As Joe says, this is very typical ISP behaviour. Servers (all servers)
are, technically, prohibited, but, as long as they
don't generate large bandwidth usage, the ISP doesn't really care. It
is there, primarily, to stop "abuse" : running a
commercial web site that WILL generate a lot of bandwidth use - that
will get their attention real fast and the TOS
gives them the power to shut you down real fast.
If you want to run servers legally (whithin the TOS), use Speakeasy
(http://speakeasy.net/). They allow servers in
their TOS and offer static IPs, but you will pay closer to $60 a month
than $20 a month. You get what you pay for.
Gary Whitten
Joe Murphy wrote:
Comcast (and virtually all ISPs) have truly stupid TOSes. I believe
that Comcast's states that you are not permitted to run any servers of
any kind. Of course, they don't block port 80, and turn a blind eye
to anyone hosting their own webserver in-house, so long as they don't
see gigs and gigs of data going out. I run VNC on my home machines
and have DynDNS setup for my Comcast account. Technically, I run
"vnc server" on each machine, so that would be prohibited... but then
again, Windows Remote Desktop is a stripped version of Terminal
Server, so that too would be prohibited. Heck... if you can remote
into your router, THAT is even prohibited via the TOS!
I've been told by Comcast reps that they virtually NEVER even look at
any of this stuff unless the end user gives them reason to, like
massive amounts of data going out or broad port probing or the like.
Think about this... all IP phone services (including Comcast's) use
something that acts as a server to respond to incoming calls... it
sits and waits for data, and when data is received, it runs a series
of processes and converts the call from digital to analog... but you
don't see Comcast kicking people off of its network for using
non-Comcast VOIP solutions!
Personally, and this is very much just an IMHO sort of thing... I
never consider Comcast's TOS in things I do, because they themselves
don't abide by it.
Joe
----- Original Message -----
*From:* brian raszap <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Monday, June 09, 2008 11:19 AM
*Subject:* Re: [UM-LINUX] [OT] Comcast users in the area
you're saying it's illegal to run an SSH server? that makes no sense.
On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 11:07 AM, Randolph Baden
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
Sorry everyone. I'm going to have to withdraw this, thanks to
something Charles pointed out:
> I might warn anybody tempted to cooperate with this request
to very carefully check their terms-of-service agreements with
ComCast to make sure this is not prohibited behavior.
I was so caught up in this that I didn't even think about that.
Running an SSH server alone is probably technically a
violation of the
ComCast ToS. As much as I wish I could still do this, you're
right,
I'm not going to be able to. Thanks for pointing this out.
> 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
This is a great idea, and I feel a little foolish for not
doing this
in my first e-mail. First of all, for information on me and a
little
about my research, you can check out my university web page at
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~randofu
<http://www.cs.umd.edu/%7Erandofu>. I'm working on this with
Bobby
Bhattacharjee and Mark Shayman. I'd appreciate it if you
didn't send
them too many e-mails (since they're busy), especially since I've
realized this won't be possible. I'm just pointing this out
because
even though I'm withdrawing it, I don't want anyone to think
that I
was trying to do something shady.
I'm going to go look into the Comcast ToS and see what I can
do about
this... Hopefully I can get around it somehow.
