Quick poll on 'free internet' perception
Roy Davis
i.e. do you think of it as full unlimited all ports access, or http traffic only, or TCP only, or limited port ranges (say blocking p2p), or what ever.
My personal opinion is of limited port ranges for general use, that is http/ftp/pop/https etc... and that if you need specialist ranges then you should get your own account and control settings, security, and usage.
Anyone else got any views?
olivernz
(TheFreeNet does have a somewhat different connotation) i.e. breaking
the lock of ISPs and WiFi companies. Thereby enabling people -ALL
PEOPLE- to be more connected and creative.
The reality looks a little different though. We don't have flat-rate
broadband here so we can't offer the free-for-all (yet). For the time
being we should therefore limit what you can do on TFN and how much of
it. But I think it should be understood that this is only due to the
limitations in NZ.
Cheers Oliver
P.S. Does anyone know of a lobby group for real flat-rate broad band?
I think every day that goes by without this is a day that NZ is
sliding to the tail end of the OECD. I want to get active about it but
I haven't found any groups out there so far. So if anyone knows please
let me know!
Donald Gordon
If you're going to cap (and maybe rate-limit) people, I can't see what
restricting their access further will accomplish. Maybe blocking P2P
(bittorrent/etc) is a good idea, but I wouldn't want to go any further.
Otherwise you'll spend forever unblocking ports because you didn't allow
some wierd IM protocol by mistake.
A network that doesn't allow at least
* HTTP/HTTPS
* POP3, IMAP, SMTP on port 587, the SSL versions of these
* IM
* VoIP
* VPNs
is not going to be especially useful to me. And it's pretty hard to
block some of those protocols by port number anyway. SIP/RTP based VoIP
(aka standards compliant) basically needs all UDP ports to be open. And
you can't block P2P by port numbers these days anyway, you need to do L7
classification. Blocking skype is next to impossible.
But if you're planning to *manually* block people who use over 1GB, then
you're stuck slowing people down so they can't use too much before you
notice. Manually blocking like that sounds like a *really* bad idea to
me. Adding automatic blocking to a closed system like Meraki is
probably between difficult and impossible. I've written code to do
usage-based blocking before for the VUW computer club's wireless network
(first student-accessible wifi network in a wellington tertiary
institution, as far as I know) -- it's much easier when you're basing
your network on an open system like we did.
donald
Mike P
Rimu
indefinitely though, some speed (512k?? ) or cap limitation (a gig or
so) would be fine.
The general public have no idea what ports are, so they wouldn't
understand why their skype or whatever doesn't work. They'll probably
wonder what they did wrong, or blame the network.... They also tend to
have a pretty vague idea how data is measured, so if you tell them
"you have a 1 gig cap" they won't have a clue how much that is, until
they get cut off.
So I expect our perceptions of 'free internet' and what compromises we
can expect are bound to be quite different to John Smith's
R
Hamish MacEwan
> Just interested in what everyones perceptions of free internet is.
Two views, free is worth what you pay for it, free is as in speech.
> Anyone else got any views?
Defining a set of ports ignores the applications/services/purposes
that flows over them.
80 is sufficient for all that is admired and despised. Volume as a
measure is probably apt.
Myself, I think a free Internet will be like air, you speak, they
hear, no one counts your words, and in P2P conversation transmitters
and receivers make their own decisions about language and content.
Hamish.
--
http://del.icio.us/Hamish.MacEwan
http://urltea.com/3jm?GoogleSharedItems
Stuart
would be nice to be able to send receive emails which includes IMAP,
POP3, SMTP, as well as the secure versions of those protocols. But as
others have mentioned, we don't yet have unlimited broadband plans we
can share, so if MAC addresses are going to be limited to 1GB per
month anyway, then I don't think it matters what prototcols are used
to reach that 1GB limit.
Stuart
Stuart
receive a message somehow that they have been blocked, or are they
just unable to connect? Do they have any recourse if they have been
blocked?
Mike P
"TheFreeNet has blocked you for excessive use for 1 month. Read our Terms of Service."
They cannot reconnect, until they are unblocked. The only recourse would be to email thefre...@gmail.com and explain why they should be unblocked.
~mike
Peter McCaffrey
Stuart Maxwell
accidentally download a bunch of Windows Updates, or some new Podcasts
while iTunes is playing music, or Antivirus updates, etc... I know
I've accidentally churned through a whole bunch of my Cafenet usage
before through software updates being downloaded in the background.
But I still think that 1GB should be ample for most users.
Stuart.
On Mar 5, 8:25 pm, "Mike P" <zoomzoom.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You can set a custom message for blocked users, I use:
> "TheFreeNet has blocked you for excessive use for 1 month. Read our Terms of
> Service."
>
> They cannot reconnect, until they are unblocked. The only recourse would be
>
> ~mike
Mike P
mike