Telephone via cat5

[Grunff]

Run away! Awaaaay!!

Demon were good once upon a time, many moons ago.

[Bob]

Must have been before they became an ISP ;-)

[Huge]

They're still fine. I use them at the moment.

[Grunff]

Hmm, given your tough stance on crap suppliers, this viewpoint surprises me. Oh well, maybe I just had a 6 month run of bad luck with them in

2000 (which is when I ditched them).

[The Natural Philosopher]

well they are crap actually, and I still use them because its ISDN or nothing here, and when I set this lot up I needed a consistent IP adesss to punch through firewalls.

Needless to say clara handles everything apart from puer connectivity, and teh madtory smtp relay, and the dreadful demon news service.

[G&M]

If you are properly fire-walled you're the rarity. Quick walk round Buxton recently revealed open hotspots about every 50 yards.

[G&M]

Glad somebody else does ! I moaned about this at a standards meeting almost fifteen years ago but everybody else thought the voice coding delay was acceptable.

As for VoIP, it looks like we'll soon all be suffering from it anyway as BT's core network converts to packet switching over next ten years. Joy ........

[Peter D]

I'm now on Eclipse, whereas i was on Zen before. the only reason why I moved from Zen was the cost, and they've just reduced there prices. in the end I was happy with Zen, but there news service was very poor for a while (it was getting a lot better by the time I left). The connection was quick and quite reliable. Customer support was friendly.

Eclipse, well, everything is ok to good. There's nothing wrong with the package. Since I was moving into a new flat; I had to get BT to set up a new connection which they mucked up. So I had a bit of hassle with eclipse getting the ADSL provided, there customer support seems to have a couple of days lag. Also eclipse have been bought over by Kingston. Time will tell if that will result in a degradation of the service!

News group access is very good, probably in excess of a months retention. But you are limited to a maximum of 2 connections. I think it's a peer from Giganews.

My mum is with Plus, and it's been a good experience as well. Newsgroup access is almost as good as eclipse, and I do not think it's limited. I would suggest that you do look at plus as I think they offer the extra services such as static ip's, cgi web space, SMTP etc...

I would fear that Plus and possibly Eclipse will face a spell of poor service as they are looking to ramp up there subscriber numbers.

A good place to find out more info on adsl providers is

Have a look through the forums for any ISPs you shortlist to see the issues there subscribers have faced recently.

[Steve Firth]

My job is computer security. It's properly firewalled. Not only that but the aerial design is such that there's no signal to the front of the house and at the rear there's no access within a mile.

[Dave Liquorice]

Thought as much, I don't like the phone at the best of times so having one with variable delay is going to really pee me off. I didn't grow up with a telephone at home, it wasn't until all three kids left home that we badgered Mum & Dad into getting one. I'm 44, on the final qualifying rounds for the "grumpy old man" award...

[John Rumm]

Clara are v.good, but I would also offer PlusNet, cheap but also superb!

;-)

(not unlike Demon at their best)

Andy, have you tried the comparison widget at ADSLguide?

figures are based on user ratings.

[G&M]

Oh well, one less free connection point :-)

[Steve Firth]

Even if you got into my back garden and got past the encryption at firewall 1, then you have to negotiate the need have your MAC registered with the network and the three other firewalls between you and the internet.

It's not foolproof but heck, rather than face all that you'd probably go to my neighbour who doesn't have a clue and who leaves his network open to all.

[invalid]

I wasn't aware that firewalls managed encryption? I guess one of the three firewalls is a "clever" one?

MAC spoofing is old hat and simple, do a google for "ethernet MAC spoofing". Nowadays, it's almost a drag/drop operation (which means any kid out of school will have a go).

Three firewalls? I would have thought one properly configured firewall would be capable and sufficient.

I suppose if someone is unsure of their skills in their profession of 'computer security' then yes, I can see why they'd do it three times to hope one of them might work. Management Nightmares 'R' Us?

I wouldn't for one moment imply that I mean you, I know you can "packet my ass of the net" whenever you want.

Admirable, atleast you are aware that a problem exists

If I were driving down a residential street (possibly in Hampshire) and noticed/found a semi secure wireless spot, it would be the first place to target. "Why are they hiding (attempting to do so) when every other house in the street is wide open?". It becomes a game. So begins the game...... unfortunately I'm not close enough to Hampshire or Blakes to ever take a wireless look.

I didn't bother looking up your old firthcom.(demon host), it looks about as old as the early MAC spoofing vulnerabilities, so instead I had a quick look at malloc in the co of the uk TLD.

Can't help but notice that - One of Lief's many vulnerabilties (bugtraq 2103) is up for exploration - The adglimpse (bugtraq 2026) vulnerability is asking to be looked at. - Early looks suggest that perl.exe is exposed where it shoudn't be.

Actually I'm not being entirely honest, there aren't three vulnerabilities waiting to be looked at, there are actually 43 (not a typo - fourty three).

In fairness, these aren't specific to your site or indicate an actual problem, but they're vulnerabilities being exposed on server2.clicknames.net, your hosting providers machine. With that many vulnerabilities I would have expected to have found MX and A entires for malloc pointing to a private machine, certainly not at any ISP. Every indication (in my quick look) says it is hosted at clicknames and not privately.

Personally, with me as a non-security professional and you as a professional, I guess you know about all of those vulnerabilities already and are confident that you're secure. There's clearly no point me telling you the full list of 43 and how they were found?

Indeed, with you as a security professional I'm guessing you'll know my home address by the morning anyway, if not, it's not that hard to find, what with the reverse lookup and only some minimally spoofed headers. By the morning you'll probably be in a position to report it to the relevant authorities. Any logs of right now will show my true IP.

You might also want to read up on Bugtraq 2021, 191834, CAN-2001-0217, CAN-2001-0231, 2109 and the other 40 odd. Oh, and also tell your hosting provider I meant no harm, I did it from my own traceable IP.

It's wierd that the unit at MX uk-mail-a.malloc(dot co dot uk) responds well and gave me it's life story, but MX uk-mail-b.malloc(dot co uk) didn't, I guess this is down to your provider or some other wierd issues? Maybe you've started packeting me off the web already, I don't know, I only took a quick look.

Back on topic for uk.diy, makes you think about your own diy wifi install doesn't it?

Regards Bill

*** Before anyone aims to hit me back, I don't claim to be a security professional, I'm just a little inquisitive. Yes, I probably carry my own vulnerabilities too. (except mine are related to drinking too much rather than computers etc).

[Andy Dingley]

[Steve Firth]

[snip]

Yes, three firewalls. There's a perfectly good reason why there are three firewalls, and it's fairly common practice to configure a network the way I have. You appear to make the mistake of thinking that you know my network topology, you don't.

Oh look, a person who can do a whois lookup. Although you're going to be so disappoitned if you do get to that building and find out that it's just an address, not the premises where my network is located. If you do find that address, as I pointed out in the earlier post, you can come, you can look but you won't find a signal from areas that are accessible to the public.

Except that clicknames.net is not my host. So that was rather a waste of time on yoru part. I suggest that you contact Onyx and let them know what you did.

No, because I don't have any interest in how insecure any clicknames server is.

They aren't my hosting provider.

It makes me think that a *little* knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

[John Rumm]

Hmmm... probably does not account for "lag" - seems ok for spotting long term trends in ISP performance. Doubt it is much use for ISPs "gone bad" so to speak.

[invalid]

snip

You were discussing the wireless accessibility from your *back garden*. This suggests a home network, not a large corporate who might actually need to consider network 'topology' and multiple firewalls.

snip

Yes my mistake (it was quite late), clicknames supply the nameservers, not the hosting. The vulnerabilities are at the host.

I would, seeing as they provide your DNS entries.

snip

As I said that was a keyboard/brain error, the vulnerabilities are at the host.

It makes me think that touting yourself as a security professional on usenet, simply invites passing readers to take a pop at your network/domain etc.

Anyway, as I said, I don't claim to be a security professional. Bill

[Steve Firth]

I see, so you get to tell me what I may and may not do and where I may or may not work and what I may or may not work on an deven how I may or may not choose to access the internet?

You have made some monumental and monumentally incorrect assumptions about the network that I work on and how my home network connects to the internet. Unsurprisingly I'm not going to correct those misconceptions because you don't need to know.

You fail to understand what is happening. The server you connected to is not the host.

No, they don't. You have made a silly error. [snip]

No they aren't. You made a mistake.

Yes, another laughable script kiddie with a half-arsed idea.

My credntials are reasonably well known even on usenet. My publications are bizarrely enough, publically accessible. You need to stop being Mr Angry, and to engage your brain.

[invalid]

I don't remember doing that anywhere?

How can you make that assertion - you don't know what I connected to? I admitted to wrongly typing out clicknames as your host, it clearly isn't.

snip

I guess Nominet must be making the same mistake?

And the mistake might be what?

snip

No script here sir, just publicly accessible sites/pages. Free for all and sundry to look at as they wish.

So, your contribution consists of... > "monumental and monumentally incorrect assumptions" > "You fail to understand what is happening" > "You have made a silly error" > "You made a mistake" > "another laughable script kiddie"

I see usenet is at it's best again.

You've descended into slanging as opposed to contributing, and we're way off topic anyway for this group. Bill