[talk] Optimum provided home router madness

[Charles Sprickman]

On Feb 1, 2015, at 6:55 PM, Mark Saad <mark.saad at ymail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
>> On Feb 1, 2015, at 5:30 PM, Michael W. Lucas <mwlucas at blackhelicopters.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Sun, Feb 01, 2015 at 05:22:36PM -0500, George Rosamond wrote:
>>> Mark Saad:
>>>> All So I am at a souperbowl party and they have a optimum Internet
>>>> and a vendor provided home router . The strangest thing with its
>>>> setup is the wireless network ( configured by optimum ) hands out
>>>> ip's in 24.0/13 net block ! Anyone have a idea why they would do this
>>>> ?
>>> 
>>> I bet it has something to do with data mining... triple nat'g while
>>> their wireless device sniffs the wlan's MAC addresses.  There is
>>> probably an update to RFC 1918 designating that block for third parties
>>> to watch your Facebook posts.
>> 
> 
> This sounds like a quote from the upcoming movie "black hat" 
> 
> http://imdb.com/title/tt2717822/
> 
>> That block is assigned to Comcast NJ. Any chance Optimum is part of
>> Comcast?
>> 
> 
> No this is cablevision country in ny; which is equally strange . 

Not really, I think back in the old days of @Home cable service (remember that?) there was some consortium of cable providers and they were all numbering out of 24.0.0.0/8.  Most now seem to have block there as well:

http://bgp.he.net/AS6128#_prefixes
http://bgp.he.net/AS7922#_prefixes (they have other ASes as well, this is just one)
http://bgp.he.net/AS7843#_prefixes (same deal)

Personally, I wouldn’t complain about getting a real IP. :)

Cablevision, in general, is one of the least sucky options.  Who else is going to sell me 80/25 with a /29 for under $90/month?

As for security, I’m all for giving the non-tech people a managed solution for visitors to use their network.  The other option is a horrible wifi password.  The current deal seems to be that if you agree to share your network, they send you a free D-Link 802.11ac router.  Supposedly this does not impact your main connection.

This is slightly different than the public wifi they provide to subscribers (the one with an optimum, comcast and twc SSID) - that’s from nifty little APs that hang off the cable plant (and are line-powered, like the inline amps).

Charles

> 
>> It's possible (barely) that you're getting actual IP
>> addresses. Unlikely, but you have me curious.
>> 
> 
> I want to start exploring but I don't want to be hogging their computer .
> 
> 
>> -- 
>> Michael W. Lucas  -  mwlucas at michaelwlucas.com, Twitter @mwlauthor 
>> http://www.MichaelWLucas.com/, http://blather.MichaelWLucas.com/
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