VPN Clients Not Allowed On Residential Service

wayn3 writes "ComputerWorld reports here that two of the major cable companies have language in their terms of service that VPN clients are forbidden for "residential" class, forcing clients on their "business" offering which is at twice or more times the cost of residential service. Has any been bit by this, and do those companies consider SSH a VPN client? This would stop me from telecommuting since my company would not be able to afford the business service."

Don't you get it yet?

[FacePlant]

You aren't supposed to do anything on your cable modem connection except surf the web, read email, and be really impressed at how much faster than 56k it is.

They've all but said that outright. They don't sell bandwidth. They sell a high speed web surfing experience.

This should no longer surprise anybody here. Let's get over it.

Re:Telecommuting IS a Business activity...

[haplo21112]

I'll take a hit for this, but...

YOU SIR ARE A FUCKTARD

Now if you would like to have a rational discussion about why your opnion is wrong..

[e-mail]

Re:Actually, It's Worse Than That

[bluGill]

(The real kicker) They explicitly claim ownership of all intellectual property that you generate and that passes through their network.

This is good. Now generate some illegal content (slander, or copyright violations), and then use as your defense "The cable company (which has deeper pockets) owns that content, so sue them not me.

Those clueless morons!

[dcavanaugh]

These cable clowns won't give up until they turn broadband into a product that nobody wants. Why not get it over with and block ALL the ports? For $39.95/month you get port 80 unblocked. Then they could have a list price for any other port you might want unblocked. That would achieve their objective of bandwidth conservation, as well as reduced calls to the help desk! I would think it would be fairly easy to support a network if all the data were eliminated.

If some data still remains on the network after phase one of the plan, they move on to phase two, where you pay per hop. At the basic rate of $39.95, the maximum hop count is five. If you pay for "expanded basic" it goes to ten, and "business class" is unlimited (at least for the first three months)!

These guys would license the number of mouseclicks and keystrokes if they thought anyone would pay. I think it's all part of a huge conspiracy to make dialup service more attractive.

All joking aside, the real issue with VPN has nothing whatsoever to do with bandwidth. It is more about controlling the availability of ports and access to IP addresses that might otherwise be blocked. Carried to it's logical conclusion, you get a few people with commercial high speed connections and unrestricted access -- then a few thousand cable customers using VPN to circumvent access restrictions by the cable company. It still has nothing to do with bandwidth, because in an unrestricted environment this type of VPN would be unnecessary -- you would still have the same packets going to the same destination (probaby via a more efficient route).

If these guys have any brains, they are fearful of a P2P like utility that might facilitate the exchange of quasi-public VPN logons, which would create a "Massive Rogue Virtual Network" (MRVN). In the pefect nightmare scenario, we throw in a bunch of house-to-house 802.11b users that eventually hit a residential cable modem "gateway" that allows entry to the MRVN world. Of course, all of this could be solved with reasonable pricing and fewer restrictions, but they're not that smart.

I have just about had it with their incessant "dumbing down" of the service. As time goes by, broadband costs more and more while it delivers less and less.

Re:Roadrunner

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it makes you Steve Case's bitch.

Earthlink DSL - no problems so far

[Don Keehotay]

'course I haven't actually READ the subscriber agreement... Ignorance is bliss.