On Saturday, 2003-03-29 at 23:22 CST, Jack Bates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > William Allen Simpson wrote: > > (Some DSL/cable companies try to charge per machine, and record the > > machine address of the devices connected.) > > And to use NAT to circumvent this should be illegal. It is theft of > service.
No, it is not theft of service. It doesn't cost an ISP more for me to have 20 machines than it does if I have just 1. Nor does it cost them if I use NAT. What might cost them more is if I use more bandwidth or use additional IP addresses (for which there may be an associated expense). But a user with one machine can potentially use as much or more bandwidth than a user with 20. There simply isn't a decent correlation between number of machines and amount of service consumed. Even so, an ISP doesn't have a legitimate complaint against users that are simply consuming the bandwidth that the ISP advertised as being part of their service. Tony Rall
