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Toledo Uncappers Getting Shafted
Jacob writes "Broadband Reports has a well written article detailing the plight of those Ohio cable modem users who found themselves facing gun wielding FBI agents for uncapping their cable modems. Buckeye Cable has clearly crossed a line and the tech community and consumer groups should be all over them like a wet, angry rag. Kudos to Broadband Reports for not letting this thing die." Granted, those who were indicted were violating their service contracts, but having their posessions siezed by FBI agents is overkill.
I think the "Drug War" opened up the laws that allow this. Basically, an arrest is made against the property itself for being involved in the crime, and I have no idea what the options are to get it back.
Yes, I do indeed love this country.
WTF are you getting those numbers? 2.5Mbps cable line here in NS, Canada is $40CND/month ($25US). Perhaps the real problem is that the people with the keys to the onramp are being a little to stingy in the US?
Up until a bit ago, this was very valid criticism. Typically, one node could provide 30Mbps to a neighborhood, and a single cable modem could snatch up a max of 10Mbps of that for its own use. It was a lot like being plugged into a hub. When usage spiked, you were in collision city. However, cable providers have started sending out configuration files to cable modems telling them to only snag a certain amount of bandwidth.
And putting the throttle in the equipment at the customer end of the cable was a big mistake, opening a major can of worms. (Especially given that some customers own their own equipment...) Makes it vulnerable to tampering, leading the company into playing "whack-a-mole", in this case with a BIG mallet.
The proper solution is to do the throttling at the head end. Downstream you can limit bandwidth with a subscriber management box between the head end and the backbone. Upstream the cable systems assign timeslots to each modem from a central box. So you can limit upstream bandwidth by limiting the timeslots. (Or just have the SMS drop the extra packets - which will cause TCP connections to throttle back.)
Of course that means the cable companies have to buy an SMS, rather than pestering the FBI to bust their subscribers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
For those of you who don't work near the ISP industry, bandwidth is --VERY EXPENSIVE--. $200 per megabit per month is an absolute STEAL (to get that rate, you need to be buying it on the DS3 level). $400 per meg is more realistic on lower levels.
Two words for you. <b>Shared Bandwidth</b>. If bandwidth was *really* that expensive, you wouldn't see 3MBit DSL connections for $70 CDN/month, including the modem rental.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Due Process went out of the door when the Government decided to start the "War on Drugs." They are expanding this even further with the "War on Terrorism."
Anybody with an IQ over 100 and a copy of the Constitution can tell you that law enforcement agencies should not be able to do something like this. Yet they do it all the time, even when they have absolutely no intention of pressing charges againt the people they do it to.
If you are suspected of being a drug dealer, you are in danger of having property such as your car or house being seized by police and auctioned off to the highest bidder, even if you are never officially charged.
There are some links to info at the LP homepage, I believe (http://www.lp.org).
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
" Yes, but from that point they have a short period of time to bring you to a judge where they must convince him why they want to keep you."
I'm certain that's a comforting thought to Jose Padilla who's been imprisoned since May without a trial, access to a lawyer, a telephone call, or one moment without bright lights shining down on him. Yes, the man has to learn how to sleep with the lights on in his tiny cell in a military brig. Anyone who's read 1984 will recognize the rooms with the brights always on with no windows as belonging to the Ministry of Love. I've got news for you; our rights have been eroding for some time, and Sept 11 gave the resident president all the power he needed to bring about a landslide. I hope to God there's a major backlash and soon, or there won't be much left of this country for our children. They'll have to read about it in books, so long as the books they're reading don't make the government suspicious. Perhaps my children will one day turn me in to the FBI for being unamerican.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."