NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Re: Who Confirms The Accuracy Of ISP Usage Meters?
This kind of paranoia is just getting silly. It's basically assuming that
the ISP is committing fraud that is easily detectable.
There are so many easy ways to measure this it's not even funny. If you're
running a firewall like IPCOP or for example, it has extensive usage reports
which will almost certainly match what the ISP is reporting. Moreover, you
can measure the internal Ethernet interface which does not include DoS
traffic because it gets blocked by the firewall.
You can also easily enable PERFMON logging built into Windows and get
second-by-second usage data. This only gives you measurements on a single
computer though but a lot of people only have one computer. You could log
data from multiple computers and just merge the data though.
George
-----Original Message-----
From: nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org
[mailto:nnsquad-bounces+george_ou=lanarchitect.net@nnsquad.org] On Behalf Of
Schlake
Sent: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 9:02 AM
To: Bob Poortinga
Cc: nnsquad@nnsquad.org
Subject: [ NNSquad ] Re: Who Confirms The Accuracy Of ISP Usage Meters?
So what we need is a independent device that can measure that network
usage. It should be open source, to be verifiable, and cheap. It
won't fix the problem, but it would put a solution in the hands of
many users. The more users that have it the more accountability which
could be imposed on the service providers.
A small box with two ethernet ports, one for the outside world, and
one for the inside world.
A web server on the inside world that displays statistics.
An NTP server that keeps the time up to date.
A configurator page that lets users configure ip blocks to be tracked
separately (unmetered streaming video from the service provider for
instance).
A NAT-like interface that can count packets at a variety of
resolutions. Total packets through would be the main one, but what
about attacks on peoples homes where you send a large amount of
traffic at an IP address to raise their bill? If that was detected
and listed as a separate line item it could be useful. In general,
the more data a person can store about their own traffic the more
useful it would be (I'm sure law enforcement would agree on this
point).
It would need a good robust data storage system internally, and a way
to automatically synchronize the data into a machine on the inside
world for backup purposes.
Obviously if someone implements this you should send me some of the
money you make from my idea!
[ Actually, much of this functionality already exists in, or
could be added to, somewhat higher-end commodity cable/DSL
modem/routers.
But what happens if a subscriber's locally gathered usage
statistics turn out to be at wide variance from the ISP's
official figures? Then the real fun begins.
-- Lauren Weinstein
NNSquad Moderator ]
On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 8:35 AM, Bob Poortinga <nnsquad@k9sql.us> wrote:
> Here's a good article in DSL Reports which brings up some important
points:
>
>
<http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Who-Confirms-The-Accuracy-Of-ISP-Usage-M
eters-106292>
>
> --
> Bob Poortinga K9SQL
> Bloomington, IN US
>
--
-- Schlake