On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 14:15 -0400, Ben Scott wrote: > On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 1:04 PM, Coleman Kane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I got Verizon DSL this week, and it turns out that they do block some > > traffic. > ... > > I learned this, after the sales person assured me > > that they don't block inbound traffic. > > Wow. I'm shocked -- *SHOCKED* -- to hear that. > > I know everyone always likes to only pay for what they can get away > with, rather than paying for what is delivered, but when push comes to > shove, the TOS/AUP is always the controlling document. People really > need to come to terms with that. What the sales guy or tech rep or > anyone else says is not worth the paper is isn't written on. Just > stop wasting your time (and everyone else's) worrying about what the > sales person said, because *it doesn't matter*. The TOS is the boss, > and the TOS spells this out in clear, unambiguous language.
That is all fine and good, but it doesn't absolve them of the fact that an agent of the company is not informed (perhaps strategically) properly about their service regulations. This would have been fine if it stopped there, but two other technicians argued with me about the company not filtering any traffic. > > Specifically: The TOS of big ISPs pretty much *always* forbid > hosting services on residential connections. If you get away with > more, don't ever forget that you're getting something more than what > you've been promised, and as such, it can evaporate at any time. They > can change it at any time. They can block TCP/25 ever other day and > still be within their rights, because they are still giving you > exactly what they said they would. > > Don't be surprised when you get exactly what you signed up for. > > > Additionally, their usage policy doesn't state anything about blocking > > incoming traffic. It turns out that there is a paragraph that states that > > they don't want you to run a server ... > > Um... they explicitly forbid you from doing what you're trying to > do. While they don't say that they may block TCP ports to enforce > that policy, the fact that *they explicitly forbid you from doing what > you're trying to do* is kind of a clue, don't ya think? > > For those of you playing along at home: > > http://www2.verizon.net/policies/tos.asp > Section 4, Subsection 3 I read this too, and explained to the tech that the paragraph lead me to believe that it fell under their bandwidth regulations, where they have some maximum bandwidth number (that, of course, they can't tell you) that will be modified to restrict your traffic. I suppose blocking port 80 might fall under "bandwidth restrictions". The aggravating thing is that they never actually come out and say these things. It is like they don't really want to let on that they are blocking traffic, but they want to do it anyhow. > > > Additionally they don't block any other inbound traffic. > > So? I don't think that anybody here can argue that port 80 traffic is more prone to misuse than port 137-139,449 traffic. They did not tell me that they are employing this restriction to safeguard users. The only reason that I was given was that they wanted to prevent home users from serving web servers. If that is the case, then the policy should state that port 80 will be blocked. They also didn't even know if the business-tier blocks port 80 (which, at this point, I wouldn't even try). As far as I can tell from researching the matter, Verizon probably blocks port 80 for all but the highest level of Business DSL (which has up to 29 static IPs). So, I am left to guess that Verizon doesn't provide a solution for me. I could ask them, but they cannot be trusted to tell the truth on the matter, so it is better not to use them at all. > > > The policy is quite absurd, in my mind. It is almost like they are > > choosing to pick on home-web-servers because of some inbred prejudice. > > It is extremely rare, in any part of any activity of any kind > anywhere in the world, to find that a law, rule, or policy is enforced > with absolute totality. You don't get a ticket every single time you > exceed the speed limit. You don't die every time you do something > risky in life. I don't get fired every time I screw off at work. I > don't ban people from the list server every time they break a rule. > This is pretty much the way the entire world works, and thank goodness > for that. > > I suspect the reason they're just blocking TCP/80 inbound is that is > where the problems were. Whatever motivation they have for blocking > the hosting of services, they found that the sore spot was web > servers. People running SSH servers or IRC servers or whatever > haven't been irritating enough for them to care yet. It seems that email servers seem to be a bigger problem to "the rest of the world". Additionally, abuse on any sort of ethical level wasn't the justification given to me when I asked why. The rep simply said that they don't want people running webservers at their home. He almost said that I could do it on business tier service, but then backed off when I asked if there were any blocks on the business line. > > As for what the motivation for prohibiting the hosting services, I > don't know. I can make some inferences based on the simple rule of > "follow the money", though. To wit: It is hard to tell the difference > between someone using something for "personal" vs "business" reasons. > But looking at "hosting services" is an easy way to separate out the > huge majority of people who are just looking to get email, watch > YouTube, and download porn, from the much smaller group of people who > actually want to use the Internet as a two-way link. > > Believe it or not, there *are* costs associated with this. Aside > from asymmetric bandwidth demands (most home Internet users are > consumer sheep, not producers of content, and the big ISPs design with > that in mind (there may be a self-reinforcing component to this, but > it's still the way things are)), hosting services is decidedly more > complex and thus will involve more support calls. Why do you think > the guy you got was so useless and clueless? Because he's trained on > helping people through tasks like plugging in their modem and > configuring Outlook Express. I disagree to an extent. Many people purchase a broadband connection for the purpose of online gaming and other interactive services like that. These tend to have a significant bi-directional requirement to them. Much more than my bursty personal website, which barely gets 1000 visits/month. I feel like the gamers get a pass here, while I get the shaft. > > It costs a lot more money to train someone to, for example, know > what a datagram is. Or to know that when somebody's home web server > coughs up the default "Your Apache installation is working" page, it's > not the ISP's fault. Sure, *you're* clueful enough to understand > that, but there's a lot more people who have just enough knowledge to > be dangerous. Anyone who's ever done any support work knows that the > support burden of those types can be quite large. Then they can institute policies like MV, DSLExtreme, Easynews, TimeWarner, CinciBell, and others which say that they refuse to provide support for resolving problems with servers. They don't ban them from being set up. > > People interested in hosting services tend to have higher > expectations and bigger demands than the average consumer herd-animal. > There's nothing inherent in a running a server that makes it that > way, but it still is that way. Just like being a teenager doesn't > automatically make one a bad driver, but statistically, the insurance > companies know they should charge more for them. I don't know. I and other "cluefuls" I know tend to use ISP tech support sparingly. Typically we go through a large amount of diagnoses before we break down and call up tech support. Many times, we know what the problem is before the person on the other end does. When I worked in PC repair, we had an ISP as well which took 80% of it's time-consuming service calls from "I can't get my Outlook set up" and "Cable is broken or not plugged in". A good example is that I never called Comcast to do anything in the four months that their service was working unfiltered. > > In short, people hosting services cost the ISP more than most of > their customers. Why should they charge everybody for the needs of a > few? Certainly, the big telcos and cablecos abuse the hell out of > their monopolies, but it isn't all the case of the big-bad-ISP. If > you go to a better ISP, you find that -- lo and behold -- they charge > more. I'm thinking there is a correlation there. > > > I am looking into mv.com right now, as my best option. > > I think they've been mentioned once or twice... ;-) > > Remember: You get what you pay for. If you don't pay for it, don't > be surprised when you don't get it. Many times you don't. You should get what you are sold, but that isn't the case. I could see myself paying $100/month for business Verizon service and only result in having a different service department to complain to. In the case of services, especially monopolies that are still regulated as utilities should still be required to disclose things like this... Of course, I also thing auto vendors who sell governed vehicles should be required to to disclose that as well. Anyhow, I am going with this DSLExtreme.com company... I can deal with periodic service interruptions (if any) to save the ~$90 difference in cumulative price. Some other people expressed interest in Verizon's DSL service after this thread went up originally. I wanted to let them know how the experience went, and give V/FP a big THUMBS DOWN. Also, there are many companies out there that enforce stricter policies than they are generally allowed to enforce under jurisdictional regulations (which are what we have our lawmakers employ to give us rights in these cases)... I think challenging them on these matters (and then evidencing you'll take the cash elsewhere) is probably one of the best approaches to try attacking such draconian-isms. -- Coleman Kane
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