IP: Pesky Home Networks Trouble Cable Behemoths

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Steven Cherry <s.cherry@ieee.org>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 14:18:57 -0500
To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
Subject: Pesky Home Networks Trouble Cable Behemoths

Dave,

This article from the April issue of IEEE Spectrum is now available.

  Steven


<http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/apr02/webs.html>

Pesky Home Networks Trouble Cable Behemoths

Are wireless router users stealing broadband Internet access?

By Steven M. Cherry, Senior Associate Editor

The convergence of two cultural landmasses, the Internet and home
entertainment, will produce mountains of new content, proponents say.
But wherever tectonic plates collide, there are also violent
earthquakes and volcanoes. It's happened before with sharing content,
a la Napster. The latest eruption is over sharing access itself,
specifically sharing broadband cable access with the IEEE 802.11b
wireless standard.

At issue is an obscure protocol from 1994, network address
translation (NAT), which allows several computers to share a single
Internet address. In January, readers of Slashdot, a global message
board for network administrators, were shocked by a report that
Comcast Corp. (Philadelphia), the largest broadband Internet provider
in the United States, considered home networkers to be "abusers" of
its cable Internet service and was "eradicating" anyone using NAT.
Comcast has denied throwing customers off its service, but hasn't
entirely repudiated the characterization of abuse. With broadband
access increasing rapidly-it approximately doubled in 2001 in the
United States-the issue will undoubtedly plague broadband providers
in the months to come.

<etc.>

--
   Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566
   Senior Associate Editor
   IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave,  New York, NY 10016
   <s.cherry@ieee.org>  <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org>


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