SlashDot: "Comcast Gunning for NAT Users"

Thu Jan 31 17:47:46 UTC 2002

I've seen a lot of good responses since this post but none that points out
the obvious, most broadband providers offer 'residential' and 'business'
products. The former at ~$50/month for a 'single connection,' the latter for
~$120/month including most of the services at issue in this thread. You get
what you pay for.

Some day case law will catch up to this new media enough that when a
'residential' service customer seeks remedy for $X,000 in 'lost business'
the defense will be that if they want a 'business' connection, then that is
what they should have signed up for/been paying for.

When 1% of your users are sucking down %50+ of your bandwidth you may need
to discuss AUPs with that 1%. Don't expect your shareholders to cut you any
slack on this issue.

-Al

Just my 2¢, feel free to use your delete key.

-----Original Message-----
From: Martin J. Levy [mailto:mahtin at mahtin.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 7:58 AM
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Fwd: SlashDot: "Comcast Gunning for NAT Users"

I got this forwarded to me.  I'm not impressed.

Based upon the general desire for providers to have NAT'ed users and to
reduce IP-space usage where appropriate, does this make sense?  I can
understand the providers desire to increase revenue, but I don't believe
this is a good way to do it.

Besides the technical difficulties of detecting a household that is running
a NAT'ed router, why not win over the customer with a low-cost extra IP
address vs: the customers one-time hardware cost for the router.  There are
people who would be willing to pay some amount monthly vs: (let's say) $100
for a NAT box.

Does anyone know what percentage of home broadband users run NAT?  Does
anyone have stats for IP-addresses saved by using NAT?

Martin

------ Forwarded Message
From: Ward Clark <ward at joyofmacs.com>
Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 15:00:32 -0500
To: "NetTalk" <nettalk at sustworks.com>
Subject: SlashDot: "Comcast Gunning for NAT Users"

Today's MacInTouch links to a report that appeared in SlashDot on 
Thursday:

"A co-worker of mine resigned today. His new job at Comcast: Hunting down 
'abusers' of the service. More specifically, anyone using NAT to connect 
more than one computer to their cable modem to get Internet access- 
whether or not you're running servers or violating any other Acceptable 
Use Policies. Comcast has an entire department dedicated to eradicating 
NAT users from their network. ... did anyone think they'd already be 
harassing people that are using nothing more than the bandwidth for which 
they are paying? ..." Earthlink and Comcast have both been advertising 
lately their single-household, multi-computer services (and additional 
fees) -- probably amusing to many thousands of broadband-router owners, 
at least until the cable companies really crack down.

There's a huge number of responses (691 at the moment), which I quickly 
scanned out of curiosity.  I'm not a Comcast or Earthlink user.

You can start here:

     http://slashdot.org/articles/02/01/24/1957236.shtml

-- ward

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