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EFF Lists Wi-Fi-Friendly ISPs
trifster writes "It appears that *some* ISPs encourage Wi-Fi hotspots from users connections. Cnet News.com has the article here." The list itself is on the EFF's site. Most of the ISPs with policies against wireless NATing seem to turn a blind eye to it most of the time anyhow, though.
My provider offers DSL modems with wireless interface. They won't be bothered too much about it.
As long as nobody is spamming or cracking through it of course...
...is a site where people have/want broadband access and a wireless card can register to find other people in their area to share access with (by post/zip code).
It is indeed good news that some ISPs apparently accept reality (since they can't detect NAT on their nodes anyhow).
However - especially here in Europe - many big Telecom companies have paid a huge amount of money (several US-billon $) to the governments to get a UMTS license because they thought it to be the only way of getting mobile Internet access.
Now, when these ISPs actually do not prevent their customers from using their node as a WLAN access point for everybody, these ISPs could quickly become a target of the major telecom companies' law departments. For them, it is much easier to sue ISPs than single "abusers".
And I think, regarding the momentary state of the economy and the possible mis-investment in the UMTS market, this is more than likely to happen.
What do the others think?
Promoting 802.11b hotspots and general connection sharing skews the usage up beyond statistical averages for a single user, but it DOES get more customers - in terms of new connections, or swings from competitors, as well as building community rapport. After all, no one likes being EULA-ed out of getting the best value for money.
I'd be interested in comments from those that have set up a communal wireless area where the connection is priced per byte, rather than a flat rate, where EULAs prevent this sort of thing from maxing out the line.
Aegilops
Certainly not. It is becoming fashinable to link everything about sharing as legitimate. To some extent it is alright, but when people want to interperet freedom as free beer thats when the things go wrong
Moreover if Wi-Fi access is shared, going by the inherent nature of 802.11m you dont really have control over the person who give it to sharing it with other. So you may have exponential growth! This is what the article also warns about.
In reality it is difficult to keep control, so its better to let wireless access inside same home, allowing it would open up a hornets net, and unless the security issued with WiFi are resolved, its better no to open the can
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quoted from the article... "Speakeasy's CEO has gone on the record in support of broadband sharing via wireless, basically saying 'you pay us for the bits you use and are welcome to do whatever you like with them."
In no particular order:
Wi-Fi - IEEE 802.11b compliant products
IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving online rights
NAT - Network Address Translation, typically used to provide Internet address for a local area network while using only one external IP address
ISP - Internet Service Provider, an organization who provides access to the Internet
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I don't see the logic behind sueing ISPs because the telco's failed to see there was 'another way' and paid a lot for those frequencies.
Besides, voice-communication is still very important, and possibly the killer-app for mobile devices. Since the datacom vendors still haven't created a standard for VoIP, a 802.11b appliance with voice communication enabled has to be
a:) very proprietary and thus will not be likely to be very interoperable.
b:) equipped with a UMTS interface
Besides that, I haven't looked into it recently, but probably the voice quality of VoIP won't be too good either...
So probably mobile appliances will need UMTS too be able to function as a phone.
In general, it's not that big of a deal.... A friend of mine works at an ISP, and he claims that only a small percentage of people are truly doing this, at least that they can find out. Most people who have wireless in their homes are doing it so they can sit out back by the pool with their laptop while they look at pr0n.
Just my dos centavos.
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I think it is possible to detect NAT by looking at sequence numbers on the packets going out.
That is probably more advanced than most ISPs can handle (or want to handle) though.
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My cable ISP does this too, although they have no problem with using multiple computers through NAT. Because of this, I don't think MAC address is how they would detect NAT. The firewall sends everything out as the same MAC address. In fact, I had to spoof the MAC on the firewall because when I first connected, I used my laptop to test the connection, so it wants that MAC address all the time.
I think there are other ways of detecting NAT, as the firewall has to do some mangling of the headers to help determine where the response should go, but I can't remember the specifics.
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erm...as far as I know, a NAT router only has one MAC address. All outgoing traffic goes through the router and thus appears to come from the same MAC. Plus, most good broadband routers will allow you to 'clone' the MAC of a machine on the internal network, so your isp will never even notice. Many isps already restrict access to one MAC *cough*Cogeco*cough* but my router shows the same MAC as my pc.
do not read this line twice.
I'd like to mention that my own provider, RCN, encourages the use of NATs to distribute home cable-modem service to all of the computers in the household. Not only that, but they even offer IP address plans if you want external IP's for the computers. RCN will help fix a problem if there is an issue with the cable modem on an internal network, and even offer a paid home-network setup option that you can add onto a free basic installation to get your home network, Wi-Fi or otherwise, up, running, and secure.
the main problem in Europe is not the ISP, it is the legislation mandating conservation of connection informations. I will not share my wifi access because I'm liable for what anonymous guy do on the net using my access.
Nobody's intending to share their internet connections for free here. Instead, people are going to build citywide (and eventually nationwide) wireless networks.
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Some restaurants get upset even if they do not share, witness Homer Simson.
For ANY broadband connection, your paying for unlimited 24/7 time at a pretty high bandwidth (100-200KB/s). They sell you unlimited access, and that's what they should expect you to do.
All four of these options on how to use one's unlimited access are essentially the same, and users should have the right to do any of them:
1. Stay online 24/7. This may be done by avid file-sharers and/or downloaders. Some Linux people might want to download the latest ISO for every different distro.
2. Though not using the connection 24/7 one's self, allowing other's in one's house-hold to use it when one isn't. If different people work different shifts, this is essentially 24/7 usage.
3. Allow any of your neighbors to come in your home at any time and use your internet connection. Again, essentially the same as 24/7.
4. Set up a WiFi network. Same as #3, but avoids security issues such as one's computer being stolen.
ISP's are selling you unlimited bandwidth, and they should expect you to use it. They advertise 24/7 then whine when people actually do use their connection 24/7. Waaah.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Why not set up a WiFi web between various broadband users, even if they use different services. This way, one can potentially get more bandwidth when others are at work or out. It also provides complete annonymity.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I'll have to read up on NAT. I always thought the router handled what traffic went to which internal address based on the outgoing port number used. That to me would make more sense anyways, since the internal addresses would be entirely invisible.
do not read this line twice.
Timothy, that strikes me as a very irresponsible attitude in matters such as this. Didn't we say that about filesharing a year or two ago? Here at least is a case where we can vote with our patronage to companies that have good policies now, so they'll be around tomorrow when others have stopped turning a blind eye to it.
There are a variety of techniques that make it possible to detect NAT usage, and it looks like certain ISPs (namely Comcast) even have entire departments dedicated to doing just that.
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Likening sharing of bandwidth to either sharing of cable TV or to sharing of electricity is inaccurate.
Consider sharing Cable TV. Once the wire hits my house, it is easy for me to share with my neighbor - I simply put a distribution amp in the line, and he now has signal. There is no additional drain on the cable TV's resources and no (technological) way the cable company can restrict this. As a result, my neighbor has no reason to buy cable, and I have just cost the cable company a customer. In the limit, the cable company has one customer who shares with the rest of the town, and the cable company goes broke.
Now, sharing electricity. The electric company charges by the kW/hr, and aside from a relatively small non-usage related service fee the more joules I use the more I pay. If I run a line over to my neighbor, the electric company WILL make more money since my bill goes up. Thus, from a purely profit driven standpoint they lose nothing by this.
Now, consider Internet connectivity. Few ISPs really charge you based on usage - I have a 384kbps DSL connection, but my ISP probably doesn't plan on me using 100% of that all the time. As such, if I give extra capacity to my neighbor, my neighbor loses any incentive to purchase a connection of his own, and the ISP loses money. Additionally, unlike cable TV, I am increasing the load on my ISP, so the arguement "But I'm not HURTING anybody" really doesn't wash - I am sucking down more bandwidth and loading their system down. But unlike the electric company, it is harder for the ISP to charge on a resources-used basis.
Now, some ISPs actually DO plan on you using 100% of your allotted bandwidth - this is usually the case for business-grade SLAs like those on T-1 type connections. In such a case, you are back to the idea of "You bought it, it's yours" - share all you want, we make money no matter what. In such cases, the ISP is not likely to care about sharing.
In the normal case, however, the ISP is very much going to care, and sharing will be forbidden.
Then, you have the weird cases where the ISP actively promotes wireless sharing because they sell that service too.
www.eFax.com are spammers
A better analogy might be hanging up a POTS telephone outside with a sign that says "unlimited free local calls," because in most cases electricity is metered and local telephone service is not.
(Some might argue that the telephone is different because you can not make a call on a line at the same instant someone else is. The same holds true for a packet switched connection, however, where two packets can not be sent at exactly the same instant. In both cases, your personal ability to use the service is reduced somewhat if you share it with others).
All this WiFi discussion is showing me just one thing: ISPs will begin to seriously consider to charge data transfer instead of connection speed or time.
Now a days ISPs plans infrastructure as telecom companies, they consider that an average user will use only x% of the bandwidth sold. Considering this they can lower prices and sell more.
With wirelessNAT opened to everybody the average user will consume almost 100% of the bandwidth sold, so the infrastructure avaiable need to be extended, this is cost, and somebody must pay for this.
They want to charge the user for the infrastructure extension, they always do this, but they can't raise prices this way, they need to find sowe other way.
The only way to charge fairly is to charge by data volume instead of connection time or speed. That's why I think that all this WiFi discussion will lead to new charging polices, and I'm pretty sure that this is the future of ISP charging.
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how could your ISP determine you were sharing?
This one method is very easy, and it is totally passive on the part of the ISP. Many home networks which use NAT have the machines use the ISP's DNS servers directly. If you run a program like Ethereal on your network, you will notice a lot of queries like:
I suppose you could fix this by running your own local DNS server instead, so the only lookups that would go past the firewall would be ones for remote machines. But basically, if you have N computers behind your firewall, your ISP's DNS server could theoretically receive hostname lookups for each of them.
Also, this shows that while you're using NAT, it may not necessarily be wi-fi. But if an ISP was reasonably suspicious, I suppose they could (based on the DNS lookup info shown above) send a van out to your street, try to connect to your network via wireless and bust you that way, but even then they still can't prove it was your wireless access point that they connected to.
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You can also get dedicated wireless service from EarthLink. They're spreading wireless access points all over the place via their partnership with Boingo.
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It appears that their definition of supporting wireless sharing is that they didn't find any obvious prohibition in whatever copy of the TOS they could find on the web, if they could find one.
They didn't look hard enough.
It depends on whether you're bridging or routing. Obilix notes that the MAC address is stripped, but that's only if you're routing. Many DSL and cable networks use a pure bridge mode in which you're essentially a leg of a larger Ethernet network instead of on your own IP subnet. Because of this, it would be possible for the ISP to see what kind of traffic is happening, although technically, the Ethernet packet that would get routed out over the bridged network on their end would have a MAC address of the NAT gateway machine, not the individual machines. But that traffic could be monitored, pretty easily.
Also, NAT patterns, even if they're over routed connections, can be identified. A lot of NAT gateways aren't very clever because they don't need to be. If you're an ISP trying to "fight" address sharing, you could set up a cheap lab with typical consumer equipment, most of which shares the same firmware from Atmel (Linksys, SMC, Bufffalo, D-Link, etc.). You could use some very simple analysis software to watch traffic and identify gateways.
Fortunately, the makers of these inexpensive NAT hardware gateways have typically responded (or their firmware developers have that they license from) and added anti-anti-ballistic missile code. It wasn't very long after cable companies were restricting access to a single MAC address that Linksys and other devices added a 'clone MAC address' option.
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Unfortunately it seems as though most ISPs are downright hostile against their users these days. After all, some of their users have been hostile towards their systems. If the ISP can not take care of it's security, someone will take care of their systems.
I am a network engineer by trade. I am tired of ISPs not doing their job. Most large ISPs these days are acting more like cable TV providers than Internet Service Providers. What is your typical ADSL and cable Internet service good for these days anyway? You get a decent downstream rate, but your upstream rate is horrible, server ports get blocked, and too many "service" providers try to pass their customer a data link layer connection instead of a network layer connection -- there is a big service difference.
NANOG is just not doing it's job these days. NANOG represents the big corporate interests in North America for ISPs, but nobody is there fighting for the users of these services. I think it time for the service providers to be reminded what the Internet is about.
I am paying for the bandwidth. Let me do what I want with it!
Providing an asymmetrical Internet connection is okay, as long as the user has symmetrical options available to them, and they receive a discount for the fact that they are saving bandwidth. Furthermore, providing high download rates to customers has no value to ISPs that entirely serve the residential market. If you do not have business customers in your collocation facilities who are also using the upstream bandwidth, then you are inefficiently allocating bandwidth.
Prohibiting servers is blasphemous. This is the Internet, not cable television.
Bandwidth providers are being like Intel and the clock cycle issue. Stop pushing these higher downstream rates as a marketing ploy when you can not provide any kind of Service Level Agreement (SLA). Having a 1.2Mbps downstream rate is worthless if you can not actually use it. 512Kbps is enough for the vast majority of home users. Oversubscription is a necessary evil, but do not abuse it.
File sharing networks are not bad. People who are sharing copyrighted material and performing illegal acts are bad. Make a clear differentiation between the two. Blocking a service is bad in most cases -- when Code Red worm broke out, that was a good reason. I have no sympathy for customers having their circuits shut down for trading copyrighted material that they do not own -- stop being a voyeur and start being a player on the Internet, or else go back to watching TV.
Start providing real services to your users. If ISPs had provided the NTP option in their DHCP lease messages and provided this information publicly, Microsoft would not have to include a client with their X operating system to synch the time to a clock that could be far too many hops away. Tell your users where your servers and what you offer!
Providing a data link layer connection is typically bad. If you are an ISP and provide only a data link layer connection to your customers (bridged DSL, all cable Internet that I know of, some wireless services) then you are responsible for their entire network, which really sucks for you. This should be provided as an addition service, not the status quo. On Cisco devices, use commands like "spanning-tree rootguard", "port protected", and most importantly, place each customer into their own individual VLAN and terminate their layer two connection at a layer three trunking interface -- this is what most DSL circuits that use Frame Relay or ATM do, they terminate at a trunking interface somewhere.
I feel that ICANN and the NICs (ARIN, RIPE, APNIC) need to hit service providers over the head with a markup percentage cap for IP allocations. Charging me $45 a month for a
And you thought IP addresses were expensive. Nope.
Reference http://www.arin.net/registration/fee_schedule.htm
On that note, not allowing your customers to receive a static IP allocation is horrible. It forces customers away from your service at to someone else for no technical reason. The reasoning is entirely political/social.
I would suggest that ISPs knock off the antics and start providing service to the last mile if they want to stay in business. This is what got them into the debt problem in the first place. Where were the customers going to come from if they do not have any network access? That fat core is doing you nothing now Global Crossing.
I am willing to pay $200 a month for a 512Kbps bidirectional layer three network connection with a first hop latency of less than 40ms, a
I get most of my access by collocating a box in Denver at a friend's house and doing work that I need to do their. I had to send my box to another state just to get the access that I wanted.
Screw you ISPs and the no demand excuse. The customers are demanding better service -- you just aren't providing it.