Re: What exactly is an internet (service) provider?

On Mon, 2004-06-21 at 14:39, Mark Smith wrote:
> On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 10:03:46 +0100
> "Christian de Larrinaga" <cdel(_at_)firsthand(_dot_)net> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > A traveller cannot change ISP easily so either will just have to accept some
> > things cannot be done or will find a way. As it happens one can preplan and
> > setup a proxy service or a tunnel broker etc that can get round many of
> > these issues.
> >
> > Perhaps the IETF would be wiser to give a warning about the futility of
> > trying to break application transparency. "The Internet user may always find
> > a way to communicate on their own terms"
> ... using the following tunnel broker / VPN peer. The neat thing about it is
> that it uses SSL/TLS over UDP, and you can specify the UDP ports to use. As it
> uses UDP to encapsulate the IP packets, the outer IP header can be NATted.
>
> Also, as it uses UDP, and the ports are selectable, you may be able to "punch"
> a pipe through a firewall, by using UDP ports #53 a.k.a. DNS, depending on how
> well the firewall inspects DNS traffic. If that works out, "The Internet user
> may always find a way to communicate on their own terms", irrespective of NAT.
You are forgetting something very big here:
 Only the smart internet users will find a way out.

Normal users, the masses, the ones that bring in the cash, don't know
this. The smart ones will pick a real ISP anyways. The others bring in
enough cash that even though there are only a few doing the tunneling
thing the ISP doing this really doesn't care about those.
This are all just normal 'business cases' the same like saying "there
are not enough IP addresses thus you get only one" etc.
IETF can't do much about it, except making protocols that can't be
NATted and that are of the 'http' or 'p2p' rating, aka something that
all the users want but which can't work behind a NAT... enter IPv6 ;)

Also the above requires on to tunnel thus you are getting real service
from somebody else and basically using your current provider as the l2
provider.

The same is the issue with IPv6 Tunnel Brokers which can be seen as
ISP's in the fact that they provide IPv6 connectivity. Though the 'l2
medium' is the IPv4 connectivity of another ISP instead of ethernet or
cable.

Greets,
 Jeroen

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