From: David Honig (honig@sprynet.com)
Date: Sat Mar 04 2000 - 10:59:46 PST
At 11:46 AM 3/3/00 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
>Obviously they need to limit upstream volume (and the newer cable modems
>or head-ends are giving them more tools for that),
>but this not only limits the high-volume porn/warez/mp3 servers,
What really concerns me is that their business model
trashes the Everyone's-a-Publisher potential of the net.
Maybe there is unlimited free web space out there today, but its
not under your control, and it limits what you can do (eg.,
CGIs, freedom of expression, etc.)
>They don't limit MS file-sharing servers - they recommend turning them off
>because they're terribly insecure, but they assume they'll be low volume.
Depends what your neighbors keep on their drives :-)
>But they don't limit RealAudio or CU-SeeMe, which are real bandwidth hogs.
This is the insulting part. Your neighbors can play netquake all day; they
can leave their VoIP phone off hook all day. You are 'legal' in sending
your photos to a hundred email recipients, instead of 'illegally' putting
them on your server for the few people who actually care, saving the damn
ISP hundreds of megs of traffic.
But you don't have a choice. The folks who own the atoms
are the folks who sell you bits. And no one else can install
the atoms.
That's ok. We don't need more wires. We need access, so
others can sell us unrestricted service.
>The related technology issue is "so how much upstream load *do* they
generate?"
Consider that much 'server' traffic would be bursty & bufferable, compared
with the neighbors' high-QoS streaming pap.
Besides, who cares about the upstream load? You pay for
N kbytes/sec. You can email this much data; why can't
you serve it? (Yes, I know about overselling b/w)
>and "what tools does the system have for scalability and load limiting?".
Well lets see, the cable/dsl ISPs own the equiptment on both ends of the
last mile.. what physics and the FCC don't constrain it seems that they do.
>>Restricting the use of the media should not be legal if the supplier has a
>>government-granted monopoly (as cable ISPs do, and DSL will if the CO isn't
>
>Cable ISPs haven't had granted monopolies in most places for a few years;
>there are FCC rules requiring towns to open access to the streets for
>competitive cable providers.
Its not the roads (and private lawns for cable, if you're really
talking about putting in more coax) its the
head-ends. Or the central offices for DSL. If the
cable cos used the FCC ruling to claim they were not monopolies and thus
didn't have to open their heads, the FCC would
have made it worse.
You can buy your electromotive force from a variety of
vendors over the monopoly-installed electric wires.
Your electric co does not tell you what you can do
with what it sells you. Similarly with phones.
What's different about bits (besides youth)?
>they mainly respond to complaints. But unless they become universal
>(e.g. include an anonymizer with every copy of Apache),
>remailers, rewebbers and eternity servers are *guaranteed* to generate
>complaints.
Then the exit point has to be a more robust
node but the entry/internal nodes can still be on home machines.
Home machines would not be the places the complainers complain to.
>Steve Shear also replied that security and firewalls may be more important
>than the server-vs-client issue. I disagree, at least for cable modem users;
>getting cracked is annoying
Annoying? Comparable to burglary, if you have valuables
(credit card info) on your disks. And I thought this was a security
forum... Anyway its not a matter of whose gripe
is bigger.. they're both abuses by monopolists. Monopolists
who need to take the common-carrier high ground, because
otherwise they'll be responsible for a lot of (c) infringement
and whatever else its herd of customers does. Monopolists who
need to open access, because competition is good and their
eminent-domain monopoly has a cost.
> but getting shut down hard means that
>you can't run the service\\\\\\\listener.
Yes, but shouldn't they give you a warning first?
Particularly if you're not doing something blatantly
out of contract, like serving erotica for money..
BTW Don't peer-to-peer "instant messenger" applications call listen()?
Isn't a NAT box a server of sorts?
Its great that most cable/dsl sysops have slack, but
unenforced rules are eventually used for harassment, and should
be taken off the books. They *can* be written to
make everyone happy, including the ISP. And it does matter.
The Internet is not a TV.
DH
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