UK ISPs Consider VPN To Avoid Piracy Crackdown 133
Mark.JUK writes "Broadband internet providers in the UK are considering whether or not to follow the example of a Swedish ISP, Bahnhof, which recently put all of its customers behind a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) in order to circumvent new European Data Retention and Internet Copyright Infringement laws. By doing this, it makes their logs less useful to outside forces (e.g. rights holders) and allows customers to use the internet anonymously. However, several UK ISPs, including business provider AAISP (Andrews and Arnold), have suggested that there may be better solutions than sticking everybody behind a costly VPN. AAISP's boss, Adrian Kennard, claims, 'something ISPs will be doing anyway, carrier grade NAT, will create a similar anonymity as there is no requirement to log NAT sessions.' Meanwhile, Timico's CTO, Trefor Davies, warns, 'It would be a pretty costly project for all ISPs to implement such a system. It would also bring with it risks – suddenly it becomes a lot easier for governments to start monitoring all your traffic because it all goes through a single point (or at least a few points) on the network.'"
Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
So the public don't like the law because they can get ratted out.
The ISPs don't like the law either
Why is there this law again?
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Y'see, it is a very simple one, the reason why pretty much any other law hated by everyone is around: money from media companies.
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Y'see, it is a very simple one, the reason why pretty much any other law hated by everyone is around: money from media companies.
Ah yes, how could we possibly forget: entertainment is the best, nay, only reason to give up civil liberties. Why if it weren't for those billions of relatively small payments we give to media companies, each representing that we only care a little about their content but we're happy to have SOMETHING, where would the economy be?
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
We don't have "jaywalking" laws in the UK. The whole idea that you can be arrested for crossing the street in the wrong place is as laughable as it is Kafka-esque.
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, sort of. See Highway Code rule 18 [direct.gov.uk]. It is an offence to loiter on a crossing.
Which means you can potentially enjoy criminal sanctions for crossing where you should be crossing, but not for crossing where you shouldn't. And this, m'lud, is why I never cross at crossings.
(It's like those stupid pavement railings close to crossings. It just means you have to make the extra effort of jumping the railing or hugging the kerb on the road side until the railing ends, which is far more dangerous than if they weren't there.)
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Which does seem odd from one point of view, but makes sense from another. In the US you have right of way if you step out in front of a car (possibly not in every state) and they must stop. So the Jaywalking laws are to stop you from abusing that power.
There are no Jaywalking laws in the UK, but if you step onto the road it is your responsibility not to get hit - it is not the responsibility of the car to stop. Of course if they are driving with due care and attention then they shouldn't run you over if the
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Well, within reason. I mean, if you're driving down the road....no crossing zone there, and you're doing the speed limit, etc....if someone suddenly jumps out in front of you, and you hit and even kill them, you're not gonna get busted for that.
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There are no Jaywalking laws in the UK, but if you step onto the road it is your responsibility not to get hit - it is not the responsibility of the car to stop.
No, pedestrians have the right of way. If you hit a pedestrian with your car, it's entirely your fault.
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[citation needed]
Not least because you are wrong - on a straight section of road without any crossing the car has right of way. There are specific exceptions (ie Section 108 in the highway code) for other situations. As for your claim that it is entirely the car drivers fault, take a look about halfway down here [camdencyclists.org.uk] on the description of classifying accidents, and then later at the introduction of Home Zones.
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I think the idea stems from the fact that although the car theoretically has the right of way, if a car hits a pedestrian and should have been able to stop in time then the driver will be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention.
This means that even if someone is hit by a car crossing in an area not designated as a crossing then the driver can still be prosecuted if they weren't paying attention, or if they were speeding, or if they were simply being stubborn refusing to stop and so on.
So like
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An interesting way of looking at it. In a situation where deaths are only avoided by both sides being sensible it makes sense to leave some ambiguity in the definition of who is in the right. If, as you point out, it makes both sides exercise some caution then it seems like a win:win.
Spitting onto ground... (Score:2)
... How about spitting to the ground in Singapore? :(
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Consider that "exceeding the speed limit" and "driving too fast for conditions" are two entirely separate violations (the second is much more severe). The latter really does make sense as a safety issue. The former is a revenue generator for the state that has nothing whatsoever to do with safety.
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So what you're saying is that, if some kid were to walk out into the road completely unexpectedly from behind a parked car, the fact that you were doing 40mph rather than 30mph wouldn't make it more likely that you kill them?
Lots of laws are preventative, like the one which stops you building an atom bomb in your back yard. Think of the car as the most dangerous weapon most people ever get to control.
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It is not technically against the law to build your own nuclear weapons; it, however, is against several international treaties.
Now I don't know if fissile material is considered a regulated substance, I suspect it might be.
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The first question I'd be asking in that scenario is: "where were his parents and why weren't they watching him?" That's if the kid is so young he can't yet be expected to understand that running out into traffic is a really bad idea. I know, it may sound crazy, but actually being a responsible parent, while difficult, is much easier than trying to control every possible vehicle that
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Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a law because intellectual property is the only major export most Western nations still have. However unpopular this sort of thing is they're all far too afraid to risk losing that economic base, so they don't want to change the equation too much. Hence laws to preserve the status quo.
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"intellectual property is the only major export most Western nations still have" - That statement is in dire need of a citation.
No, that's not how this works when you're not editing an encyclopedia. If a comment about a topic has piqued your interests, it is now up to you to research that topic. If you find information that contradicts someone else's position, let them know.
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Actually it is, it's up to the person making the claim to back it up, otherwise it's just a bald assertion. For example, if he claimed unicorns exist it's not up to me to disprove the claim since it is logically impossible for me to do so.
So let me be blunt, I call bullshit on the OP. I did some cursory research before my first post and found global revenues in the ten's of billions for movies, music and video games, clearly this
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Actually it is, it's up to the person making the claim to back it up, otherwise it's just a bald assertion. For example, if he claimed unicorns exist it's not up to me to disprove the claim since it is logically impossible for me to do so. .
You mean unicorns don't exist? I've been grossly misinformed.
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"intellectual property is the only major export most Western nations still have" - That statement is in dire need of a citation.
No, that's not how this works when you're not editing an encyclopedia. If a comment about a topic has piqued your interests, it is now up to you to research that topic. If you find information that contradicts someone else's position, let them know.
Are you familiar with the concept of the burden of proof?
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"IP" isn't on the list, as it isn't a physical product that goes through Customs.
Take Apple for example. They go down on the list as an importer of goods from China. However, the design of their products and the software that runs on them is carried out in the USA, and their products go from China to all over the world. That is a major IP export from the USA.
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Note that when I say intellectual property, I mean ideas.
The US exports no significant amount of raw materials, or manufactured goods aside from those which are heavily subsidized or banned from being produced overseas like grain and military equipment. Neither of these things produces much of a net bonus to the US economy because the amount of money that must be paid to keep those industries viable is so high. The same is true of most western nations. We don't make iPhones, nor do we produce the materials
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There used to be a reasonable period over which the rights of the creator lapsed and the content became public domain. Corporate interests recently succeeded in a significant increase of this period. Th e compromise between providing a reasonable incentive for creating anything original through protection of exclusive rights and the public interest has gone out of whack completely. Secret negotiations on ACTA are the ultimate proof in eliminating a due democratic process
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
The funny this to me is:
Sean Hannity (can't stand him, but listen sometimes on my way home from work just to get mad lol) had Joe Lieberman on and had they talked about this and that. Two days later Hannity has two foreign people on talking about what's going on in Egypt, with each person having different views. He then asked the one if the current President of Egypt (or whatever that position is called) is a Dictator, and kept hounding the point. After the lady wouldn't agree or say, Sean said something along the lines of "well look, he had the internet shut off, which makes him a dictator".
Well if that's true, then Lieberman is a dictator for having come up with the internet kill switch for the US, as well as anyone else who agreed on the bill.
It's funny how one action someone else is evil and "makes someone a dictator", yet the same or similar actions else where are just fine.
It really makes me sick
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Exactly - and you see Obama crowing about the rights of the Egyptian people, but then you wonder - what would happen if the same events were occurring here? I'm willing to bet that Obama would be singing an entirely different tune. Further, the initial intent of the "kill switch" was to mitigate damage in the wake of cyber warfare. However, just like everything else the federal government has done in the name of "national security" since 9/11, it *will* be re-purposed for other non-defense uses.
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It won't be Obama that pulls the 'Internet Kill Switch'
That ship has not sailed yet... and I doubt very seriously it will sail on his watch, even if the man gets re-elected.
It will be some future tool that gets voted into the hot seat, and decides thing are bad-assed enough to make that call.
some future, elected asshat, that get the distinction of triggering a long over due civil war.
I'd bet money it won't come to that for another generation... eventually it will... as it must...
We've been too long without
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The funny thing to me is you think Lieberman is a dictator even though he has no power on his own. He can't force anyone to do anything.
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So the public don't like the law because they can get ratted out.
The ISPs don't like the law either
Why is there this law again?
The usual: too long time since the last total overhaul of the ruling class.
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So the public don't like the law because they can get ratted out.
The ISPs don't like the law either
Why is there this law again?
Because little children sometimes (surprise!) don't like to eat their vegetables.
I know it's "PC" to believe everything government does these days is aimed, solely, at "taking your toys away" but, believe it or not, there IS a reason why we are a society of laws and choose not to degenerate into a "Mad Max" like existence.
If you think the laws are wrong (or just stupid), then by all means, try and change the laws. But don't just sit on your ass and blame imaginary monsters ("guberment", conspiracies betwe
Any side effects of NAT? (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not all that familiar with the nitty gritty details of NAT. /. rate limit posts coming from multiple users behind a NAT?
Would a site like
IIRC, one spammer behind a NAT can get everyone else blacklisted.
Talk about havoc for that ISP's customers.
A VPN sounds like the smarter of the two ideas.
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NAT is already done by certain ISPs who don't have enough addresses for all their customers. If you (say) map 2 people onto the same IP address you can pay for less addresses.
If you map a bunch of people to the same address every session, and you don't store the routing table, I think you can safely call it 'anonymous' - because you're introducing uncertainty.
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NAT 64 is one possible transition mechanism to ipv6 when combined with DNS 64. Of course, they probably are doing what you say.
Re:Any side effects of NAT? (Score:5, Informative)
The side effects of a NAT (not all NATs, but the IP masqerading one which has become synonymous with it) are that you lose the ability to accept incoming traffic. Pretty much all Peer-to-peer protocols depend on that in some measure.
Some can cope (I believe Skype has some server-based way of negotiating a direct connection between two firewalled computers, though I don't know the details), while others like BitTorrent keep some limited functionality (you're limited to connections you initiate), and still others (tor, probably - as a node, not a client) will stop working entirely.
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DO NOT WANT (Score:1)
It doesn't work with a NAT like Linux NAT. Why? Because outgoing connections are mapped on port *and* destination. If both sides are behind same type of NAT, it is impossible to connect the two together.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation#Types_of_NAT
Most NAT is symmetric, at least by default. Remember when Skype stopped working and all hell broke lose? The cause was NAT. Without NAT, supernodes (skype servers) would not be necessary and Skype would have continued to function.
Anyway, of
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That's one way, I've not personally investigated this but I've been told that Skype also uses UDP to punch through the firewall... since it is a connectionless protocol many home firewalls can't really tell if the "connection is open or closed" as with normal TCP traffic.
So each of the client blindly send a UDP packet to each other as negotiated by the skype server.
Client A's firewall sees UDP traffic going out from Client A Port 1 to Client B Port 2
Client A's firewall says "aha this must be some kind of co
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Doesn't matter... (Score:2)
Next year there'll be a new law requiring logging of NAT sessions.
The RIAA already knows who to bribe so the next round of laws will go through quickly.
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I'm sure any log retentions rules would apply. The problem for anti-piracy investigators is that about all you can tell by sniffing the packets is that pirating is being done behind the NAT router. If that ISP has, say, 500,000 users, the investigators can't tell which ones are pirating, and the logs would become considerably less useful. There might be key indicators, like number of bytes downloaded in a given period, if the logs have that kind of detail, that might point to specific users, but I'll wag
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Basically, if you're behind NAT, you're on a LAN with a gateway (/gatekeeper) to the internet, **NOT** actually on the internet.
There is no difference between public and private addresses technically, it's just an agreement that we are allowed to use 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x and 172.16.x.x inside our own networks and don't route these ranges to the outside. Even if you have a public address from your provider, you still have a gateway.
Selling you this as "internet" is false advertising. Not that false advertising has ever stopped ISPs, with their "unlimited" broadband.
My provider sells "access to Internet", not "Internet".
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Pretty much all P2P protocols don't do this anyways. There are a few older ones; IRC and FTP come to mind, that do this, but even very low-end NAT routers can fix that as well. As to the single point argument, well, most ISPs only have a few such points anyways and I'm sure governments can find excuses to monitor them, whether the gateways open up on to public or private IP spaces.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Why do people worry (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got nothing to hide. \end{cynical}
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"Why do people worry about wire trapping?
I've got nothing to hide."
Because, unlike you, they're aware of history and basic civil rights principles.
Why workarounds ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of searching for technical workarounds, we should try to block such laws. Workarounds are just that, and sooner or later the law will workaround workarounds.
What will happen if encryption will become illegal for the general public ? Today this might seem far-fetched, but we are slowly giving in, and it might be a tad too late when we'll realize what we lost (and I'm not talking about the regular /. guy, but about the general public).
Re:Why workarounds ? (Score:5, Interesting)
The people who want these laws are the kind of people who have enough money and influence to ensure that these laws stay the same way.
I mean, you saw the whole Net Neutrality debate in the US. It had misdirection on one side which triggered the American Native "I DON'T WANT NO GUBBERMENT" reaction.
When we're talking about media - you can expect to see commercials detailing how 'favourite artist' supports this law because it protects their music, how the world would be horrible without them. Then you have government lobbying (also known as bribes) and stuff like that.
If we had an infinite pool of politicians, enough floating voters and a way of determining who supports these crap laws, you'd see the world change pretty quickly. Not the case either.
At least you can rest on the fact that laws usually take ages to fix. So this 'workaround' is great until they patch the law up in a few years' time.
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I mean, you saw the whole Net Neutrality debate in the US. It had misdirection on one side which triggered the American Native "I DON'T WANT NO GUBBERMENT" reaction.
The problem was the other side of it, that was salivating over all the possibilities to insert more government control into the legislation for net neutrality. You weren't ever going to get real net neutrality, you were going to get something like it, plus a whole lot of political meddling.
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So this 'workaround' is great until they patch the law up in a few years' time.
At which point, we're stuck with NAT and all its disadvantages, rather than a far superior IPv6 option, because the technically inferior version happened to be more convenient legally until the law was fixed.
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Instead of searching for technical workarounds, we should try to block such laws.
Which is what many people have tried to do with lobbying and public rally calls, etc. As far as I remember a couple of ISPs have even gone to the lengths of getting a Judicial review of portions of the Digital Economy Act. Unfortunately, half the reason that act got through in the first place was because it wasn't scrutinised enough in parliament and if that's a problem in the first place then trying to block laws will probably go the same way: for whatever reason, due to excessive lobbying on one side,
Safe for how long? (Score:2)
"as there is no requirement to log NAT sessions"?
1. Log data as file is shared, downloaded.
2. Get legal advice in the UK.
2.5. Another private dinner with members of the Rothschild banking dynasty at the family's holiday villa on
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/25/file-sharing-internet
3. A UK court asks "happy joy isp will not log NAT sessions.co.uk" ab
Internet is not a curiosity anymore (Score:1, Troll)
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I don't understand how you got from point A to point B in your post. Are you saying that because the Internet is quite important nowadays, we need to screw it up with overzealous copyright enforcement?
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Tell that to the entire corporations.
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Article 29
1. Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
2. In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality
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Not just some "one-world government". Any government.
Human rights declarations always have a term in them that says "the government can suspend this when it wants to". For example, the ECHR's article 2 prohibits the death penalty, but provides an exception for "action lawfully taken for the purpose of quelling a riot or insurrection."
But then, this is probably for the best, because as citizens, subjects or (more accurately) peasants, we have basically no power to oppose the government at all. The idea that
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It depends on the government. The nuclear armed ones, assuming they have the will to nuke their own citizens, can probably never be opposed. As for the others, the possibility of defeating the government is there, given a large enough percentage of the population in revolt, but it wouldn't be very pleasant.
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True; but that's actually a different case of the same rule: if the citizens form a mob that is sufficiently powerful that it can make the laws, then it becomes the government. It is tough for citizens to become more powerful than professional soldiers with real weapons - but the military might join the rebellion...
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Indeed, it's important not to confuse law and morals. But piracy advocates do this all the time. For instance, on OS News, Thom Holwerda cannot resist mentioning that "downloading is perfectly legal in The Netherlands and many other European countries" [osnews.com], a matter he has mentioned before [osnews.com]. He says this as the ultimate answer to any question about whether piracy is right or wrong. But heating on your wife is also legal in The Netherlands, and that doesn't make it right.
Also, the view that file sharing is moral,
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You misunderstand, still, I guess. I'm not wound up or anything of the sort, it's simply I haven't checked in at Slashdot in all these months, and was just picking up where I'd left off, with your reply. (I'm fine to drop it though!)
As far as thread bleed goes -- that's hardly a concern is it? For a sub-thread marked troll at the start and our exchange 5 levels deep, I imagine it's not. Your concern it noted.
Cheers!
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For instance, on OS News, Thom Holwerda cannot resist mentioning that "downloading is perfectly legal in The Netherlands and many other European countries", a matter he has mentioned before. He says this as the ultimate answer to any question about whether piracy is right or wrong.
Really? That's what you took away from that article? I guess when I read your post all I see is someone looking to over-simplify the debate in order to rationalize their own "morals" which are really just a form of gussied up bias.
The outcome is predictable. (Score:3)
Hmm... carrier-level NAT would also make tracking people online next to impossible. Could we have finally found something that will convince non-technical types of the need to move to IPv6? 'Deploy the new protocol, or the evil pedos will never be caught?'
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Banning NAT and VPN would take down a huge amount of the infrastructure out there. NAT routers, from cheapo consumer-grade hardware right up to some pretty expensive equipment, is installed all over the place, and various forms of VPN are very prevalent in the corporate world.
What they might require is far greater detail in logging; packet types, translation tables, but man oh man, I cannot imagine the amount of storage you would need if you were a large ISP with hundreds of thousands or millions of custom
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All of the cellphone networks in the UK do it. There are 80m cellphone connections for a population of 62m, and there is no way they could get enough IP addresses to go round.
Also, two-tier internet (Score:5, Insightful)
With a simple DSL access, possibly using a push-based dynamic DNS service, you can become a server right now. You can even serve out of a local NAT by forwarding a few ports in your router. Without renting a server, you can host a small website, provide an FTP share, seed a torrent, and host a tor node. Particularly in the last case, many small users with their own computers are what tor thrives on.
If your computer has to share its global address with hundreds behind a NAT at the ISP level, this becomes basically impossible (just try asking your ISP to forward a port for you!). The internet will be split into two halves made up by the content providers who can afford a globally accessible address, and the content consumers who sit behind a glorified television.
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The problem being that the ISPs realize that even with public addresses, most (an overwhelming majority?) of their customers are just that -- "content consumers who sit behind a glorified television."
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Those customers will still be very annoyed when their IM file transfer services stop working.
What's IM? The current generation of youngsters has no idea of such a concept. To them, IM = Facebook and Twitter.
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Facebook has an IM service built in. No file transfer, but IM nonetheless.
Tor (Score:2)
You had the answer in your examples of what can be done on a simple DSL connection; Tor facilitates this exactly. Users can't be traced if users are required to use tor, with any configuration of exit nodes (all customers, some customers, ISP-level, third-party). If all customers are required to use tor as exit nodes, traffic bounces around the network and jumps out anywhere, perhaps not even in the same ISP. There would be no way to know where traffic comes from (with respect to IP addresses, anyway), s
question about summary (Score:3)
I notice the summary mentions a VPN being "expensive".
What makes a VPN expensive?
I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, I really don't know the answer.
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It increases server load, with each connection being encrypted. If you look at say DD-WRT on a linksys router, the thru put drops a lot when using VPN with encryption. To combat this, you can use a dedicated VPN point, say one made by Cisco, but they aren't cheap and IIRC there's a license limit to the # of VPN connections you can provide. (I may be wrong on the license part though). I know Penn State uses it for people who want to connect from home and for access over certain WiFi networks on campus. That
Re:question about summary (Score:5, Informative)
It's no problem for you at home, as your small router surely can cope with a few megabits of data. However on the ISP side you will suddenly have multiple gigabits of encrypted data you need to decrypt. You need fast and therefore expensive computers for that.
NA(P)T is no solution (Score:2)
Once NA(P)T is in place, ISPs will surely be forced to log it. Even if they aren't forced to do so, the data visible to them via NA(P)T is just far to valuable for them to be left unused.
Essentially when they implement NA(P)T they will have to keep track of all your current TCP connections. It's only a small step to log those and will give you far more detailed information than just the IP-Address the user used to have at any given time.
Furthermore NA(P)T breaks most services like VoIP, FTP or E-Mail. Witho
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Furthermore NA(P)T breaks most services like VoIP, FTP or E-Mail. Without the possibility for incoming connections those services wouldn't work properly.
Um, the NAT problem for FTP got solved a while ago with passive transfers and SPI firewalls. Even less of an issue for email. And also not a problem for certain types of VoIP. The clearer answer is that NA(P)T messes up stuff that requires an inbound connection. Stuff such as SIP-based VoIP the way it was meant to be (where the SIP endpoints talk to each other directly, not with some phone switch-like thing between them). Trying to run one's own email gateway. Trying to put up a VPN gateway into your
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Well I'm sorry, but passive transfers just kills all the advantages of FTP like load balancing. In real FTP you can have the files on different servers than the indexes making it able to scale into areas HTTP has problems with. Essentially you can have a control server which only has the meta information of the files. When you want to get a file, it can be provided by a different server. That way the control server can choose a server closest to you or you can have large quantities of data split across mult
one huge NAT (Score:2)
a NAT per ISP instead of per user.... well, I suppose something has to be done about the imminent shortage of IPv4 addresses :)
Spam haven (Score:2)
Sending all your users through a single point of transmission, and thereby making all your users look as though they have the same IP address, makes your ISP a haven for spammers.
If you have enough legitimate users behind your single IP, forum/blog/game/whatever admins will be reluctant to block that IP, since they'd be blocking a lot of real potential users as well. Reporting spammers to you becomes more difficult as well, since all their reports will list that single IP, and neither they nor you will hav
IPv6 (Score:3)
In addition to that, IPSec encryption is a standard part of the protocol, so just by implementing it you get instant security. Older OSs could use a 4to6 interface that wouldn't break older apps that have not yet been updated to support the protocol.
IPv6 is much closer to be a reality now than ever before. It's about time that some ISPs start taking the lead on this instead of going the VPN or NAT route. It will happen any way and they could get some good PR out of it while addressing the issue they are trying to solve.
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The privacy extensions wouldn't provide any more privacy than you typically now get with IPv4. In IPv4, you typically get a /32 which identifies you - in IPv6, you'll get a /64, /56 or whatever. The privacy extensions only affect the last 64 bits - you can still be identified by the prefix that you were given by your ISP.
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No! (Score:3)
Doing this will break so many things... On top of making people unable to be hosts (FTP, SSH, etc.) or to participate in certain P2P activities, it would also make it just about impossible to block offending users from websites. What exactly can you do about an idiot DoS'ing your site when his IP is shared by thousands?