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> It is important to read the MediaOne contract carefully. ... > My understanding is that if you IP Masquarade you are > not within the terms of the contract. Furthermore, if you tell the > MediaOne people that A) you have a network or B) you are running Linux, I > was told they won't even come to your house to setup the service. I also > understand that for the MediaOne people to setup the service you have to > have Win95 (or maybe a Mac?). So I would read the papers they have > carefully to make sure that you don't get yourself into any trouble. This reminds me of the early days of cable TV, or even for that matter the first several decades of phone service, when the installer would cheerfully volunteer to hook up a "second outlet while I'm here", for a "modest monthly fee". The marketplace has spoken loud and clear on these billing practices, and the vendors invariably lose. Media One will get a heap of customer complaints if they try to enforce a single-machine restriction on their IP dialtone. In the end, they'll lose--it's a competitive market, and the incremental cost to a provider for these second-line hookups is negligible. Essentially, such users represent the "power users" who have a significant impact on profitability only during the early-adopter phase. As an example, if you go out and buy the $21.95 unlimited AOL service, and actually use it all day, of course their cost of providing it is more than the price they're charging. But they make money based on the fact that only a small percentage of customers are heavy users. Before the days of million-user PPP networks, of course, unlimited modem service was as much as $250/month from companies like BBN and PSI--a reflection of the true costs of building and operating a network whose user community is small. Today, the user communities of Media One, RCN, and CAI are small. If it costs more to enforce a metering policy than to scrap it, then ultimately it will be scrapped. We have some bright people here in this group: can anyone here figure out a cheap way for Media One and/or any of the cable companies to meter or to "catch" power users in the act of running multiple systems? As for the on-site technician's non-support of Linux--I wouldn't worry about it. If you have no inclination to run Win95 or a Mac at your house, have a friend lend you a notebook PC long enough for the Media One technician to test your installation. Then plug in your Linux box and enter your IP parameters. The tech from CAI was fascinated with my Linux setup but I didn't bother putting in the parameters before he left; I was happy enough just to be surfing along at 2 megabits on my Win95 box for the moment. (I finally got around to the IP masquerade stuff about two weeks later...) -rich
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