[SATLUG] Free WiFi Router if you'll join the system (which is also free and gets you free wifi all over!)

[tom weeks]

On Sunday 18 February 2007 16:51, Sean Carolan wrote:
[...]
> The only ISP that I'm aware of that allows sharing of your bandwidth
> is SpeakEasy:
> http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/
>
> How will the ISP be able to tell what you're doing behind your own NAT
> router? 

Well..  detection of the FON heartbeat is one way that an ISP could passively 
detect what you're running (ports 1812, 1813, 1937).  Just like running web 
servers on port 80 (or sort of).  More info here:
	http://boards.fon.com/viewtopic.php?p=7517#7517


> And is it any of their business anyway? 

Well.. literally.. yes, it could be.  If "their business model" consists of a 
profit margin based on overselling their user to bandwidth ratio at 10:1, 
then with a bunch of FON clients they find that their BW costs are doubled 
due to only being able to offer a 5:1 ratio without buying more bandwidth... 
then you can see how they would be upset with such clients (not even talking 
about new client profit losses due to "peer sharing".
NOTE: I'm just playing the overly-greedy-capitalist-pig advocate here ;).

All that being said.. This really isn't a "problem" with the number of FON 
folks we see in SA, or even in Austin.  You literally have tens of thousands 
of regular, road runner customers for every one that might have a FON device.  
It's probably not worth their time.  Although still.. would not be difficult 
to set up to detect such clients.  

> As soon as they  
> start to try and make their TOS cover what goes on inside your LAN,
> they open a whole can of worms as far as liability goes. 

All they have to do is "disallow" port 1937 use and a few others to stop fon 
users, not asking what's inside your network (just as some stop ports 25 and 
80 incoming):
	1812 udp - RADIUS auth
	1813 udp - RADIUS acct
	1937 tcp - ssh (heartbeat script)

[...]

> Personally I have used Time Warner Road Runner for some years now, and
> have found them easy to deal with.  No port blocking, no bandwidth
> throttling, etc.  They seem to be pretty much hands-off once they
> connect you to the network. 

Last I checked, without a special business account, they still block you from 
serving port 80 and port 25 traffic no?  I recently helped a friend set up 
custom apache and postfix configs so that they could serve web and email 
services from home... at least I thought that he was using road runner.

Tweeks