Randolph,
I'm a member of this list, and have Comcast, but have no servers running at
home. As you yourself stated, you are asking a lot, and even more when one
considers that you are a total unknown to the group. Perhaps if you were to
give more info for verification... Professors, sponsors, etc... that people
could communicate with to verify who you are, you might get a better
response. I myself am not a UMD student (UMUC), but just a list member.
Good luck with the research, it sounds interesting!
Joe
----- Original Message -----
From: "Randolph Baden" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 10:27 AM
Subject: [UM-LINUX] [OT] Comcast users in the area
I'm not quite sure if this is appropriate for this list or not, but I
figure I'll give it a try anyway. Most importantly, I need to find
Linux users in the area, and this list is one of the few places I know
of doing so.
I'm a Ph.D. student in networking here at UMD, and I've hit a little
snag in my research. I'll be really up front about this, I'm going to
be asking for a lot here, and I feel a little rude for doing so, but I
thought I'd at least try it. In particular, I'm looking for Comcast
users in the area willing to do the following:
1) Help me with IP geolocation research; that is, finding the latitude
and longitude of a machine given its IP address. I understand that
not everyone would support such research due to privacy concerns.
2) Give me SSH access to their Linux machine on the Comcast network
(to my own user account, obviously).
3) Set up dynamic DNS (if you don't already have it) so that I can
continue to log in to your computer even after Comcast changes its IP.
4) Allow me to compile and use a modified version of ping, which sends
ping probes according to a very specific schedule to a set of hosts
(the schedule and hosts are defined by another file; unless I'm just
testing it to make sure it's working, this will always be a list of
other machines nearby in the Comcast network). Since ping (and this
modified program, pink) requires raw sockets, it must be run as root.
I'm not asking for root access, I'm just asking that you change the
owner on the program to root and set the sticky bit, after I've
compiled it. I'm sure people will scream about how unsafe this is,
and I understand that; the only things I can offer are my assurances
that I'm not trying to do anything malicious and the source code to
the program.
5) Allow me to use the program to send a small amount of ICMP probes.
Unless I seriously make a mistake in the script file, you probably
won't even notice that I'm sending anything unless you look really
hard (no more than 1000 56 byte pings in a 5 minute period, probably
for at most 10-15 minutes a day, probably only one day a week). I'm
not sure exactly how long I will want to continue using the probes
yet, but of course you're free to opt out at any time.
The following two are optional, but appreciated:
6) Use Google Maps to find the latitude and longitude of your home.
7) Set up your router to respond to pings.
I wish that I were more to you all than some random stranger, because
this is a lot to ask. As it is, I'm really not expecting anyone on
this list to be willing to do those things (unless maybe they do know
me and I haven't asked them already!), but I thought I'd ask anyway.
:) Anyone who's still interested, respond to me directly off of the
list; anyone who wants to discuss how bad of an idea this is can feel
free to do so on the list. Unfortunately, the only compensation I can
offer is an acknowledgment in any papers I publish based on the
experiments I would run here!
-Randy Baden
