On 8/1/2013 2:16 AM, Simon Leinen wrote:
>For the first couple of years that I had an ISP connection (which soon
>had an early NAT box on it), whenever I called up the ISP (then, and
>still, one of the largest in the US) with a service call, the first
>thing I had to do was unplug the NAT box and plug in a host directly!
>
I don't think your anecdote contradicts Joe's claim.
In the eyes of your ISP, you were misbehaving, because you were
violating their assumption that you would use ONE (1) computer with that
connection. If you had been what they consider an honest citizen, you
would have gotten a "commercial" connection to connect more than one.
Another data point is Google's recent reversal on network transparency
focused on artificially differentiating between perceived "commercial"
and "individual" customers:
http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/2013/07/sort/time_rev/page/1/entry/4:390/20130731102314:B16998B8-F9EC-11E2-AF78-DB9DE151F03B/
My experience has been that there are four ways ISPs try to break the
Internet's assumption that "all nodes are equivalent" (any port, any
time, any where, IMO), with:
1. asymmetric BW provisioning and throttling
2. NATs
3. short-lease DHCP (i.e., spinning IP addrs every day or
faster, to interfere with registering an assigned IP in the DNS)
4. legal means
ISPs use a combination of these, but the cheapest one is NATs.
Joe
