs, restarted downloads, etc.) That adds up to 2.2 GB/month or 6784 b/s, sustained. My use is probably on the heavy side.
The point is that 6.8 kb/s is a far cry from a 128 kb/s rate cap. So, such a rate cap would be (a) crippling for the occasional massive download, and (b) still too high if the traffic were anywhere near steady, as if it were shared. About the only thing the 128 kb/s rate cap does is even out use of a shared medium. Load balancing during peak use times would be better, and is generally used on DSL connections (because of the centralized nature of aggregation), but would require dynamic control of upstream traffic from distributed cable modems in a cable environment, with it's own overhead issues (though TCP could be rate-limited by delaying packet ACKs, the "interesting" traffic is not TCP).
The only solutions this leaves us with are either (a) pitifully crippling rate caps, (b) metered access, or (c) a certain amount of "free" traffic, followed by metered access to the rest. Option (d), "use all you want until we tell you its a problem", while currently common is crude and fraught with difficulty and misunderstanding.
Now, with a more intelligent network, and local traffic rate capping, shaping, and balancing, interesting possibilities abound: why not permit open access during off-peak times, when there is a light load? To some extent, this needs to be saved to average out heavy use later, but there's no rule that says this has to be 100%, as it is now. Off-peak discounts for bandwidth become possible. Maybe I know I won't be downloading a new distro this month, and my use will be below normal. Maybe next month, my neighbor's will be below normal. Maybe between us (and others), we can offer that excess for free. How much should be under our individual control, but one can see an opportunity to smooth out a neighborhood's overall traffic use by dumping occasional "excess" for free access -- without going to the trouble to secure a dedicated fat pipe, setting up a company to manage it, etc.
This does require technical improvements (local traffic shaping and load-balancing, with shared ISP/user control -- imagine an "ISP meter" like an electric meter, but not as draconian as current attempts at this sort of thing that completely lock out the user), as well as looking at a user's average traffic pattern as averaged over their use over time more than over the sumultaneous use by other users (so, you don't balance you're low use as much against your neighbor's high use, but rather your higher use in the past or the future). This creates the opportunity for "credits" for unused bandwidth to carry from month to month, with some fraction "lost" if not used (you can't carry them forever -- the ISP would have to carry the credit on it's books as earned but unpaid in your favour). Given a "use it or lose it" scenario, sharing of unused bandwidth should naturally happen.
You could've hired me.
You pay the water company for each drop of water you use, so you are paying extra out of your pocket when your friend drinks it. You might get in trouble if you tried to charge them for it, reselling of water obtained from the water company might be illegal. Same with the power coming into your house. Now, if you were paying per bit for your cable access, then go ahead and share it with whomever you like, but if it is illegal to 'resell' it, you can't charge them for it. It's a little different when you are paying $40/mo for 'unlimited' access. I have a feeling they most likely have a clause in your contract prohibitting reselling or allowing people outside your house/apartment to use it. Otherwise, why can't I just get a splitter and run a cable for cable TV to the guy upstairs?
What?
Well, a slight difference with the water company, as you are generally paying for amount of water you use, so you're paying for any water you give to friends. With bandwith, at least with cable modems, you generally pay a flat fee. So while it may be right to bitch about the cable company limiting your "unlimited" amount of bandwith for your use, when you start giving it out to friends and neighbors, you start using more bandwith than you personally can use. Hence, the cable companies may be in the right in trying to clamp down on WiFi sharing.
If there is a usage limit, spell it out. If you want more money for more usage, publish a price schedule. But quit targeting early adopters who are just using their connections in new and innovative ways.
... like to hear from people who run ISPs to see if this theory makes any sense.
Perhaps the contract is working as designed.
I hear that a small fraction of customers use most of the bandwidth. Turn that around, and it says a large fraction of customers are paying too much money. If billing went metered, competition might eventually drive down the price of broadband for most users to the point where the provider couldn't make any money.
Just speculation
-- p
..changes.
Until you pay rates on the Kilobyte, the providers have every right whatsoever, both legally and morally, to prevent you from sharing your connection.
Right now, most services in the US allow subscribers to buy an unlimited amount of transmission at a fixed rate. For example, you might pay $50 a month for a 768k downstream connection.
Compare this to the electric company, which charges you variable rates -- you use more electricity, you pay more cash. The electrical companies probably don't care if you run a line to your poor neighbor's shack -- other than the risk associated with you frying yourself and knocking out the power grid, the only thing they have to concern themselves with is collecting additional revenues for the added kWh.
ISPs are the exact opposite. They let you transfer as much data as you want, but they limit how quickly you can send and receive it. With unlimited transmission rates, they get the same amount of money from you if you transfer 1M or 10T in a single month. They make loads of money on the 1M, and stand to lose quite a bit on the 10T. ISP's assume you won't have 768K of traffic 24/7 for an entire billing cycle -- and this is how they make money.
Simple logic: if more people use your connection, more data is transferred. The ISP begins to lose lots of money. Eventually, even at the fixed bandwidth rate you're paying for, the ISP loses. If you're paying per K, M, or G, suddenly, the ISPs won't care HOW many people you share your connection with -- they'll receive money proportional to the amount of data you and your leeches transmit.
This isn't a big deal, and I'm surprised that it's taken the ISPs this long to jump on the issue.
The problem is that they can't tell the roaming visitor from the freeloading full-time neighbor, so they treat both of them as Eeeevil Cable Thieves instead of either realizing that offering friendly 802.11 service for visitors makes you more likely to buy broadband (either theirs or DSL) (so they should encourage it), or finding a way to charge $5/month for roamer service and get extra revenue from these new customers as long as they can tell a full-timer (who they can hope to get $40/month from) from a light user.
It's a continuation of the industry-dominant policy of suicidal cluelessness. A few of the cable companies get it, and let you offer servers at home, which encourages you to use broadband, but most don't.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Now, let me get this straight. I pay $50 for access to TimeWarner Road Runner. For that, I get broadband bandwidth (which usually ranges from 50 (on below avg. sites) to 800 (under good conditions). I get this bandwidth, and the deal is that I get UNLIMITED ACCESS.
So that means I could be on the net 24/7 and they'd have no cause to complain.
But no matter how long I'm on the net, the bandwidth i get at any one point doesn't change. I always get ~200-300KB/s (avg).
So, if I'm not going to use it 24/7, shouldn't I have the right to let other people use it, so I can get my money's worth? If I let other people come in my house and use my cable modem, Time Warner wouldn't gripe about that? What's the difference between that and me having something where I can broadcast my access to neighbors?
There is no difference in effect for Time Warner. I could do either one, and it would have the same effect on them. Time Warner's simply seizing this to stop it because its technological.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
The fact is when you're paying $20-30/mo for a high speed connection and bandwidth alone costs hundreds, up to thousands (though that's rare these days) per month, and that's not counting the cost of equipment, upgrades, customer support and living wages, you're not buying a dedicated connection. You're buying the right to occasionally get fast downloads and fast intermittent usage. You're more than welcome to use 802.11 for your own computers, you're just not welcome to share it with everyone else. If you want to do that, spend the big bucks for a real dedicated connection instead of sponging off the people that are.
Uhm, I don't know how cable set it up over there, but unless you've got a cable box or some other kind of decoder that controls how many tvs you can have watching different channels, all you need to do is split the cable in the wall or coming out of the jack and everyone can watch whatever they want to. Satellite TV is more restrictive, because of the decoder box it has. Same goes for digital cable. But with plain ol' analog cable tv, as long as you don't split the cable to many times (resulting in crappy signals), you could probably have about 4 or 5 tvs in the house all watching different stations.
What?
Can I download a picture off the internet and then send it to someone? Is that 'sharing' my internet connection?
I don't think that the comparison between cable TV and cable internet is so cut and dried. After all, what if you make the argument that you are just buying bandwidth? Or, more presicely, that you were sold bandwidth?
I use AT&T cable internet. I run a wireless network at home. I have an ad-hoc network set up with internet sharing. AT&T says that I have to pay an extra $5 a month for each computer connected to the internet. (I don't think they understand the concept of ICS.) Since I don't, am I stealing? Or did I pay for bandwidth?
If cable ISPs were all-you-can-eat restaurants:
"Thanks for your money, gentlemen! Here's you go, one plate each. Yes, we know that the plates are the size of a saucer even though our commercials say they're the size of a manhole cover. Now please, overlook that and go help yourself to anything. Oh, except, the sundae bar you heard is in places like this is off-limits to you. And you can't have the fried chicken wings, and you can forget about those bacon bits that you see in the salad bar, those are off limits to you, too. And if you gentlemen want to discuss business over your meal, you have to pay us more money."
"Excuse me, sir, what do you mean, 'Then what did I come here and pay good money for?' You can always sit at your table, sip a glass of water, have a slice of bread, and look at all the nice ads that are on the placemats. We worked very hard to sell that ad space so you customers wouldn't have to look a plain, blank placemats!"
"Oh, and please don't stay too long. Even though we say we never close, we sort of frown on people who keep the tables tied up for too long."
~Philly
This isn't stealing bandwidth, the people sharing the bandwidth are paying for it. [...] Provided they remain within their contract, nobody should care what they do.
Just don't bitch when your cable company decides to implement data transfer limits, because that is the ONLY solution. These morons are going to ruin it for everyone else.
The company shouldn't mind unmonitored open-access use by strangers, because that's not adding significant bandwidth and (more importantly) reducing their number of subscribers, any more than they mind visitors coming to your house and watching cable TV. What they should mind is using your wireless (or wired) access so that your neighbors mooch off your service instead of buying their own, just as they'd mind if you ran a TV cable from your splitter to your neighbor's apartment. The intermediate level - a houseful of college students sharing access - is pretty much equivalent to the houseful of college students sharing the TV in the living room . It'd be nice for the cable company if they could charge more for large households, but it's unrealistic, and besides, this way they're more likely to upsell on the movie channels. (When I lived in Ithaca, you had to buy cable service to get decent TV reception - otherwise there was just one UHF station in Syracuse that bounced over the hill - but HBO didn't cost too much extra so lots of people bought it.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I give a fuck, because you're letting someone else get Internet access, who otherwise would have to pay for it. It's pure math. If it costs $100 to wire a neighborhood, and there are 5 people there with Internet access, they each pay $20. Now, one person mooches off your signal, because you're too fucking incompetent to RTFM and secure your access point. There are now 4 people with service, and the price goes up to $25. That sucks. Scale that for a city instead of a neighborhood, and it still sucks.
Incidentally, they're not saying you can't use 802.11. Go read the article.
They're saying you can't use 802.11 and let your neighbor use it. If you have an access point that authenticates somehow (MAC address, password, whatever), they're not going to know, and they're not going to care. But if you have one that lets your neighbor mooch off your signal, they will care.
I mean, my neighbors are nice and all, but I don't want to use my hard earned cash to pay for Internet access, and then have them mooch off me.
You wouldn't run an extension cord to your neighbor's house and let them mooch off your power, would you? Why would do you do the same for Internet access?
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Here's a food analogy that works:
Pretend that I set up an eatery. I think about an all-you-can-eat take-out buffet, but then realize that I'd lose money on certain corpulant customers. Instead, I create a system where you can take up to 5 lbs. of food. While 5 lbs. is pretty much the break-even point for what I'm charging, I know that most of my customers will never eat that much.
I let a bunch of people in, and to my shock and horror most of them load their take-out cartons with exactly 5 lbs. of food and depart. I follow one of them home, and find them spooning out portions to their neighbor.
Now, is this (a) my fault for setting up a basically faulty (from my POV) system, or (b) the customer's fault for using the system in a way I didn't forsee?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Instead of a company charging a metered rate -- which would eliminate a lot of profit from the "paying too much money" people -- they can just beat/ban/forbid/threaten the high-bandwidth users until they fall into the low-bandwidth category.
This is probably why most ISPs don't explicitly state what acceptable/unacceptable bandwidth usage is...if customers knew, then they could adjust for it. Since customers can't know (because it's never stated), then the company can make the adjsutments.
I pay on the meter for both. It's just how it works in the US.
"They waived a banner in our faces and said, 'Look what we're doing!'" said Suzanne Giuliani, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable of New York City. The company wasn't actively looking for violators, she said, but only reacted when someone pointed out the NYCwireless Web site to them.
I would hardly consider posting a website as "waiving a banner." When you pay for bandwidth, you should be able to use the bandwidth however you choose.
Lets be real here people...they are pissed because they are not getting those 20 other customers. If it really is an issue of "resources" or "bandwidth," perhaps we sould show them the havoc that REAL bandwidth issues can cause...i dunno, perhaps some geographically distributed (within a single provider's network of course) p2p apps running at full throttle.
Last time i checked, no one was sitting on my front stoop DDoS'in.
Oh yeah...and just as a side note, the only reason that I use WiFi is cuz AT&T in over 4 years hasnt been able to get cable to my building! Jerkoffs.
Intelligence is like four wheel drive, having it just means you'll get stuck in more remote places.
Policies against running servers on your cable modem interfere with early adopters, preventing the innovation that might find the killer apps that get lots of people to buy service -- that's suicidally clueless, and pretty common. Policies against wireless are because they can't tell roaming visitors from non-innovative late-adopters who are mooching off their neighbor's paid service rahter than buying their own. Instead, the cable companies need to encourage innovation, perhaps by setting up a tunnel server system so that roamers can easily access the net, either for a small fee or with better service for roamers who are cable subscribers than for non-subscribers (e.g. limit bandwidth to 28kbps for non-subscribers so they can still do email and light surfing, with unlimited for cable subscribers so they can do cool broadband apps.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Cable Companies that Screw Technically Oriented Cusotmers Will Watch Subscriptions Go Down the Drain. Stupid is what Stupid does. I already tell most people that cable modems are not worth the money, that all you need for email and simple web browsing is a dial up modem. These fools think they have a monopoly, but what they really have is a temporary advantage. Technological progress will eventually circumvent these losers and leave them with their obsolete entertainment delivery systems. Cell phones offer a second line to all, right now. Soon wireless networks will play out and deliver beter and freer internet than these stupid cable operators can imagine.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
It is stealing. Although your not making money at it is still stealing.
You can compare it to everything in the world to try to justify your actions, but it is stealing.
This is a connection for your home, not your home and everyone else. The price is based on a one single user model. Period, not a 50 person mondel. You want 50 people to use it, pay for 50 people to use it.
I personally don't want you sucking up all the damn bandwidth in my sector because you fill you need to steal and give to the rich. That is right your not giving to the poor but the rich guy next door that makes enough money to pay for it also.
Get off you high horse, come to to earth and just admit your stealing. Otherwise your just kidding yourself and you sound silly to everyone else.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Here's my take on the situation : 1) Cable Operators sell service at X$ per month. They had no practical (cost-effective) way to throttle bandwidth, so they offered it as "unlimited" usage, even though they were counting on users to use only a certain amount of bandwidth. 2) Technologies (802.11) and applications (P2P) become common enough that the average bandwidth per user goes beyond what the Cable Operators had originally budgeted for in step (1). As a first step to curb bandwidth usage, Cable Operators target the high-bandwidth users first to help bring the average bandwidth per user down. This is where we are today and what this article, along with many others, have been about. 3) Tiered services technology, which would allow the Cable Operators to offer different sized pipes at different pipes, becomes commonly and affordably available in early 2002. This technology allows Cable Operators to more accurately bill their customers on the amount of resources they are using. However, since the Cable Operators are either: a) too short on cash to upgrade (Adelphia is in bankrupty court, AT&T is in the process of being acquired by Comcast, Comcast is too busy acquiring AT&T to worry about upgrading their technology, etc.,.) b) don't see the benefit of upgrading yet (hey, why spend $15 per suscriber to upgrade our head-end when we can just charge all customers more money and make more profit ?) or c) are in the process of upgrading (GCI Alaska is the ONLY Cable Operator I know of offering tiered services today) Anyways, that's my story and I'm already stuck to it.
Biodiesel : domestic, renewable, clean, and in the fuel tank of my bone stock 2002 New Beetle TDI
First, I don't eat gargage like that.
Second, I don't expect people to hang out in my bushes surfing the net where I live. -splunch- That's the sound of your analogy falling on its face. I especially don't think they will hang out in my bushes, to anonymously plan criminal acts. Are you another member of the department of "Abuse and Security"?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
In the past, some people have suggested that bandwidth be treated like a utility service. I think that's a great idea. Just like every residence is supposed to have water and electricity service and acceptable levels of reliability, a data connection should be treated the same way. This data connection can be for conventional telephone service, cable television, internet, and whatever permutations and combinations the future brings us. This way, an infrastructure can be established whereby each connection receives metered bandwidth, and the recipient can do as they please with it because they are paying for the bandwidth they use. The power and water companies don't care if you leave the faucet running all day or every light in your house on all day because you're paying them based on your consumption.
This will also have the effect of forcing the consumers to educate themselves to prevent abuse of their bandwidth. If you have a leaking faucet or toilet, it's in your best interest to fix it. If you have an unsecured WAP, then you'll end up paying for whatever bandwidth leaks out of it.
That sounds like a lot of education. How can that be accomplished? Part of it is available in most public schools. It's called "Home Economics". In addition to learning basic sewing, cooking, cleaning, and typing skills, students should also be presented basic information about home networking. The students can then bring this information home and educate their parents. The other part of the education solution lies with the equipment producers. They should provide more information with their products about setting up a secure home network. This is in addition to products already available like personal firewall software and "Idiot's guide to.." publications.
This could also help with adoption of IPv6. Just like every phone line gets a telephone number, every data line will get an IP address.
BLOCK STRUCTURE breathing apparatus required for special maneuvers!!
When I ordered Covad DSL ($50/month for 384/128kbps), the salesperson was very clear that sharing one's line to sell wireless access to one's neighbors was perfectly OK with them and something that they regarded as a competitive advantage of their service.
DSL has less media sharing and is easier to upgrade on an individual basis. This may be why DSL providers in my experience generally seem to be ambivalently neutral to definitely positive about wireless access sharing, while cable modem providers have generally been quite concerned and proactive about any kind of bandwidth hogging scenarios (not just wireless sharing).
Subscriber: wait, why don't you charge us based on bandwidth? Then instead of getting bitchy whenever someone starts downloading too much shit from some newsgroup and putting caps on your "always on" service, or wasting time tracking down sharers, or trying to figure out if someone's hooking their connection up to three computers behind a router, you could make money on someone regardless?
Exec: You know that math I mentioned? Yeah, well, we have all these nice statistics, and we're really quite partial to them. My boss said I had to use them for something, and this is all I could think of.
Your notion of property is rather warped. It's THEIR connection -- they bought/leased and installed the equipment, they provide the service -- and they're allowing you to use it in exchange for compensation. If you don't like the terms of use, you don't have to pay the compensation. (Contrary to what a lot of geeks might wish, there's no inalienable human right to a broadband Internet connection.)
Now, I agree that their terms of use should allow some degree of "fair use" slack. They shouldn't bust you for illegal sharing if your out-of-town friend stays with you for a few days and shares your connection in the meantime. But if you're openly advertising your hot spot as a public access point, the providers have every right to complain.
It's not unlike the difference between taking the morning newspaper and making copies of an interesting article for a couple of friends, and copying the entire newspaper every morning and giving it away to everyone on your block. Whether you're charging them or not isn't the point, you've overstepped the boundaries of fair use. (I know I'm muddying the waters a bit by using a copyright-based analogy and terminology when that's not really the issue at hand, but I think the parallel is quite strong.)
And it actually sounds like this is how the companies are behaving right now: They are going after the people who seem to be willful offenders rather than people sharing casually. And while I may disagree about whether that's a smart way to run the business (and am personally glad to be with Covad, the one company they cite that doesn't care if you share), it's clearly their prerogative to do so.
Or to use a different real-world analogy: leasing a broadband connection is not unlike renting an apartment. You're paying, but it's not YOUR apartment. You don't have the rights to do whatever you want -- tear out the carpet and replace it with linoleum, permanently move in ten of your friends, etc. Of course, you can do things within reason (like have friends stay for a few days, or put up some pictures). But don't think for a minute that it's yours because you're paying.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
They are not banning 802.11, and nor could they if they wanted.
Yes, they could. They can ban whatever they like because it's their service. As for enforcement, they can ride around in a sniffer van to detect who has 802.11a/b/g and send out letters telling them to shut it off. They don't have to prove that you were sharing the connection. They don't have to even show that the 802.11 was hooked, directly or indirectly, to the cable modem. They could simply say that they don't want you as a customer if you use wireless networking.
802.11 is a transport mechanism.. your cable modem has no IDEA what types of transport are being used downstream.
I don't think the average Slashdot reader thought that their cable modem was aware of what was using it for connectivity.
My cable modem does not have an "IDEA" about what servers I'm running either, but that has not stopped my cable company from changing their AUP to ban servers.
That'd never work. Afterall, how many lawyers do you know who would admit to being a lawyer?
When you work at a law firm, every single one! They never let you forget where you are on the org chart!
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
The differnce with dialup is that the overall useage is so small, that even with 100% saturation all day and all night, you're still under 600 MB per day. It's tiny and there isn't much possibility for you to suck the ISP's uplink dry. Sure, bandwidth costs money and more bandwidth costs more money, but this only has a real effect on a large scale. 600 MB is nothing.
"If I've payed for bandwidth, I've all the right to use it!"
For certain! I think ISPs mentalities with the meaning of 'unlimited' are different when comparing dialup and broadband. This is because the %useage for the average broadband user is FAR lower (in terms of percent of the possible bandwidth used) that in modemland. If a broadband user shares their connection and it is at 100% all the time, then they might be using 50X the average bandwidth the ISP expected. If a modem user did this, it might be 5X the average. I think that this is one of the achilles' heels of the current broadband payment model because it allows the customer to gouge the ISP in a way the ISP never expected.
In the ISP's mind, you've only payed for that average level of useage even though they advertised an 'unlimited' connection and they will get upset if you take more than they expected and budgeted for because the bandwidth costs them money. Since, if you buy unlimited broadband, you are entitled to use it, they simply change the definition of how their system works by bandwidth caps on ports used by kazza (sp?). In the end, the ISPs that survive and are not draconian in their useage terms will be the ones where users pay for what they use and don't pay for what they don't use.
To keep pricing fair and prevent universal bandwidth caps, I think that it makes sense that people be billed for the amount of bandwidth they use beyond a certain limit. This way, as you say, you pay for bandwidth and have the right to use it. This is because bandwidth costs money, and more bandwidth costs more money.
While some innovative municipal utility companies have rolled out fiber optic to the curb, both the telcos and cable companies have purchased legislation to insure that can't happen in many states, California among them.
The alternatives unless one can economically justify T1 are ... if you can find a dialup ISP willing to experiment, build a point-to-point 802.11 / microwave link with the other end on their roof or DIY DSL renting a "dry pair" (aka alarm circuit, etc.)...
From my POV, I take these threads as simply a warning to avoid cablemodems from major broadband companies no matter how attractive the pricing or sales pitch.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Don't they realize that most people who use shared WiFi links are merely trying out the service and they will eventually buy their own subscription.
-a
Yes I am karma-whoring. What's it to you?
How to rationalize theft.
As usual, you are wrong. Of course, given your record, hardly a surprise.
Cable companies are regulated by the FCC and cannot currently decline to provide service to paying customers who abide by reasonable contracts.
Hope That Helps.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
Wierd. In the US, I've never seen one that *did* require a set top box (except for really really old TV's with mechanical dials).
Perhaps because the contract you signed specifically said this practice was verbotten? In most of these cases, that's exactly what's happened. I chose a DSL provider who was both slower and more expensive than my cable company specifically because the contract didn't have a server ban, only a re-sale ban in it.
In other words, you didn't pay for the service as you are using it. If you wanted a simple bandwith provider with no restrictions, you should have shopped around for one.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
Of course you agree with them: it's *your* customers who would be getting the free wireless access, so it's *your* market that's eroded by them not paying *you* for what they get for free.
-- Terry
These are the same people who misguidedly think that bandwidth is something that can be "stolen" (never mind the dictionary definition of the word) and would probably accuse you of "stealing" temperature if you went to a shopping mall to enjoy the warm air (in winter) or air conditioning (in summer) without buying anything.
That's a terrible analogy. And you absolutely can steal bandwidth: that's what happens when you use it without paying for it. In this situation, the cable internet provider has spelled out, carefully and in great detail, what you can and can't use your bandwidth to do. You can't set up a free wireless access point and give access to anybody who happens to be in range, for example.
If you're doing that, then you're taking something (that privilege) without paying for it. That's stealing.
Let's argue about whether the cable internet providers are right or wrong. Let's argue about whether what they're doing is justifiable, or even moral. But let's not argue about whether the customers are doing something wrong. That much, at least, should be obvious to anybody.
I, personally, would vote for a world in which internet access comes to your house the same way electricity does: it's metered, at a rate that's low enough not to make much difference. My electric bill varies every month, but not too much, and it's never too high. I'd be happy if my internet bill did the same thing.
That'd also give us a nice, strong case to object to internet ads and spam. If I download a 300K Flash animation, I had to pay for it! Bastards! Where can I send the bill?
It's not about the bandwidth used. That's just a red herring. And it's not about "theft of services": they are being paid for their services. And it's not about bandwidth or transfer caps: many companies already enforce them anyway.
We all know that, eventually, as soon as someone deploys a directory service capable of handling it, circuit switched telephony, along with the long distance carrier charges that are based on the source and destination nodes for your VOIP packets, will go away. And so will the revenue model based on distance between endpoints, as the carriers are commoditized into fat packet-pipes.
So... I rather expect that the cable people are more concerned with the 17 other apartments within 300 feet of yours that get wireless access without paying them $$$, than they are with roaming wireless hordes.
They are facing the same problem than the long distance carriers face with IP telephony: there has been a technological sea change that will require them to go from charging for the source/destination of a packet to charging for the pipe size.
They are being commoditized, and they don't like it. Well, "welcome to consumer driven demand for a conversion to packet switched networks".
In other words, it's about a reduction in total market size. They want the market to be as big as possible, and for that to happen and ppermit them to maximize revenues, they have to achieve the same market penetration.
As supporting evidence, I'll offer the following:
They aren't going after people who leave their curtains open while they watch HBO on their big screen TV visable, and often audible, from the sidewalk in front of the house.
They also aren't going after the little 2.4GHz television repeaters. They aren't being bashed because cable television run out through one is circuit switched by channel: it's unlikely that all of your neighbors will want to watch "Attack of the Zombie Bimbos" (unless you live in a Fraternity House). So they end up buying cable so they can change the channel.
-- Terry
In general, my computers don't use bandwidth--I use bandwidth. One's person's bandwidth usage isn't going to change depending on how many computers they have hooked up to the net. On the other hand, the bandwidth used by two people is going to be more than the bandwidth used by one person. I think ISPs set their rates based on the average use of one person.
Because with cable TV you are paying for access to the content, while with broadband you are paying for access to the infrastructure. They are completely different - sharing broadband does not involve redistributing content, merely access.
So I see that your mom decided to let you use the computer again.
But, as usual, you are back to making claims with no basis in fact:
Cable companies are regulated by the FCC and cannot currently decline to provide service to paying customers who abide by reasonable contracts.
"Reasonable contracts"? Yeah, that sounds like a real solid legal definition. LOL! Show me anything -- ruling, law, etc. that demonstrates that the FCC forces cable modem companies to provide service based on how "reasonable" a contract is. Or were you just spewing more of your unsubstantiated bull****?
P.S. If being "right" is important to you, just start agreeing with me and you'll be right far more often than you are now.
> But to offer "all-you-eat" access, and advertise it as such, and then say "Oh, wait a
> minute- it's only all-you-can if you don't eat much" is a bit ridiculous.
You're exactly right, and that's where the providers will have to make up their minds: keep advertising broadband as this limitless multimedia experience and risk not being able to deliver, or set more realistic expectations? Frankly, I think they're still making it easy on themselves by not really improving their infrastructure. The initial cable modem deployment went relatively swiftly because they already had the wire in place. But now in many places that one wire isn't enough anymore, and they're in the same position as the DSL providers.
If I pay for X amount of bandwidth it is no one's business if I then may some subset of it available to someone else as long as I don't use more than I contracted for. The claim of the cable companies is bogus.
Zelet flames:
You are the same type of person who thinks it is okay to download all the MP3s you want for free because record companies are evil.
Huh? No, I am saying that sharing bandwidth is both legal and moral, if and only if it is within the bounds of the service agreement. Downloading MP3's is unauthorized copying, and there are many strong arguments that it is illegal copyright infringment, the MP3 issue is much both more complex and completely unrelated to the wireless bandwidth issue.
Same here, you can steal all the bandwidth you want because the cable companies are evil.
I never made any moral judgement about the any companies, and certainly never used "they're evil" as justification for my arguments. In fact, I never mentioned cable companies at all, I am talking about Broadband ISPs (eg. RoadRunner, Covad, Verizon).
I also never advocated stealing, I merely support people's right to use what they paid for.
Obviously companies like Excite@home went under because they weren't making enough money.
Yes, and that is a failure of @Home, not me. A company is responsible for making it's own product (in this case bandwidth, server access and a service agreement), and pricing it accordingly. Nobody outside the company has a responsibility to prop it up if they make bad business decisions. I don't know much about the failure of @Home, but from what I understand bad business decisions were pretty rampant.
Maybe you should consider that when you go stealing more bandwidth.
I am not "stealing more bandwidth", I am operating within my service agreement. In fact, the three connections I mentioned were in the past, I currently only use one connection, don't operate a wireless port, and know that if I do operate one then RoadRunner is well within their rights to cut off my service, because such an open port would violate my service agreement. I also know that other people have other service agreements, and some of them have no such restrictions.
Oh yeah... I bet you were bitching when your cable internet went down from that... then bitched again when they raised the price to bring it back.
Um, I've never been an @Home customer, they never even got close to my area. I'm a RoadRunner customer, they've raised my rates once since I've signed up with them. I haven't griped since they give me reasonably reliable service at a competitive rate. I could save five bucks a month switching to Verizon, but my friends experience with them, their service is quite unreliable.
If I wanted to share bandwidth through an open wireless port, I would find and purchase a service that allowed me to do so. I would expect to pay more for such a service too.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Jetson writes:
The tragedy of the commons
Paid bandwidth is hardly a commons.
The problem with the argument "they gave it to me so why do they care what I do with it?" is that it intentionally ignores the principles under which the [insert generic asset here] was given in the first place.
The whole point of a contract is so that I know which side of the agreement is mine to keep up, I have no moral or legal responsibility to ensure that their side of the contract was made with due attention paid to making a profit. Why would I be responsible for their bad business decisions?
They don't cap your line because they *assume* your usage will be typical, and that their infrastructure will support N users at the calculated average rate.
I would call that a bad business decision. A company should plan for typical aggregate usage, not that every customer will use no more than the average amount. They should also have a contingency plan in case everyone maxes out their service agreement. They should also have an emergency plan for substantial violations of their service agreement.
My provider is RoadRunner (NYCAP RoadRunner to be precise). They do cap my line, precisely because they want to minimise customer complaints. There is a limit of how much bandwidth I can use (700 some-odd bps) and how many connections I can have at once (3). If I find either of those limits too...limiting, I can raise either or both of those numbers with a suitable application of cash. They also have a plan for if lots of people max out their service agreement, they can dedicate extra channels in each local loop to multiply the available bandwidth without any last-mile wiring. They are implementing their plan for substantial service agreement violations, they're the one going after people advertising open wireless links in violation of their service agreement.
When someone decides to increase the number of users and thereby increases the demand on resources that is NOT simply a deviation from the average because there is little chance that there will be an offsetting reduction at a later point-- the average is changed in the process,
Yes.
invalidating the assumptions upon which the contract was based.
Averages change, this is why a contract should never be made assuming everyone is average.
The excess demand is taken directly from the commons (which is their bottom line).
This is a perversion of the term "commons", internet bandwidth is not a commons, it is a paid service. The excess demand is taken directly from their bottom line, this is not the Tragedy of the Commons, this is the Risk of Doing Business.
We all know what happens to the commons when too many people take advantage of an unregulated resource. The ISP has no choice but to react.
This is a regulated resource. Whether it's regulated well or badly depends on who your provider is.
I was starting an ISP today I would bill on the bell curve-- the bottom 10% would have their bill waived entirely, the middle 80% would be billed according to the average usage estimates, and the top 10% would be billed by volume.
Nice in theory. In practice you will have customers complaining if they got used to being in one category and suddenly found themselves in the next. It would be a PR nightmare.
You're better off selling "economy", "normal" and "power user" tiers of service contracts and let people pick whichever they think is right for them.
Think of it as a tax on the commons....
I'd rather think of it as an awkward pricing scheme, since it's not a tax and doesn't involve the commons.
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Open mind, insert foot.
That's a terrible analogy. And you wouldn't want to pay for the convenience anyway. In the case of electricity they actually send out a person every year to check my usage and carefully calculates my bills to match my usage every month according to this. In the case of my ISP that would mean that bandwith would have to be monitored around the clock and reported in as often as every minute. Imagine the needed investments in infrastructure this would imply!
To the point, there's nothing stopping such a pricing system other than the ISP's themselves - they know that it would only scare away the most positive users that know the advantages of a high bandwith while leaving the average user doing some moneytransfers. Who probably is far from the "average bandwidth consumer" from the ISP's pricesetters point of view. I don't even think that it helps that some banking services has become impossible to use by dial-up nowadays. Instead, ISP's should concentrate in promoting bandwith use so that the average consumer could make a data-based tariff feasible, on demand video and broadcast streaming media is possible without leaning on the ISP to use much costly cross-network or intercontinental links.
On the other hand forcing the doors open on your local supermarket would probably be as much abuse and misuse of electricity as WiFi network sharing since it would certainly make an impression on the next energy bill. But even if electical companies earns money on it they do take a stand against it and actively disencourages such waste of power. When the ISP market matures I guess that the focus of the discussion about WiFi sharing will change. Right now it's a deadend whining from ISP's that the average user shouldn't utilize more than 5 % of what he paid for and users rightfully wondering why prices aren't cut by 95 %.
You obviously missed my comment one paragraph later in your haste to hit "Reply" :o)
To quote: (unless the terms and conditions they signed in the first place expressly disallow this)
So, yes, I agree with you :o)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I just read the response posted by the lawyer. I guess it really sucks to be you right now. Of course, I expect that you'll slink off silently rather than being man/woman enough to admit that you were wrong.
Repeated surveys have shown preference toward flat rate billing. Look at the telephone service in the US - local is completely flat rate. Long distance is rapidly moving to flat rate. Cell phones are even starting to become flat rate.
Yes, electrical, gas, and water are billed by consumption. They're also the utilities people complain about the most regarding cost -- because while you have a general idea how much power you use month to month, there are the occasional months that just blow you out of the water.
Your TV service IS flat rate unless you get PPV movies. Glad to see that your cable company is progressive (most are not), but you still know that the cable bill is going to be a set amount every month.
Gas? Food? Yeah, it's pay as you go. But gas is virtually always the same barring long trips. I know that I have to refuel my car every week and a half or so, and while the price is going to vary some, it's not going to take drastic swings. Same thing goes with food.
What you have to realize is that people have been paying flat rate for telecomms (consumer grade) for over a decade now. The phone service has been flat rate for even longer. If you try and change that and make it "pay as you go" then you're going to get a lot of flak and resistance toward that -- particularly since I've yet to see a plan that would actually LOWER the cost for the average user.
Yes, I fully agree that people whinging "it's my bandwidth" are off the deep end and have no tie to reality. But the cable and DSL companies aren't a whole lot better. They wanted people to buy the service and not use it.
Pretty much agree with you on the AnonWiFi bit though... there are "tactics" that could counter the script kiddies, but it's always a war of strike and counterstrike, with the providers a step behind.
What's the difference between redistributing via wireless network and redistributing via wired network? My home network is ethernet. If I leave it unsecured and someone hops through it, am I committing fraud because they're not paying the cable company?
do not read this line twice.
In the case of electricity they actually send out a person every year to check my usage and carefully calculates my bills to match my usage every month according to this.
While that may be true where you live, they haven't done that in my town for years. In my neighborhood, the days of the meter-maid are long gone.
In the case of my ISP that would mean that bandwith would have to be monitored around the clock and reported in as often as every minute.
The technology to do that is in place already, at the router level. You wouldn't have to add meters to everybody's houses or anything absurd like that. It's very different from, but technically similar to, measuring how long I'm on the phone every month. All the data collection can be done at the switching points. Measuring the bit rate across a segment is a SMOP.
I guess what it all boils down to is this: if it costs the provider per unit of the service they're providing, then flat-rate pricing plans are inevitably going to be unfair, either for the consumer or for the producer.
The new york city cable franchise agreement with TWC NYC (Southern Manhattan), section 4, paragraph 6. "Nondiscrimination"
Provide a link to it. There is no logical search on Google that reveals that document and I have no intention of wasting any more time looking for it. If you can't link to it, quote the section in full.
Most "nondiscrimination" clauses have to do with race, ethnic background, physical handicaps, etc. and nothing to do with networking hardware. "Reasonable persons" (I thought it was "reasonable contracts" in your previous post) would agree that a cable company could have legitimate concerns about network security related to wireless networking.
Anyone who believes that Anonymous Coward is a lawyer has been trolled.
"Anonymous Coward" is the name given to all persons who choose to post without a login. It's not one person.
You're just pissed off because he/she pegged you right as one of the "people that obviously have little grasp of even simple contract law pretend[ing] to be legal experts."
Again, I walked away from you. I don't play flamewar games, but I'm *STILL* not anonymous coward.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
Bullshit. You entered this discussion by flaming me: Then when challenged to support your claims, you turned tail and ran. If you won't engage in an intelligent debate, then don't waste my time.
Otherwise, why would they have issues of network security, if it wasn't hooked up to their network?
Because they might believe that the consumer is lying when he claims that he will never hook the wireless equipment to their network. What possible reason would they have for believing some person who says that he's creating two home networks, one with, and one without, Internet access? Chances are that it's like the customers with three computers that swear that only one will be on the cable modem. 99% of them are lying.
If it's really about "above average" bandwidth users costing them money, then why aren't they falling all over themselves to refund money to "below average" bandwidth users, who are saving them money?
The infrastructure is there, and I can guarantee you that they are not upgrading it all the time. It's all about how much money they can suck out of how many wallets, per month.
Sharing your connection is one less "on *grunt* going *grunt* customer *grunt* relationship!".
-- Terry
Zelet writes:
Sharing bandwidth is generally illegal in the contracts and that is why the cable companies are cracking down. But, even if it is legal (or not contractually defined) it is still immoral (illegal and immoral are very different things).
I certainly agree that illegal and immoral are often very different things, but, given a contract allowing sharing I would take exception to your stand that such sharing is categorically immoral.
If a contract is made in good faith with both parties having certain assumptions, and one party finds a loophole permitting them to violate one of these assumptions to their benefit, it would be immoral to exploit it.
Sharing is natural and expected. Sharing of a good or service should be assumed to be allowed unless the contract specifically excludes it. In this case, if the provider is advertising "personal" internet service, you could argue that their customers know that they aren't supposed to share it.
However, in many cases the providers are just advertising "fast internet access", and even include lines like "attach as many computers as you want" in their ads. For example, a friend of mine got Verizon DSL, and Verizon made a big deal of having no limit on how many computers you could attach to their service.
I sincerely hope our society hasn't gotten so far gone where sharing itself is considered abnormal or immoral. I would agree that sharing someone else's stuff without their consent is immoral, but if you contracted for an unrestricted internet connection, then the bandwidth associated with that connection is yours to use as you see fit. Sharing is one way of using such a service.
I agree with you that we shouldn't support companies with flawed business models (record companies), but we shouldn't exploit loop-holes in their contracts with us either. Again, that is a moral issue not a legal one.
I agree, with a few exceptions, none of which apply in this case (eg. contracts you could not read before allegedly agreeing to them; contracts of adhesion that overstep any reasonable scope; contracts whose terms change without notice or agreement).
Companies especially, but people more and more are starting to cheat each other at any possibility. Individuals and companies believe that if it isn't in the contract then it is okay to do something that is detrimental to the other party.
Yes, there is too much greed, duplicity and just plain bad manners in the world. On the other hand, if the "something...detrimental" is a feature of the contract and not a loophole used in bad faith, then it's hard to argue that it is immoral to make use of the contract as originally agreed.
Greed and selfishness (even disguised as generosity - example - sharing internet with neighbors who could afford it on their own)
Again, using bandwidth that you paid for, within the terms of the service agreement, to share with your neigbors, whether or not they could afford their own service, is neither greed nor selfishness, it is just sharing.
Sharing bandwidth that you had agreed not to share as part of the terms of service is selfishness, because you are violating the terms of your agreement. The argument that "I paid for the bandwidth" doesn't hold water where you explicitly paid for restricted bandwidth, especially since most providers will offer less restricted plans (potentially allowing sharing) for more money.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Zelet writes:
I agree with all of your points. I guess your's and my contracts are different. Mine is pretty clear that it shouldn't be shared (although the contract does not state it specifically.)
There are lots of different contracts out there, depending on your bandwidth provider, where you live, what level of service you pay for, and in many cases when you ordered the service.
My contract specifies a maximum of three connections, makes sharing kinda pointless. I guess I could share (haven't checked, I don't share), but assuming I want my computer connected I would have to refuse everyone after the second connection. I would also have to keep rebooting the cable modem, since it has a limit on the number of ethernet ids it can give DHCP addresses to without a cold boot.
However, I have seen other broadband providers that are far more lenient, and I personally like the idea of people sharing their bandwidth.
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Open mind, insert foot.