IIC Internet Virtual servers

[ward at pong.be (Ward Vandewege)]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 09:16:28AM -0400, Matthew Gillen wrote:
> Jerry Feldman wrote:
> > From the Verizon web site:
> > "Verizon FiOS Internet Service consumer packages include 10 MB of
> > personal Web space. The consumer offers do not permit customers to host
> > any type of server, personal or commercial".
> 
> That's sort of ridiculous.  I know these are lawyers writing this and not
> technical people, but technically an (non-passive) ftp client acts as a server
> for the data channel.  I'm sure there are lots of other examples of "consumer"
> software that actually use some sort of server port on the "client-side" in
> their protocol.
> 
> Even if I can close my eyes to the dumbness of the words used, I can't
> understand the the motivation behind the intent of the statement.  Why do they
> want to restrict customers?  Does it cost them money?  Or are they just afraid
> you'll actually use the amount of bandwidth that they're advertising is
> available to you...

That's probably part of the reason. I suspect they also don't want to
cannibalize their 'business' offerings, where they can charge substantially
more for the privilege of running servers (and an SLA, of course).

If Verizon would stop thinking as a telephone company (where *every feature*
costs extra - caller id, voicemail, etc) and start thinking as a data
company, this sort of nonsense would probably go away real soon. But I don't
see that happen anytime soon. Not without some serious competition.

Thanks,
Ward.

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