North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Fwd: SlashDot: "Comcast Gunning for NAT Users"
OK. I am running VMWare and run virtual machine on my PC; is it 2 computers or 1 computer? There is not ANY sharp boundary between 1 computer and many computers -:). It can be less that 1 computer, 1.0 computer, 1.02 computer and so on -:)... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric A. Hall" <[email protected]> To: "Bill Woodcock" <[email protected]>; "Martin J. Levy" <[email protected]> Cc: <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 2:09 PM Subject: Re: Fwd: SlashDot: "Comcast Gunning for NAT Users" > > "Bill Woodcock" <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Besides the technical difficulties of detecting a household that is > > > running a NAT... > > > > Can you think of a way of doing it reliably? Anything that provides > > anything more than a guess? > > Several ways: > > Comcast has a mail server, they could poke at the HELO banners and > other identifiers. > > HTTP proxies indicating that multiple browsers are in use, especially > if multiple platforms (Win95, WinXP, as simple test) > > More than ~4 simultaneous TCP connections open at once. > > None of those would be bothered by firewalls or other legitimate devices, and > would probably all be within a legally-defensible purview of ~analysis. > > As to whether or not Comcast does any of this, I do not know. My brother has a > friend who was a 2nd level tech with @Home, and he says they did it, so I > would not be surprised that Comcast would also. > > The thing is that Comcast is trying to make money by selling ~consumer > Internet access, and they have a perception problem with shared access > (PacBell used to run great "bandwidth hog!" ads). They don't want people using > more pipe than ~consumer access would normally imply. > > This is hard because they are selling bandwidth ("watch video") so they can't > really cap the downloads, and they are selling always-on so they can't measure > by time conveniently either. So they try to get the "bandwidth hogs" through > contractual means. Comcast prohibits VPNs, and prohibits ~"attaching to > another network", as examples. If you use too much bandwidth, they will use > these to drop your service. > > -- > Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ > Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/ > > >
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