[NANOG] Charter Communications going to sniff traffic foradvertising?

Thu May 15 19:07:35 UTC 2008

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Steven M. Bellovin <smb at cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 May 2008 13:30:52 -0400
> "Christopher Morrow" <morrowc.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Oh, how do you know you can trust the VPN folks anymore than the
>> cable-modem folks though? eventually the same cost issues are going to
>> arise for the VPN folks as did for cable-modem/dsl folks (downward
>> pressure on pricing and infra/opex/capex costs going
>> up/not-decreasing).
>>
> They're not more trustworthy, but since they don't require widespread
> local physical infrastructure it's potentially a more competitive
> market.

right, so not 'today' not 'tomorrow' if this becomes a service that is
percieved as valuable and useful more providers will pop in this
market (like cable vs dsl vs dialup), pricing pressure will start,
profit margins will shrink... then ... Oh look! If I give my user meta
data to CompanyX I'll get profit without any real capex expenditure!
Yea, free money!!!

So, how long until that happens? Hopefully when that happens there
will be enough other vpn provider options so it won't matter as much
as it does in the current US Duopoly... I mean 'competitive local
landscape'.

-Chris