How Sticky Are CableModem AUPs?

Sure, and Charter is no exception. But using thier webspace isn't nearly as fun as managing a cute little cyrix-150 netbsd machine and teaching it tricks.

It's one of those 'it's the journey, not the destination' things. :-)

Sure, and Charter is no exception. But using thier webspace isn't nearly as fun as managing a cute little cyrix-150 netbsd machine and teaching it tricks.

It's one of those 'it's the journey, not the destination' things. :-)

From: "phaeton"

| I have Charter Cablemodem access. Like most any broadband provider | they mention 'no webservers, no ftp servers, no gameservers" etc. Just | *how* closely do they watch this? | | I realize I'm the one breaking the rules and taking the risks, but I | would like to set up a small webserver at home. It will be very very | low bandwidth- mostly just to host small images like avatars and stuff | for a few forums I frequent. I will also like to have ftpd running on | it for the infrequent times of moving small files around (less than | 2mb, in most cases). I understand the usual ports are blocked and I | know how to get around that. | | I know it's against the rules, but has anyone ever done this | themselves? Ever get 'busted', and if so, what did they do? I have a | feeling that as long as I don't rock the boat too hard they either | won't notice or won't care as much. | | But I could be wrong. | | Thanks for any insight. | | -phaeton

Yes. A server is often a violation of an ISP's AUP/ToS. Normally ignored.

However... If it is a commercial venture or has heavy Internet use then expect the ISP to enforce the clause.

Probably true - you may need to use non-standard ports though - like 8080 instead of 80, etc.

If you are using it for an occasional connect nothing to worry about but if your going to run a game server with 8 or so players this will show up and will raise a red flag.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

No gameservers for me. I'm also not going to have any mail services running on the box either. Ideally, (like I said) a webserver, ftp server, and maybe ssh. Otherwise it will be locked down.

When you say "terminate the account", does that mean i'm likely going to be blacklisted and never again can be a customer? Thier TOS doesn't seem to say much. What's also vague is their description of 'commercial services'. It doesn't specifically say 'no webservers', but it also doesn't specifically say 'webservers ok'. What's more entertaining, is when I go to their website to see if "commercial level service" is available in my area, they say they don't service where I'm at. (They also say this about the residential service, which I currently have).

I'm a little leery of calling up someone at Charter and asking these questions bluntly, because:

1) It doesn't matter what they tell me over the phone, because if it is wrong my only defense is "he said/she said" which they won't pay any attention to.

2) I don't want to get 'flagged' as someone asking about stuff against the AUP, and they will completely refuse to talk to me until I give them my address.

3) Of course, out of all the 7 times I've emailed them with questions, I've only once gotten a response (they hit 'reply' to my email, then hit 'send', and obviously forgot to include an answer). The few times I've called them on the phone, i've had to give an impromptu Networking 101 course to the person who answers so that they can even understand my question enough to put me on hold and ask someone else who has a clue.

Not being critical of them, but that's just the breaks.

-phaeton

These rules are made nationally and applied regionally. And each company has slightly different rules and interpretations and penalties. If you run a web server that gets 20 hits a day, you'll likely never be noticed. But who knows. A lot of the TOS is to fight SPAM and scams. So if your usage "profiles" to look like a BOT controlled system maybe you'll be banned for life. Or get a rude talking to. Or an email. Or ...

If you don't want to be noticed driving 5 MPH over the limit, don't stop and ask the cop what his threshold is for writing a ticket. :)

I know t hat before AT&T was taken over by Comcast, they blocked every incoming port except 21 and 80, so port incoming port

8080 may be blocked depending on your service. I know Comcast unblocked a lot of ports when they took ovre and I had to start using a firewall. When I was in college years ago, I used to run a web site off muy then-@Home service for project groups I was in, and @Home never said anything.

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Make sure they are not blocking ALL incoming ports. Comcast is now blocking incoming traffic on ALL

65,536 ports. I was running a small server and doing my own online talk show, but have discovered all ALL incoming ports have been blocked. Now I gotta spend extra money to get on something like Live365.

X-No-Archive: Yes

There might be a way. In the one thread about Comcast blocking incoming ports, one guy mentioned Tor, I have checked it out, and it appears that Tor will let you run a "hidden" web site, though that part of the software looks complicated. I do know that you would have to bind the IP settings of whatever web server software you use either to 127.0.0.1, or to the address of your router (if you have one). It appears that users would enter an address in the Tor network, which would forward to your "hidden" server, and back again. Since the server itself would only be seen by the Tor software, any routine scans of your system would show nothing. Tor takes all the user hits, and acts merely as the relay. Tor just goes to the directory you specify and fetches the web page, and sends it back to the users on Tor that are requesitng it, from what I can tell. The more than 10,000 servers on the Tor network would take all the hits, instead of your Web server and/or Charter Pipeline.

Its also a good way to shield you from script kiddies, who might try and compromise your Web server. In other words, your Web site could not be compromised by hackers. As the saying goes "what cannot be seen cannot be hacked".

Umm, no, the hits to your web server and your ISP's network are the same regardless of whether you stick a proxy such as Tor in front.

That's one of the big problems with running a (web) server on a non-standard port, the false sense of security. It takes longer to scan a large port range than it does to scan a smaller port range, but it's not as if we're talking about manual labor here. Not only that, Tor's web site describes security through obscurity, which is nothing to be proud of.