is @home really monitored by the cable company?

[god_father7]

sup guyz

just wondering, does the cable company really scan ur hd through open ports? I got cable internet, but i dont really want anyone snooping around on my comp.

Hmm.... if this is true, is there any freeware proggy that lets me prevent unauthorized access onto my comp?

[glc]

Zone Alarm firewall from http://www.zonelabs.com

[reboot]

The cable co does not "scan" your system for stuff, or minitor in any way...except...
They will occasionally have the DHCP server ping you to determine bandwidth speed. If it falls below a certain rate, the DHCP server will (sometimes) assign a different IP for you, and attempt to tell your computer that it's changed, and/or reset the connection. Not all @home services do this.
In the time I've had @home cable, I have been pinged twice, and received a phone call seconds later asking me to turn off my firewall (zonealarm BTW) so the DHCP server can determine speed. That's it.

------------------
Who needs a life?, I have internet!
Cheers, Jim
Jim & Sue's Free Files | Jims Modems

[god_father7]

thanks peeps!!

i already got the proggy - but is there anywhere i can get an easy to follow tutorial for zonealarm?

also, someone was tellin me bout something called freebsd - whats this?

can b found @ www.freebsd.org

thanks

[Xayd]

Ummm, FreeBSD is an OS, and a UNIX OS at that. It's more secure than Windows, so someone might've been picking on you on that one .

Zone Alarm is simple enough to set up. Just install, reboot, and when a program tries to go online, Zone Alarm will ask you for permission to let it do so. To set those preferences in stone, just check the box in the confirmation prompt. That's all there is to it. Double click on the icon in the systray to see all options for the program.

Xayd

[Statica]

What @home does do is do periodic scans of ports to check whether you are running any servers [Read ToS, you are not allowed to run any servers]. You should be aware that no matter if you run any blocking firewall code, it is virtually impossible to bypass those scans because @home's cable modems are SNMP capable and with the tools they have, they can look into the bandwidth you use/serve out, number of virtual IPs you have running etc etc. But @home cannot browse the contents, unless you have a serious configuration malady

Cheers

[Dave22]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Xayd:
Ummm, FreeBSD is an OS, and a UNIX OS at that. It's more secure than Windows, so someone might've been picking on you on that one .

---

They may have been picking on him, but it could be that they're suggesting FreeBSD as the NAT/Firewall solution. It does quite well in that arena.... if you know UNIX that is.

[Xayd]

Good point Dave. For a personal, single PC setup, I don't see a hardware frewall as necessary, though. Unless you work for the CIA and need to bring all those alien coverup documents home for late night work, either Zone Alarm or BlackICE should do just fine.



Xayd

[Halo3]

Just wanted to throw in my two cents. I work for AT&T @Home, and can safely say that we do NOT do any port scanning or snooping. Part of the paperwork a subscriber signs during installation is that they will not operate a server over their @Home service. However, the only people that get caught are the ones that setup warez, MP3, porn, or other ftp/http sites up, and then publicize the fact that they have a server up.

Once this happens, other subscribers on your network segment generally start complaining of slow speeds. At this point, trouble tickets get created and escalated up to the National Network Operations Center, and we start investigating. From there it is a simple matter of looking at various ethernet statistics compiled by the various routers your traffic is routed through. With this information in hand, we can determine who the bandwidth-hog is, and we disable their service until they speak with Abuse.

Subscribers turned over to abuse get three strikes before we permanently disable their cable modems.

For subscribers running intrusion detection software, they will see that the @Home network has MANY subscribers that try and poke around other peoples' systems. Guess everybody wants to try and be a hacker. We generally do track these individuals down, and repeat offenders eventually lose their service.

Hhhmmmm...guess that about covers it...

------------------
Semper Fi,
L.G. Huber III, MCSE/MCP+I/A+/N+