| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 3:36:43 AM | Since virgin media are obviously monitoring what we look at and telling us what we can and can't download with the governments backing do you think we are moving towards the limited internet access given in police states e.g China and North Korea?
I find this very creepy as these people obviously have access to bank account details, photo's of our children we are sending by e-mail and the ability to monitor what we read.
I for one shall not be going back to Virgin and staying with my current provider.
Also using a i.p blocker and proxy server for everything I now do. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 3:39:44 AM | | I am with Virgin and this has really made me consider changing providers, Im pretty happy so far but this recent development smacks of greed and intrusion. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 3:47:23 AM | | Its an absolute mockery, we have some of the slowest speeds in the world & the highest prices and then they tell us were going to limit your connection speed at times because you use your connection to much & if we catch you doing something we don't like like p2p we will write you a nasty letter as well, after we have collected your direct debit of course..... only in the UK!! | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 3:58:40 AM | It's nothing new, some years ago, my brother received a letter from BT, informing him he was one of the most 'prolific' down-loaders in the country and would he be a nice boy and errr stop it.
He hasn't but no action has ever been taken. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 4:04:29 AM | The reason we have the slowest speeds is because they do not upgrade the equipment in the telephone exchanges to be able to cope with all the users.
Don't forget that ADSL Broadband is a contended service and you are therefore sharing bandwidth with other users. It's just the same as the old 56k modems used to be. The speed can go up and down depending on our contention ratio.
I'm sure you all remember ISDN was much better than 56k modems as it was a constant 64k download and upload. The broadband equivalent is SDSL. This gives you the full speed and is constant all the time. However, just like ISDN was back in the day SDSL costs a small fortune and has ridiculous distance restrictions based on your location and how near you are to the exchange.
The other issue is that our telephone network here is mainly copper and analogue. The whole phone system in places like France is digital, or the equivalent to our ISDN. So they have a much better infrastructure and the bulk of their network is fibreoptic.
Once again the internet companies take advantage of us here because we don't moan enough about it. "Up to 8MB" services advertised, and the words "Up to" get them out of any legal bother.
An IP Blocker and a proxy server may keep you safer from some nasty hackers out there but it won't stop the ISP and/or the government seeing what you are doing. So don't be fooled into thinking that. The traffic still has to go from your PC to the ISP before it gets to an internet based proxy server. And even then the ISP can see exactly what traffic is coming back again. Trust me I did a lot of work with Cisco networking equipment and was a reseller for them.
God I sound like a right geek. That's my chance of getting a date out the window then  | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 5:00:18 AM | | Anything that can prevent kiddy porn being distributed on the net can only be a good thing.It would be unfortunate for me if that prevented music downloads too but its a price worth paying. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 5:17:53 AM | | Am sorry :) the ip blocker and proxy is obviously to stop external sources monitoring you, encryption of net traffic is the way to beat the isp's (If you wanted to) | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 6:32:11 AM | | im in agreement with georgie colin on this anything that can stop pervs from accessing children is good,but also to be told that downloading music ect is not great either as that takes away freedom and also make the companies even more money | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 7:09:51 AM | I don't want my ISP packet sniffing and throttling other sites but I've no real objection to them stopping the downloading of illegal music / movies and software.
How they can do that without inspecting all my traffic I don't know, and until they can work that out I don't think I'll put up with them doing it so I'll be switching providers. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 9:08:21 AM | Sammyv:
Its an absolute mockery, we have some of the slowest speeds in the world & the highest prices
For £18/month, I get around 17MB/s over 20+ year old copper. So not the cheapest or fastest in the world - but fast enough that it's hard to find a server that can saturate it.
then they tell us were going to limit your connection speed at times because you use your connection to much
Read your contract very carefully; there may well be a useage cap. Remember that ISPs are businesses, not charities; It costs them money to provide your bandwith, and it costs them money when you use it.
If you don't like your ISP, vote with your feet. I did (I'm on my 6th now; and I'm glad I did - by far and away the best I've encountered)
TG:
The reason we have the slowest speeds is because they do not upgrade the equipment in the telephone exchanges to be able to cope with all the users
See above - much faster than I ever saw over ISDN
It's just the same as the old 56k modems used to be. The speed can go up and down depending on our contention ratio.
That's a bit misleading; contention wasn't the issue with 56k modems, it was line quality.
The other issue is that our telephone network here is mainly copper and analogue
I read an interesting study about 10 years or so ago that had done the numbers; at the time, BT could have ripped out the entire copper network and replaced it with fibre - and made a profit purely on the scrap value of the copper...
The traffic still has to go from your PC to the ISP before it gets to an internet based proxy server. And even then the ISP can see exactly what traffic is coming back again. Trust me I did a lot of work with Cisco networking equipment and was a reseller for them.
In which case you've probably heard of TLS, and so know that what you wrote above wasn't entirely true...
God I sound like a right geek
Not even close, you're just a wannabe :)
Geordie Colin:
Anything that can prevent kiddy porn being distributed on the net can only be a good thing
Anything? Do you REALLY mean "anything"? If you do, then I suggest moving to North Korea. Naturally, I'm not in favour of kiddy porn - but I'm also not in favour of the abolition of human rights.
Here are a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples of what "anything" might entail:
Would you close ALL the roads because a minority use them for criminal acts?
Would you eliminate the telephone and postal networks because a minority use them for criminal acts?
Would you eliminate the use of speech because a minority use it for criminal acts?
Would you advocate shooting everyone in the head because a minority perpetrate criminal acts?
"Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither" - Benjamin Franklin. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 9:24:30 AM | As for the do anything to stop Peadophilia items being distrubuted through the net
So if that happened do you think that would stop the offenders participating in this it , in my opinion this would only force it more underground basically back to the depths where it spread from before the Internet .At least there are measures in place on the net to "TRY" and filter out this activity and allow the necessary measures to be taken it may not be 100 accurate but imaging a world where it is taking place through mailboxes and such like where there is no visible clues .
Even back from the old days of dial up pay as you go we have had restricted access so why is this bothering you now .
Remember the 1p/minute after 6pm and before 7am and the speeds obtainable if a connection was possible at 6.05pm
Then came the Anytime package but limited to a set number of hours
My T.O.S is limited to 5gb a month but is ample for me .
as for site history/information exchange your internet history is stored at your isp anyway
and also remember even though you have pressed the delete key their are ways that this information can be recovered if neccesary by those with the know and How many use microsoft based products and only worry about your isp recording your every move . | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/6/2008 12:28:51 PM |
The reason we have the slowest speeds is because they do not upgrade the equipment in the telephone exchanges to be able to cope with all the users See above - much faster than I ever saw over ISDN
I would hope that your broadband is much faster than you ever saw over ISDN. But that's a bit daft as it's like me saying my car is faster than my pushbike.
The problem with equipment in the exchanges is that it simply cannot cope with the bandwidth requirements of all the users that are being attached to it. Where I live the exchange is a prime example. Even the local council have been on at BT about upgrading it. You get useless connection speeds and your connection goes up and down more than a brides nightie.
I'm impressed with what speed you get though. I'm assuming that's an ADSL2 connection then and you live pretty damn close to your exchange if it's over a copper phone line.
The traffic still has to go from your PC to the ISP before it gets to an internet based proxy server. And even then the ISP can see exactly what traffic is coming back again. Trust me I did a lot of work with Cisco networking equipment and was a reseller for them. In which case you've probably heard of TLS, and so know that what you wrote above wasn't entirely true...
It depends what TLS you are talking about, google the acronym and see how many different things you get back.
Either way if the home user is using a phone line and connecting via an ISP the traffic simply HAS to travel from your PC through the ISPs network, and then returning traffic HAS to come back the same way. Otherwise it wouldn't get there. Unless there is some new magic pixie dust broadband I haven't heard of that just sends and receives network traffic directly from your PC to the internet.  | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/7/2008 5:42:07 PM | I'm impressed with what speed you get though. I'm assuming that's an ADSL2 connection then and you live pretty damn close to your exchange if it's over a copper phone line.
ADSL2+, and the exchange is about 1/2 a mile away if you're a crow. No idea what the physical layer between the exchange and the building are, but inside the building it's certainly copper.
It depends what TLS you are talking about
My apologies - I'd have thought it obvious from the context; I'm referring to Transport Layer Security. TLS is a trivial (but very effective) example, but it's entirely possible to use a far more secure encryption scheme on your data if you so desire.
Either way if the home user is using a phone line and connecting via an ISP the traffic simply HAS to travel from your PC through the ISPs network, and then returning traffic HAS to come back the same way. Otherwise it wouldn't get there
Umm sure it does - but the only thing your ISP knows for sure is the destination address on the incoming (encrypted) packet. Since the data's encrypted, then they can't tell anything useful about the content (unless your ISP happens to be the NSA - in which case you've got bigger problems ;) ); they can't even know for certain where it came from (it's easy enough to mask that by filling the source address field in the IP header with random junk - or somebody else's address; if you don't want to bother doing that, just send the reply from a different address)
I'd submit that's a LONG way from "the ISP can see exactly what traffic is coming back again" - they can see "traffic" coming into your machine, but they have no idea of the content, and they have no idea what generated it; for all they know, it could be some script kiddy portscanning your machine - not every packet you receive is necessarily a response to one you sent out.
Unless there is some new magic pixie dust broadband I haven't heard of that just sends and receives network traffic directly from your PC to the internet
I can quite easily send network traffic out without my ISP knowing about it. I have a laptop, WiFi and several local coffee shops...not to mention a library ;) | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/7/2008 6:18:21 PM |
ADSL2+, and the exchange is about 1/2 a mile away if you're a crow. No idea what the physical layer between the exchange and the building are, but inside the building it's certainly copper.
Well that certain explained the immense speeds you get. I'm about 4.5 miles in cable length from our exchange and the best speed I ever get, up to 8MB service, is just over 2MB download. There is a firmware update for the ADSL WIC on my Cisco router though so I may give that a go and see if it helps a bit.
My apologies - I'd have thought it obvious from the context; I'm referring to Transport Layer Security. TLS is a trivial (but very effective) example, but it's entirely possible to use a far more secure encryption scheme on your data if you so desire.
Me being a bit cheeky there. Wanted to make sure I wasn't going to get into a silly argument with someone who didn't know what they were talking about. It does happen on here when people try to tell you they "own you" and all that crap. Clearly you DO know what you are talking about.
Umm sure it does - but the only thing your ISP knows for sure is the destination address on the incoming (encrypted) packet. Since the data's encrypted, then they can't tell anything useful about the content (unless your ISP happens to be the NSA - in which case you've got bigger problems ;) ); they can't even know for certain where it came from (it's easy enough to mask that by filling the source address field in the IP header with random junk - or somebody else's address; if you don't want to bother doing that, just send the reply from a different address)
I'd submit that's a LONG way from "the ISP can see exactly what traffic is coming back again" - they can see "traffic" coming into your machine, but they have no idea of the content, and they have no idea what generated it; for all they know, it could be some script kiddy portscanning your machine - not every packet you receive is necessarily a response to one you sent out.
Yep that is true, but I doubt 99% of your average home users would know this and apply it. So in most cases I'm sure the ISP knows exactly what is going on. Quite a few ISPs also only allow you to use the router/modem that they supply now as well. I think part of the reason is so they can see what is going on.
I worked for the MoD for a while and the standard encryption stuff that the public has would never be released to them if it could not be broken by the relevant authorities as and when they needed to. I'm sure you would agree that no encryption is unbreakable, they just have levels of how difficult it is to break. Do you remember all the hoohaa there was in the US when that "PrettyGoodPrivacy" first came out as I think it was the CIA who couldn't break it 
I can quite easily send network traffic out without my ISP knowing about it. I have a laptop, WiFi and several local coffee shops...not to mention a library ;)
Ha Ha Ha yes touche! I'll give you that one. Well Done  | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/7/2008 7:16:53 PM |
Well that certain explained the immense speeds you get. I'm about 4.5 miles in cable length from our exchange and the best speed I ever get, up to 8MB service, is just over 2MB download. There is a firmware update for the ADSL WIC on my Cisco router though so I may give that a go and see if it helps a bit
If the operate in your area, check out BeThere dot co dot uk - easily the best ISP I've ever used.
Me being a bit cheeky there. Wanted to make sure I wasn't going to get into a silly argument with someone who didn't know what they were talking about. It does happen on here when people try to tell you they "own you" and all that crap. Clearly you DO know what you are talking about.
1ee7 me pwnz your a55 :-). Yes, I do know what I'm talking about. Trust me, it's my job to know about this stuff :-).
Yep that is true, but I doubt 99% of your average home users would know this and apply it
99% of home users wouldn't know a secure socket from a frying pan - but that doesn't stop them using https to pay for their groceries. Add to that the fact that there are plenty of p2p clients that offer encryption - and people tick boxes that say "encryption", because they think it makes things "safer" (and they think that, because mostly it does...).
I worked for the MoD for a while and the standard encryption stuff that the public has would never be released to them if it could not be broken by the relevant authorities as and when they needed to
TLS allows for AES encryption (and most implementations of TLS provide AES). The simple fact that the NSA approves use of 256-bit AES for US gov't material classified as "Top Secret" tells me that it's pretty secure - secure enough that the NSA are confident that our MoD can't break it (in any "reasonable" time frame, at least)
I'm sure you would agree that no encryption is unbreakable, they just have levels of how difficult it is to break.
Sort-of. A one time pad is, to all intents and purposes, "unbreakable" - but it's not a terribly practical for any volume of traffic. Other than that, yes, they're all notionally breakable in the mathematical sense - although actually being able to do so is a whole other matter. (For instance, the cost of throwing enough compute power at AES to get my credit card details would be considerably higher than any profit that might be made).
Of course, a key point about encryption is that it only needs to be "strong enough" - the classical example being it's no use taking a week to decipher a message that says "attack at dawn"...
Do you remember all the hoohaa there was in the US when that "PrettyGoodPrivacy" first came out as I think it was the CIA who couldn't break it
It'd probably be the NSA, rather than the CIA (Since The Company generally farms out heavy-duty cipher-crunching to The Agency.); but my recollection is that the fuss wasn't about breakability (at least, not directly) - it was that the key was 128 (or 256? can't remember) bits - at the time, the US government (at the instigation of the NSA) had classified any encryption scheme which used a key longer than 40 bits as a "munition", and thus subject to export restrictions. Zimmerman's response was to print the code in a book; being a book, it was covered by the First Amendment and so not subject to those export restrictions.
See, I said you were just a wannabe geek  | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/8/2008 3:59:27 AM |
Of course, a key point about encryption is that it only needs to be "strong enough" - the classical example being it's no use taking a week to decipher a message that says "attack at dawn"... Too true! It always makes me laugh when people go on about how everything can potentially be hacked but as you say the encryption needs only to last for a certain amount of time not to mention that some encryption algorithms also change the encrypion key for every other transmission so that it doesn't matter if someone has cracked a piece of the transmission.
However back to the topic under discussion restricted internet access is a concern and does impact on our civil liberties. However as our country moves closer to a police state (I can go on about cameras, the new terrorist laws etc), I suspect not only will we see this but also taxation on internet too. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/9/2008 11:19:35 AM |
Anything that can prevent kiddy porn being distributed on the net can only be a good thing.
Closing the internet down completly would prevent kiddy porn being distributed on the net  | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/9/2008 12:47:48 PM | | seems the EU wants in on the act, but SSL secure sites and the bit torrent clients that are in development seem to be the way to go, as bit torrent allows people to upload as well as download, suspect anyone into dodgy porn will not want to be caught uploading it ? | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/9/2008 3:16:24 PM |
I'm sure you would agree that no encryption is unbreakable, they just have levels of how difficult it is to break And that difficulty is measured in years/decades of processor time. (remember that the best supercomputers have many thousand CPU cores)
More importantly I'd like to see an ISP in this country that would even put a cheap second hand 600MHZ PIII PC on the job (which would take millenia to crack even 256bit TLS encryption by brute force attack), given the low profit margins in providing internet access.
The biggest barrier to breaking encryption is having the resources, or desire, to do so. We cracked the Enigma Code in WW2 because it was incredibly important for national security, and resources were given to help solve the problem by many countries. Me reading the Net through an anonymised encrypted web connection (for example using Privoxy http://www.privoxy.org/ over Tor http://www.torproject.org/) isn't going to get My ISP running around all over europe to ask for help to see what I'm doing. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/9/2008 3:39:41 PM | More importantly I'd like to see an ISP in this country that would even put a cheap second hand 600MHZ PIII PC on the job (which would take millenia to crack even 256bit TLS encryption by brute force attack), given the low profit margins in providing internet access.
That's very true if you tried brute force, but the government and other such people wouldn't be doing that. You can count on it. And they would never allow us, the general public, to have any sort of encryption that they couldn't get through if they wanted to.
JustAndy is clearly well up on this technology and I'd actually quite like him to describe what he'd do if he had to break such a communications link as this. He might not want to type the details of what he'd do, but I'd bet good money he could do it. That's why I did bits on security, it's fun trying to break into it and show people just how lame some software and hardware is.
The encryption stuff is just all about keep it secure long enough so it's not worth breaking. Firewalls are pretty much the same stop everything coming in as best you can, but if it does get in log it and ring the alarm bells. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/9/2008 4:17:05 PM |
That's very true if you tried brute force, but the government and other such people wouldn't be doing that. You can count on it. And they would never allow us, the general public, to have any sort of encryption that they couldn't get through if they wanted to. As JustAndy pointed out AES is very secure. As far as I know there are no published cases of AES encryption being broken through a weakness in it's algorythms. This leaves weaknesses in key exchange, or brute force, as the method for cracking TLS encryption. Diffie-Hellman key exchange is a particularly secure method of sharing a private cryptography key over a public communications channel, weak only to man in the middle attacks. And trust me, my ISP is not doing man in the middle attacks on me and my internet communications. The legal fall out if they were would be huge. | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/10/2008 3:04:08 AM |
As far as I know there are no published cases of AES encryption being broken through a weakness in it's algorythms Are you surprised by that? If it has been mathematically cracked then that fact would become one of the best kept military secrets of all time! That's one of the major dilemmas of cryptography, you have to be very careful how you use information gleaned from cracking cyphers so that your enemy doesn't realise it's been cracked. When we cracked Enigma during the second world war that fact was kept very quiet for many years after, in fact we handed out captured machines to 'friends' so that they could use this uncrackable code!
So if AES has been cracked it will be a very long time before we get even a hint of it, the very last thing anybody would do is publish the fact because a crack like that would be far too valuable  | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 7/11/2008 1:53:24 AM | | alright you geeks! Anyone know much about how they are using PKI to help with identity management on the web? Apparently this will help them track suspected terrorists, paedophiles and general wrong doers.... | |
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| Restricted internet access in this country?
Posted: 8/4/2008 12:55:05 PM | Ipower have a few interesting videos about this sort of thing,
try http://ipower.ning.com/crewvideos?vid=27 for their video on Internet Content Control | |
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