Fwd: SlashDot: "Comcast Gunning for NAT Users"

Thu Jan 31 22:54:06 UTC 2002

On Thu, Jan 31, 2002 at 10:40:10PM +0000, E.B. Dreger wrote:
> > This is hard because they are selling bandwidth ("watch
> > video") so they can't really cap the downloads, and they are
> > selling always-on so they can't measure by time conveniently
> > either. So they try to get the "bandwidth hogs" through
> > contractual means. Comcast prohibits VPNs, and prohibits
> > ~"attaching to another network", as examples. If you use too
> > much bandwidth, they will use these to drop your service.
> 
> There it is... how many bits is the customer actually moving?
> 
> As for the person who mentioned modifying Linux IP code to alter
> the port range... it's a simple set of sysctl tunables in BSD
> (at least FreeBSD).

And it just came to my mind, a solaris machine uses by default
high port numbers to open tcp connections:

root at backup:~[15] > ndd /dev/tcp tcp_smallest_anon_port
32768

That settings determines which port number it uses to open
outbound connection from what I know.

-- 
Regards, Ulf.

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Ulf Zimmermann, 1525 Pacific Ave., Alameda, CA-94501, #: 510-865-0204
You can find my resume at: http://seven.Alameda.net/~ulf/resume.html