[HamWAN PSDR] Holy smokes, we have Internet address space!

[The Doctor]

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On 02/21/2013 05:05 PM, Benjamin Krueger wrote:
> We really need to think long and hard about whether it's a good
> idea to connect this network to the internet. I am still
> unconvinced of the value of this proposition, and it causes a great
> many extremely difficult technical and legal challenges.

In the US, unless the account you have with a broadband ISP
specifically permits connection sharing (especially public connection
sharing), they may threaten to kill your access unless you take the
gateway to the mesh network down.  They may also decide to drop you as
a customer entirely and be done with you.

Additionally, there are several states that have laws against doing
just this.  Community wireless networks run into this problem a lot
and not a few have been shut down here.  It was a common complaint
from USian projects at the last International Summit for Community
Wireless Networks (this link was referenced a lot during the "State of
wireless" roundtable discussion:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/broadband/muni.htm).

> If nothing else, it is a distraction for us today. If we really
> want to explore that feature of the network, we should do it in a
> future phase after the network is already established. In the
> meantime, we can block

That would be a good strategy.  In addition, you will want to have a
large community of active users to help you make a case for not being
shut down if it comes to it.

> traditionally encrypted ports on the network as standard practice;
> no need for one-off changes from end-users.

The problem there is that you will then be forcing users to connect to
online services insecurely.  Passive attackers will be able to easily
record authentication credentials to webmail services (which are
increasingly being used as authentication providers by other services
- - Google Mail comes to mind immediately), banks, and other sites.

You might be incurring additional liability if you set that policy.
You might also want to reconsider setting up network gateways for this
reason.

- -- 
The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS]
Developer, Project Byzantium: http://project-byzantium.org/

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"I'm prophetic, not infallible." --Mr. Morden

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