ISP wants to know how many PCs I have
glenn
Last night my Cablevision called me up and asked me how many computers
I have hooked up to their connection.
I told them them the details of my home set up: wireless router, two
wired linux boxes and an unwired windows laptop. These machines are
always on, but bandwidth consumption is modest.
Today I checked the firewall log [router] and it was
empty.............................
What is going on? Any ideas? Where should I look for traces of whatever
they are up to?
Glenn
jruschme
glenn wrote:
> To all,
>
> Last night my Cablevision called me up and asked me how many computers
> I have hooked up to their connection.
>
> they are up to?
My guess would be that they have been looking at traffic and noting how
many different Mac IDs are using the same IP address. Most likely, they
want to confirm that you are just an active geek and not, for instance,
using "home" cable service for an office or other business (you don't
run a coffeee shop out of your house, do you? :-). They may also be
trying to verify that you aren't "reselling" their bandwidth by being a
Fonera, for instance.
<<<John>>>
Jean-David Beyer
Hash: SHA1
I use Verizon FiOS and they do not care how many computers I hook up. They
even supply a router that allows 4 hard-wired computers and a bunch of radio
ones (D-Link DI-624).
So the only MAC ID they would ever see is that of the router.
I have two computers, but I use my main (Linux-only) machine as a firewall
and router for my other one. So here, too, they would see only one IP
address, and even if they could see the MAC ID of the NIC that connects to
their router, that would be the only MAC ID they would see.
Since I have a home-user account, I am not allowed to run any "servers" on
my machine. I do not know what they mean by server, but I quit running
sendmail on the Internet, and I never ran apache. I do run ntpd and named,
but I run them as clients only (as far as the Internet is concerned. Now
ntpd does use a port in the range 0 - 1023, so it might be thought of as a
server. Verizon does not seem to care about it, though.
Maybe you should consider FiOS if it is available in your locality. I get
nice bandwidth:
Download Speed: 20006 kbps (2500.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 4354 kbps ( 544.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
- --
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 10:10:01 up 62 days, 12:42, 3 users, load average: 4.10, 4.08, 4.08
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Glenn Smith
I read the EULA on the Cablevision website, and it is impossibly vague. The company doesn't like *servers* of any sort, and I don't even host a homepage. I should be in the rights. I am anxiously awaiting my next bill, however.
Merry Holidays..............
Glenn