[NCLUG] Cable Modem Refugees

[Michael Dwyer]

Chris Wolney wrote:
> I had read the slashdot post as well, and checked out a little traffic when
> my cable modem regained the link on Saturday.  Same experience as that
> poster, the net is there, but no DHCP server.  I wonder how much more prep
> they need to do before they open the network back up?  Their press release
> says we may get back online on Thursday.

I had no net.  We've always had a static connection, so the loss of DHCP
shouldn't have hurt us. But all I could see when I watched the line was
other cable modems doing DHCP requests.  Oh, and our internal DNS server
should have worked fine, too.  So we were just clean cut off from
bandwidth.  I was sort of bummed that I couldn't even talk across the
AT&T intranet (so to speak) to other cable modem users across town.  I
would have been a little happier if I could at least still play
CounterStrike with friends. :)  But nooooo.

> In the end I decided I would make do with dialup for a bit to avoid getting
> the dreaded "abuse" flag, but if others are having success with it, and our
> subnet is in anarchy anyway...

Add another "Huzzah!" to FRII who apparently throws in a dial-up account
with their web hosting package.  Anyway, I sort of doubt that anyone is
manning the ABUSE lines at AT&T right now.  For instance, here's a quote
from the Incidents.org intrusions mailing list:

   @Home seeme to have finally done something about a persistant
   scanner. (Thanks guys - I don't envy you your workload)

   There seems a bit of a mismatch between the theoretical 
   minimum time to saturate the Internet with a new worm (15 
   seconds, was it, for the "Warhol worm" ?) and the time for
   a financially troubled broadband provider to respond to a 
   scan report (52 days).

> I don't like this new bandwidth cap concept.  I hope it does not get to be
> an issue.  I'd rather see them take initiative in doing something about
> other customers probing my boxes for Windows trojans and other shady
> goings-on than tighntening down the screws on my pipe.

The bandwidth cap was already in effect, I guess.  Upstream, at least. 
Now AT&T says that they are capping downstream to 1.5Mb/s -- which is
still T1 speeds, so I don't think I have too much room to argue.  On the
other hand, I was checking into DirecTV DSL, where they give you 256k up
and 768k down with a static address for the same price as my cable
modem.  I'd jump for that (or a FRII product, probably) if only DSL was
in my neighborhood...

Personally, I'm more annoyed with the complete loss of static IPs.  Its
gonna be hellish to track down my MP3s^H^H^H^H important business
documents from work, now!  On the other hand, one of my recent projects
at work was a little tool to enable one to find a machine out in the
dynamic world... Hmmmm.

Anyway, I kind of enjoyed the brain-storming that went on with our
search for bandwidth.  We had all kinds of hare-brained ideas:  sell a
T1 to all our neighbors, run a cat5 wire across the street to the local
elementary school, get satellite service, move to a house closer to
DSL...  You know.  That kinda stuff.