I have only 'seen' a few 'secure' systems in my day and they ran internal devs of some unix variant off of firmware. All the apps (and I think to some extent, the NOS) were distributed accross the newtork. Very nasty, scary, expensive systems. Sorry I cant be more specific, but maybe the ABC sections of our government are not sharing their knowledge with the military. Wouldn't be the first time.
Yes, placing more machines on the network than your agreement states breaks the agreement. The cable companies want to make more money by selling each IP. They also don't want the bandwidth distributed to multiple entities without paying for it (which I can sympathise with). There was a case in Illinois where one guy was reselling his connection to his neighbors (he had over 40 people in his apartment complex wired up to his switch and router). This guy was making over $600 a month and the cable company got $40. The only way he got caught was that they finally capped his usage at a normal single user level and one of his "customers" complained to the cable company.
That reasoning out of the way, here is why they don't want VPN's. Virtual Private Networking is a method for extending a LAN across a WAN or the Internet safely and keeping the network cohesiveness. For instance, say you have an office LAN and you want to give a telecommuting employee access to all the info on that LAN. By setting up a VPN connection between the two, the telecommuter would have all the funtionality that he would if he was physically at the LAN site. VPN and IP tunneling put a heavy strain on routers in between the connections (and can be a pain to implement across the heterogenous mix that is the Internet). PPPoE is another type that is actually used by some DSL and (I thought) road runner cable to hook up customers. Really, this is not a big deal to people unless you are a business trying to do something along the lines of what I discussed. I would LOVE to see what happens if a customer sues over this (there are grounds, IMO...IANAL!!!)
Don't forget that cable modem hanging off that copper is a full-fledged router/monitoring device. The hardware in a DOCSIS (the standard) cable modem is truly impressive. It contains the logic to function as a router with plenty of monitoring tools built-in. A proxy or NAT style router/firewall is still the safest (and highest performing) method of placing multiple computers on a cable or DSL connection. There is (almost) no way of detecting multiple machines behind a NAT router or something similar.
What cable service do you guys have? I used comcast@home and it is a free for all for bandwidth. The caps are (supposedly) 1.5 Mb down and 128Kb up. I haven't gotten to the 1.5 on the down, but I have hit 800 kb on the up (less usage of that channel). The nature of cable modem architecture uses a "head unit" that all the lines on a node plug into. They (cable ISP) sets usage levels on the fly at that point (which also can make settings/firmware changes in the modems).
I don't get charged for traffic usage, only a monthly flat fee. Now the commercial line (same bandwidth as a T1 w/QoS agreement) does charge by usage.
As I type this, I just heard that a federal judge ruled against several music marketing and manufacturing firms for illegally inflating the price of CD's in the US and around the world for the past five years. I think the explosion of mp3 trading is a very loud message to the powers-that-be that people are sick and tired of paying over-valued prices for music and being force fed what to buy. I don't place $15-$20 US value on a CD. I would be willing to pay $5 or a reasonable amount per song. I want the choice to purchase custom remixes and indivual songs and burn them to any medium and use any format. I set the value of the product (that would be demand-sided economics, kiddies), not the producers (they can argue it is a limited supply product...but there are THOUSANDS of good bands out there that could be heard if not for the expensive process of traditional promotion). I own the medium that contains the copyrighted work and I can determine what that medium is (by the Digital Copyright Act). If I want to make mp3's of my CD's, I can (I MAY be required to get rid of my CD's, but there is a good legal argument against). The other part of this argument is distribution. There is not a single radio station available in my area that promotes the music I enjoy. Only markets like NYC or LA have my music. Am I to be force fed music I don't want or denied access to new bands I would never know of? The bottom line is that this lawsuit is not about copyright, it is about the fight for distribution and control rights. No one has a problem with paying a fairly valuated price to an artist, but paying for promoters, advertisers, marketers, and all the other BS that goes along with corporate sanctioned entertainment is a problem. Artists unite...if you record, we will pay for it. Tell all the promoters and lawyers to kiss off. Poor Metallica, you just don't get it. I can't believe you guys are being chumps like this.
a freely available program called Spyster can show all IP's currently trading and the associated files. The people running the "Wall of Shame" sting on gnutella are using it to trace ip's. It is still inaccurate, but it is important to realize that you are almost NEVER totally anonymous online. (Yes, even spoofs can be correctly traced)
Slashdot Mirror
I have only 'seen' a few 'secure' systems in my day and they ran internal devs of some unix variant off of firmware. All the apps (and I think to some extent, the NOS) were distributed accross the newtork. Very nasty, scary, expensive systems. Sorry I cant be more specific, but maybe the ABC sections of our government are not sharing their knowledge with the military. Wouldn't be the first time.
Yes, placing more machines on the network than your agreement states breaks the agreement. The cable companies want to make more money by selling each IP. They also don't want the bandwidth distributed to multiple entities without paying for it (which I can sympathise with). There was a case in Illinois where one guy was reselling his connection to his neighbors (he had over 40 people in his apartment complex wired up to his switch and router). This guy was making over $600 a month and the cable company got $40. The only way he got caught was that they finally capped his usage at a normal single user level and one of his "customers" complained to the cable company. That reasoning out of the way, here is why they don't want VPN's. Virtual Private Networking is a method for extending a LAN across a WAN or the Internet safely and keeping the network cohesiveness. For instance, say you have an office LAN and you want to give a telecommuting employee access to all the info on that LAN. By setting up a VPN connection between the two, the telecommuter would have all the funtionality that he would if he was physically at the LAN site. VPN and IP tunneling put a heavy strain on routers in between the connections (and can be a pain to implement across the heterogenous mix that is the Internet). PPPoE is another type that is actually used by some DSL and (I thought) road runner cable to hook up customers. Really, this is not a big deal to people unless you are a business trying to do something along the lines of what I discussed. I would LOVE to see what happens if a customer sues over this (there are grounds, IMO...IANAL!!!)
Don't forget that cable modem hanging off that copper is a full-fledged router/monitoring device. The hardware in a DOCSIS (the standard) cable modem is truly impressive. It contains the logic to function as a router with plenty of monitoring tools built-in. A proxy or NAT style router/firewall is still the safest (and highest performing) method of placing multiple computers on a cable or DSL connection. There is (almost) no way of detecting multiple machines behind a NAT router or something similar.
What cable service do you guys have? I used comcast@home and it is a free for all for bandwidth. The caps are (supposedly) 1.5 Mb down and 128Kb up. I haven't gotten to the 1.5 on the down, but I have hit 800 kb on the up (less usage of that channel). The nature of cable modem architecture uses a "head unit" that all the lines on a node plug into. They (cable ISP) sets usage levels on the fly at that point (which also can make settings/firmware changes in the modems).
I don't get charged for traffic usage, only a monthly flat fee. Now the commercial line (same bandwidth as a T1 w/QoS agreement) does charge by usage.
As I type this, I just heard that a federal judge ruled against several music marketing and manufacturing firms for illegally inflating the price of CD's in the US and around the world for the past five years. I think the explosion of mp3 trading is a very loud message to the powers-that-be that people are sick and tired of paying over-valued prices for music and being force fed what to buy. I don't place $15-$20 US value on a CD. I would be willing to pay $5 or a reasonable amount per song. I want the choice to purchase custom remixes and indivual songs and burn them to any medium and use any format. I set the value of the product (that would be demand-sided economics, kiddies), not the producers (they can argue it is a limited supply product...but there are THOUSANDS of good bands out there that could be heard if not for the expensive process of traditional promotion). I own the medium that contains the copyrighted work and I can determine what that medium is (by the Digital Copyright Act). If I want to make mp3's of my CD's, I can (I MAY be required to get rid of my CD's, but there is a good legal argument against). The other part of this argument is distribution. There is not a single radio station available in my area that promotes the music I enjoy. Only markets like NYC or LA have my music. Am I to be force fed music I don't want or denied access to new bands I would never know of? The bottom line is that this lawsuit is not about copyright, it is about the fight for distribution and control rights. No one has a problem with paying a fairly valuated price to an artist, but paying for promoters, advertisers, marketers, and all the other BS that goes along with corporate sanctioned entertainment is a problem. Artists unite...if you record, we will pay for it. Tell all the promoters and lawyers to kiss off. Poor Metallica, you just don't get it. I can't believe you guys are being chumps like this.
a freely available program called Spyster can show all IP's currently trading and the associated files. The people running the "Wall of Shame" sting on gnutella are using it to trace ip's. It is still inaccurate, but it is important to realize that you are almost NEVER totally anonymous online. (Yes, even spoofs can be correctly traced)