What NTL know....

[downquark1]

Topic for discussion: What can/do NTL know about you?

I was talking to someone with a STB broadband set up, and he told me that in one conversation with NTL customer/technical services they were able to tell him the make of his router and the number of computers behind it.

Given what I know about routers I found this a little hard to believe. I remember people saying in discussions about the 3 computer rule that they couldn't know that.

[Stuartbe]

I smell a bit of bovine excrement here m8 !!

There is no way to tell the make and model of a router unless is identifies itself via a html or telnet session...

I think you are having your leg pulled !

Originally Posted by downquark1

Topic for discussion: What can/do NTL know about you?

I was talking to someone with a STB broadband set up, and he told me that in one conversation with NTL customer/technical services they were able to tell him the make of his router and the number of computers behind it.

Given what I know about routers I found this a little hard to believe. I remember people saying in discussions about the 3 computer rule that they couldn't know that.

There are researchers out there who have been developing ways of 'sniffing' behind a router by sending packets of data into a network and then analysing those packets as they come back out. Apparently you can tell with a fair degree of accuracy how many machines are there and what kind of machines they are. Somehow I doubt NTL is so cutting edge that they are employing these techniques yet, however I have no doubt they would like to, as it would be fairly easy for them to spot if someone was, for example, using Xbox Live without having paid their extra £5.

[Stuartbe]

Originally Posted by towny

There are researchers out there who have been developing ways of 'sniffing' behind a router by sending packets of data into a network and then analysing those packets as they come back out. Apparently you can tell with a fair degree of accuracy how many machines are there and what kind of machines they are. Somehow I doubt NTL is so cutting edge that they are employing these techniques yet, however I have no doubt they would like to, as it would be fairly easy for them to spot if someone was, for example, using Xbox Live without having paid their extra £5.

How would that work when the packets are re-written as they pass through the nat box And how would they send packets in ? Surely the nat would reject them !

Originally Posted by Stuartbe

How would that work when the packets are re-written as they pass through the nat box And how would they send packets in ? Surely the nat would reject them !

There was a thread about this on .com about a year ago. It contained a link to research paper ... I'll have to do some fairly heavy googling and see if I can find it again....

EDIT: OK, here it is - this link is Google's cache of an HTML version of the paper:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cac...hl=en&ie=UTF-8

PDF version downloadable from here:

http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/fnat.pdf

[downquark1]

Originally Posted by Stuartbe

I smell a bit of bovine excrement here m8 !!

There is no way to tell the make and model of a router unless is identifies itself via a html or telnet session...

I think you are having your leg pulled !

They would know it's mac address, do they have company trends?

[Stuartbe]

Originally Posted by towny

There was a thread about this on .com about a year ago. It contained a link to research paper ... I'll have to do some fairly heavy googling and see if I can find it again....

EDIT: OK, here it is - this link is Google's cache of an HTML version of the paper:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cac...hl=en&ie=UTF-8

PDF version downloadable from here:

http://www.research.att.com/~smb/papers/fnat.pdf

Ahhh. Packet counters - Clever.... Would not work on a proxy though !!

I supose they could determine the make and model of the router via mac.. Though for a company that seem incapable of running mail servers correctly I doubt that they have the technology to do this !

Cheers Towny.

[Chris W]

Originally Posted by downquark1

They would know it's mac address, do they have company trends?

yes they do, for example a mac starting 00028a1 is an ntl home 200 (ambit) modem, and 00d0596 will be an ntl home 100.

So, they might be able to find out the manufacturer and model of the router, but to be honest i doubt they would bother, and dont see why ntl would need to do this!!

[David25]

If it is a STB then the customer will have provisioned the router. If he called it the make and model then NTL will know.

[Nutty]

for example, using Xbox Live without having paid their extra £5.

You dont need to pay an extra £5 just to allow you to hook your xbox up. Thats only if you want the technical support for it.

I can hook as many different things as I like to my connection, and it has very little to do with ntl, provided I stay within the AUP, and dont go over the cap.

[Matth]

The MAC address is a strong clue, as they are assigned in groups to makers (and then the maker assigns them within that group. avoiding any risk of identical MAC's on the same ethernet), most routers will allow you to manually set the MAC address (aka. MAC address spoofing) so that the router can present the same address as the primary PC - this makes things a lot less painful if you have to move between router and direct connection, as you should be able to do a DHCP release/renew without power cycling the box.

Originally Posted by Nutty

You dont need to pay an extra £5 just to allow you to hook your xbox up. Thats only if you want the technical support for it.

I can hook as many different things as I like to my connection, and it has very little to do with ntl, provided I stay within the AUP, and dont go over the cap.

'Fraid that's not the case. You can certainly hook up your Xbox without NTL's knowledge and without paying them, but if they knew you had done it they would insist you had breached their AUP in doing so. They don't market their Xbox service as 'pay us £5 if you want our technical support', they say 'pay us £5 if you want to use your Xbox on NTL broadband.'

Whether this is legal or moral of them is quite another matter, just be sure you understand that they think you're breaking the rules by doing what you're doing, and make sure you don't get caught.

[Marge]

The only way to tell would be in the registration for the stb as you can register upto 5 pc's in here however I don't think it's possible to tell re the router side of things

[ButttersB]

I thought the extra £5 was to provide an extra IP address for the xbox? Not that i've got xbox live or anything, i'm sure i read that somewhere though.

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by towny

'Fraid that's not the case. You can certainly hook up your Xbox without NTL's knowledge and without paying them, but if they knew you had done it they would insist you had breached their AUP in doing so. They don't market their Xbox service as 'pay us £5 if you want our technical support', they say 'pay us £5 if you want to use your Xbox on NTL broadband.'

Whether this is legal or moral of them is quite another matter, just be sure you understand that they think you're breaking the rules by doing what you're doing, and make sure you don't get caught.

Well, I don't think the way the AUP is written is particularly clear-cut.

You may only connect XBox gaming consoles to the NTL network using a designated Xbox compatible broadband access product.

The way I interpret that, there is nothing wrong with my connection method (router), despite it not involving paying NTL £5pcm

My router has been "designated" as XBox compatible by Microsoft (AUP doesn't say it has to be designated by NTL ). Plus the AUP, in a different section, allows the use of routers.

Originally Posted by ButttersB

I thought the extra £5 was to provide an extra IP address for the xbox? Not that i've got xbox live or anything, i'm sure i read that somewhere though.

For your £5 per month (plus a "set-up fee" too, AFAIK), you get a 2nd IP address (for the XBox or PS2), & also official tech support from NTL for using XBox Live.

£5pcm = £60 annually....whereas a cheap & simple Linksys BEFSR41 router will cost a one-off forty quid, thereabouts.

And XBL support...well, that's what the M$ XBL support line is for. Plus there's always these & other forums too.


Anyway....