Cable modem question,PLEASE!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alon Brodski
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Alon Brodski

Hello world!

I read in Peter Norton's "New Inside The PC" book that cable modems receive
all the data that it's in the area (probably till the nearest node) and they
only process the data that is sent to a particular modem.
So my question is...technically someone using special equipment can also
gain access to the data that was intended for someone else?

Thanks in advance,
 
Alon said:
Hello world!

I read in Peter Norton's "New Inside The PC" book that cable modems receive
all the data that it's in the area (probably till the nearest node) and they
only process the data that is sent to a particular modem.
So my question is...technically someone using special equipment can also
gain access to the data that was intended for someone else?

Thanks in advance,
Click to expand...

Data is normally shipped as cleartext. If you are worried about folks
with sniffers reading your data, you can use VPN to encrypt the data,
but that only works with nodes that already support VPN.
 
Hey!

Thanks for your help!

Well,to be honest I'm not worried about Internet at very least.I have real
life worries to worry about....
My little baby girl half the globe away from me and my kidney stones :-)
And also in my immidiate neighborhood noone has cable Internet...Buying and
selling drugs here is what most people do in their free time :-)
I was just curious purely from technological point of view.
What do you mean by "cleartext"? Unencrypted? And how I can encrypt every
transaction over the Internet.
Like what I download and what sites I visit....I do use VPN to access my ISP
(that I also work for)...Meaning that here in Israel those who use cable to
access Internet have Open Access Dial up VPN connection (PPTP or L2TP).And
no IPSec 'cos ISP doesn't support it.So in this case...what could be done,
if anything?


--
Thanks in advance,

Yours truly,
Alon Brodski
 
Alon said:
Hey!

Thanks for your help!

Well,to be honest I'm not worried about Internet at very least.I have real
life worries to worry about....
My little baby girl half the globe away from me and my kidney stones :-)
And also in my immidiate neighborhood noone has cable Internet...Buying and
selling drugs here is what most people do in their free time :-)
I was just curious purely from technological point of view.
What do you mean by "cleartext"? Unencrypted? And how I can encrypt every
transaction over the Internet.
Like what I download and what sites I visit....I do use VPN to access my ISP
(that I also work for)...Meaning that here in Israel those who use cable to
access Internet have Open Access Dial up VPN connection (PPTP or L2TP).And
no IPSec 'cos ISP doesn't support it.So in this case...what could be done,
if anything?
Click to expand...

Cleartext is another word for unencrypted.

There is no way to encrypt everything that goes over the net, because
encryption relies on having the source node and the target node have
an agreement about the encryption mechanism before the encrypted
message is sent. But, since many nodes do not support encryption at
all, there is no way to get them to understand encrypted messages
that you send and no way to get them to send encrypted messages to
your node.

Using VPN between your PC and your ISP is a good start since that
protects your data over the "last mile". I don't think there is
any general way to guarantee that nobody monitors traffic that is
forwarded by your ISP between your PC and other internet nodes.

In the USA, certain government groups are rumored (just a rumor,
and you didn't hear it from me) to have the ability to monitor ISP
traffic; but the only agencies with that ability are those with
TLAs in which the last letter is a vowel, and the only departments
with that ability are those with TLAs in which the first letter
is "D".
 
hey!

Thanks for your explanation!
Here in Israel I'm not too worried about american government agencies...I
had to f*ck around with one (INS) for over 5 years by being an illegal alien
(who never took flying lessons :-) ).

So if I understood it right...Having PPTP/L2TP (VPN) connection between me
and my ISP is actually safer on that part of Interne traffic here locally?So
it means that regular (Not Dial Up-VPN) MPLS connections where you get an
external IP address directly from a cable company is less secure? Here I get
first a 172.xx.xx.xx address from a local cable company and then when I
connect to ISP I get also a 80.xx.xx.xx that I use to get online

And you meant that the only way to provide a really SECURE Internet
connection is by using SSL (port 443)?
And the rest is basically a naked info?

Alon
 
Alon said:
hey!

Thanks for your explanation!
Here in Israel I'm not too worried about american government agencies...I
had to f*ck around with one (INS) for over 5 years by being an illegal alien
(who never took flying lessons :-) ).

So if I understood it right...Having PPTP/L2TP (VPN) connection between me
and my ISP is actually safer on that part of Interne traffic here locally?So
it means that regular (Not Dial Up-VPN) MPLS connections where you get an
external IP address directly from a cable company is less secure? Here I get
first a 172.xx.xx.xx address from a local cable company and then when I
connect to ISP I get also a 80.xx.xx.xx that I use to get online

And you meant that the only way to provide a really SECURE Internet
connection is by using SSL (port 443)?
And the rest is basically a naked info?

Alon
Click to expand...

Apparently, I failed the clarity test twice. Let me try again.

1. VPN encrypts data between the two ends of any logical connection.
Using VPN between your PC and your ISP is much better than sending
cleartext (unencrypted data), particularly if the data goes over
some shared media, such as a broadband cable.

I have no idea whether VPN over one specific connection is
better than cleartext over another specific connection; I don't
think there is any generic way to answer that question.

2. SSL (port 443) is certainly not the only way to provide a secure
connection. SSL is just one such secure transport; albeit a standard.
 
Hey Bob!

What I meant was not if VPN over a specific connection vs.cleartext on
another one,but on the SAME kinda connection.
Again...physically it's the SAME infrustructure-cables.Same cable Co.Unlike
in the US (where from what I know every broadband cable modem user gets
automatically valid ext.IP address from cable Co.,that basically gets a pool
of addresses from ISPs)...Here there's a choice...Either you get a Dial Up
VPN connection to ISP and from ISP you get ext.IP address and you get an
internal 172.2x.xx.xx address from cable Co. OR...you use the "american"
way. It's a BIG issue now here,'cos local ISPs try to B.S. the customers to
switch to Open access VPN Dial up connection from the "american" one.From
ISP' s point of you-it saves them pool of IP addresses.
Plus gives a CONTROL over what their custs do.Otherwise the Cable Co. has
that control.
What we- ISP tell the people that it's safer for THEM to have Open Access
VPN connection,'cos in this case they would get a temp.IP address and
hackers would less likely to get a control over their PC's.
Here I agree with the policy (more or less).What is unclear to me is:from a
connection standpoint locally...is there any difference...


--
Thanks in advance,

Yours truly,
Alon Brodski
 
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