Re: [Nolug] Tons of DHCPREQUEST messages in syslog

"Michael B. Roetto" <mike@augdata.com> writes:

<META>
We're getting pretty far afield but I'll keep going if people are
interested. Of course alot of us *nix hobbiests run and play with
"servers" on our residential broadband connections so I guess that's
where the relevance is.
</META>

> Telocity DSL (now directv) offers 1500kb/s down, 256 kb/s up, static ip,
> no port restrictions for $49.99 /m.
>
> <RANT>
> i've always suspected the real reason broadband providers use DHCP doesn't
> have anything to do with available addresses, it has to do with bandwidth
> management , pure and simple.

horsehocky. IP management is harder than bw management. Now download
and upload caps have everything to do with bandwidth. Short IP leases
is foolishness in my view. There's just not much to gain there. But
some believe it makes IP management easier and lessens abuse.

> with hosts having dynamic IPs, that makes them harder to find on the net,
> and thus alot less likely to consume more bandwidth.
>
> when cox,charter,bellsouth, etc, advertise an "always on" connection, i
> that to mean that I have full of use of my wire , 24x7, if i
> choose to.
>
> with such short DHCP leases, you raise the possibility of breaking alot of
> TCP sessions when the node renews. That makes the connection a little less
> than "always on", don't it?

It doesn't break if the IP address doesn't change. If you're leaving
your PC on 24/7/365, the lease will rarely change even with short
leases. Unless the provider enforces a change-IP-on-renewal setup.

My lease times are 1 week. The only time I've ever cut them down, is
when I'm running short on public IP space. This gains me back a lot of
IPs when I'm in a crunch. Why? Because most people don't leave the
PC's on unattended. So they lose their four hour leases that they're
not utilizing anyway. But 99.99999% of the time, lease times are 7
days in my world.

> If providers are offering broadband connections at a certain advertised
> rate, they should provision their networks to handle that load, and not
> try to solve the problem through (imo) these customer unfriendly traffic
> engineering schemes.

Agreed. providers need to realize that upstream usage has grown and
is part of the game now and engineer for it. No servers policies and
the like simply don't work.

You want to know what the number one user of upstream bandwidth is?
It's not "illegal" web/ftp/mail servers. It's not virus activity
(NIMDA, etc.). It's peer-to-peer file sharing -- Morpheus, Kazaa,
grokster. Far and away these are the biggest bandwidth users. I've
measured it (using netflow on cisco routers to watch tcp port
utilization status). Those three programs account for around 90% of
the entire upstream utlization on my cable modem systems in
Mandeville, Thibodaux, and Opelousas (I'm with Charter). and that's
with a fairly aggressive upstream cap (128kbps) in place.

 There is *nothing* we as providers can do to stop this. yes, it is
much more expensive for us because it means re-engineering how you
build a system. But no amount of policies, port blocks and other
nonsense are going to stop people from (gulp) using the service we
sell.

Of course that's why most DSL providers are either 1) out of business
(telocity was nearly so but bought by directv) or 2) have
substantially higher prices. Those who haven't gone up are likely
losing money right now on the service. If anyone honestly thinks
they're going to get a DS3 (or even a fulll T1) for $40/month, then
I've got some desert land to sell you just outside of Raceland.

I have a standard rant on conference calls and email conversations
when these issues come up. Basically it boils down to provide the
customer with reliable service and otherwise leave them alone and
they'll stick with you. I personally have enough trouble chasing down
legitimate abuse (port scans, hack attempts) to give a damn about
whether joe bleaux hosts his family pictures on Personal Web Server in
Win98. I see no reason to unnecessarily interfere with customers. Of
course some day my hand could be forced....

> </RANT>
>
> /m/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, 8 Jan 2002, Ron Johnson wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On Tuesday 08 January 2002 10:39 pm, Jerald Sheets wrote:
> > [snip]
> > >
> > > I'm sticking with @home through this, but with the DSL providers
> > > going 768 both ways and a static IP for $79, I'm more willing to shut
> > > off all my cable services and go the way of the copper pair...
> >
> > You're lucky. Smack dab in the middle of the 'burbs, I'm ~18K
> > ft from the BS^H^HBellSouth CO. So, Cox has a captive account.
> >
> > As long as they don't go to address-change-on-expired-lease, I'll
> > be happy in my velvet prison, 'cause from a fast host, like
> > ftp.kernel.org, I easily get 2,400KBps download speed.
> >
> > - --
> > +------------------------------------------------------------+
> > | Ron Johnson, Jr. Home: ron.l.johnson@home.com |
> > | Jefferson, LA USA http://ronandheather.dhs.org:81 |
> > | |
> > ! "Fair is where you take your cows to be judged." !
> > ! Unknown !
> > +------------------------------------------------------------+
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
> > Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org
> >
> > iD8DBQE8O85xjTz5dS9Us5wRAveOAJ0Scx+QX4BeZ+gfo9GestlwUEznJACdEKSy
> > O3XeNf+0km1mCgRK0CIFLOU=
> > =0Hxp
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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-- 
Scott Harney <scott_harney@yahoo.com>
Broadband Services Manager (LA)
Charter Communications
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