Subject: Re: trying to reconcile two threads

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 15:20:15 -0500

>It seems to me that these two can't both be true. IP Addresses cannot at 
>once be scarce enough to charge for and non-scarce enough that scarcity 
is 
>a non-issue.

I don't think anybody's actually saying that addresses aren't scarce; 
they're saying that NAT solves the scarcity problem.

Meanwhile, cable companies aren't actually worried about charging per 
address; their (perceived) problem is unauthorized users, and they're 
using addresses as a proxy for users.

/================================================================\
|John Stracke                   |Principal Engineer              |
[email-masked]  |Incentive Systems, Inc.         |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com|My opinions are my own.         |
|================================================================|
|He wondered if Elli was going to buy that explanation. His taste|
|for heavily-armed girlfriends did have its drawbacks.           |
\================================================================/

---

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 17:09:22 -0500

>It's quite feasible for 
>devices to initiate the communication instead.

Only if each device talks to only one external host (or a fixed set of 
hosts).  If I want to check my fridge from an arbitrary host, I'm out of 
luck, unless we introduce some kind of rendevous proxy.

/=================================================================\
|John Stracke                   |Principal Engineer               |
[email-masked]  |Incentive Systems, Inc.          |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com|My opinions are my own.          |
|=================================================================|
|Two words that inspire the same feeling of dread are synominous. |
\=================================================================/

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 09:03:01 EST

Dah!

Rick L Johansen Jr
Phi Theta Kappa Academic Scholar
looking for funding for college this year (2002)
7201 Henderson Blvd SE 
Deschutes Cove   4-C
Tumwater  WA 98501-5661  USA
(360) 570-2242  Fax:  (360) 943-5354 at Kinkos
E-mail: [email-masked]
Effective 12-15-01:  [email-masked]
URL  <A HREF="http://www.geocities.com/rljohansenjr/Personal_Injury.html">Paralegal Services</A>

---

From: Charles Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 08:42:34 -0600

It's rather difficult to give a cable company the MAC address of your
router, when in fact they setup your connection on-site.  There's also the
assumption that you can change the MAC address on all routers.  For most
people on this list, it would be somewhat simple to 'foil the system' of a
cable company.  I just have a hard time believing that the majority of the
customer base for a cable company would have the technical ability to do so.

Charles

-----Original Message-----
From: Pekka Savola [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 4:33 AM
To: Charles Adams
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: RE: trying to reconcile two threads

On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, Fred Baker wrote:
> At 01:57 PM 11/28/2001, Charles Adams wrote:
> >This may be the wrong time to interject this, but I know of a local cable
> >company that requires you to register a single MAC address.
>
> mine does that. I gave them the mac address of my router.

And even if not that, if you gave them your workstations MAC address, you
could change your router's MAC address to that and select some random one
for your workstation...

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "Tell me of difficulties surmounted,
Netcore Oy                   not those you stumble over and fall"
Systems. Networks. Security.  -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords

---

From: "Andrew G. Malis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 14:50:58 -0500

Charles,

At least for AT&T Broadband, you can call them on the phone and give them a
new MAC address (since you are allowed to buy new computers!).  In my case,
once the cable modem was up and working with one computer, I just called
them and gave them the MAC address for my router/firewall/NAT.  They
switched it on the spot.

Cheers,
Andy

-------