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Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

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Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#61

Post by kkielhofner »

devwastaken wrote: post #59
kkielhofner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad this is at the top. The linked Reddit thread demonstrates a common but fundamental misunderstanding of SIP. Port 5060 is used for call control and is very low traffic. At most you may have timed OPTIONS messages but a “standard” SIP deployment is at most a handful of (small) packets per second per call setup and tear down with occasional REGISTER messages on an interval measured in seconds. Very low traffic and…

Not the ISP's responsibility.

I’d argue that a reasonable network limitation with a minimal blast ratio is responsible. For example, I use SIP over 5060 on Spectrum without issue.

Not having their network used by bots to inflict untold financial damage is being responsible.

Would you argue that implementation of BCP38 to cut down on bots used in DDoS attacks is “not the ISP’s responsibility”?

Plus, they get the abuse reports from the victims and I’m certain this traffic is a ToS violation for their customers and certainly against the CFAA and numerous other laws for the resulting theft and fraud it causes.

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#62

Post by throwaway413 »

TheSwordsman wrote: post #56

At least where I am in SoCal, AT&T literally just deployed fiber with plans up to 5 gigabit/s. I'm so glad to be leaving Spectrum behind, because when moving here I never thought I'd have a cable Internet provider that made me miss Comcast... So hopefully you have some other options soon. :)

Saw your comment, went to my ATT internet account, and just upgraded from 1k to 5k! I’m so happy, thanks!

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#63

Post by chrismeller »

josephcsible wrote: post #30
_wldu wrote: post #15

They are probably trying to reduce SIP abuse. It's a big problem.

That doesn't make what they're doing okay. To see why, imagine that they instead blocked access to all email services except their own, since spam is a big problem.

I’ve come to treat residential ISPs as basically a transit for HTTP. As someone else in the thread pointed out that’s all that 99.99% of customers care about, and unfortunately you’re talking about a lowest common denominator here.

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#64

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

kmeisthax wrote: post #21
nousermane wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes. The classic "all our customers are morons" approach, with no opt-out for those 0.1% who, in fact, are not. Very typical among ISPs/Telcos. Where I am, we used to have a different, "nerdy" ISP [0], where customer was allowed to bring their own modem; they also provided real IPv4/v6 dual-stack since forever, easy to request a /29, tech-support that's realistic to reach, and staffed with people who know what th…

The opt-out is buy business-class service[0]. My guess is that the 2x price increase Xs4all was charging for their plan was a bridge too far for most customers. It's important to keep in mind that the vast majority of people rent their modem, don't know or care what a /29 is, and is calling tech support because the plug is loose or the modem needs a power cycle. Bulk-blocking SMTP happened because open ports are botn…

IMO, if the ISP doesn't want to sell Internet access, they shouldn't be allowed to call it anything that could be mistaken by a consumer for Internet access.

Trying to upcharge customers for what they were initially supposed to deliver should be considered fraud.

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#66

Post by Prolixium »

FWIW, when I lived in Seattle I found that Lumen's DSL service blocked it as well. It wasn't an obvious block, though. It was either some DPI or size-based filtering. I wrote it up here for posterity:

https://blog.prolixium.com/2021/01/23/does-centurylink-dsl-b...

It worked just fine through Comcast's Xfinity service (although at the time, that service had other critical issues for me..) and I have no problem now with Verizon Fios.

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#67

Post by chihuahua »

bombcar wrote: post #55
Brian_K_White wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've certainly dreamed of a co-op / credit union isp. I think in absolute numbers there are a lot of people who would value that, but only one or two people in any given area, so no way to service them. (Not considering sattelite for both bandwidth and latency reasons.) A long time ago I was in some newsgroup or irc channnel and someone from Russia I think it was, was just casually describing their internet connectio…

You can do something similar in the US - many condos have it setup where they technically are an ISP and pay for transit. Usually it's not worth it because you end up doing end-user support for every neighbor and people are dumb as rocks. But you'd be surprised how cheap a "very fast" transit internet connection can be.

I agree with what you're saying about support. I get nauseous just thinking about the number of people who call their ISP just because their laptop has a flaky Wifi module, and the thought of having to deal with that.

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#68

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

kkielhofner wrote: post #61
devwastaken wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the ISP's responsibility.

I’d argue that a reasonable network limitation with a minimal blast ratio is responsible. For example, I use SIP over 5060 on Spectrum without issue. Not having their network used by bots to inflict untold financial damage is being responsible. Would you argue that implementation of BCP38 to cut down on bots used in DDoS attacks is “not the ISP’s responsibility”? Plus, they get the abuse reports from the victims and…

Block by default is fine but customers should be empowered to disable them if they need the IP service they're paying for.

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#69

Post by mindslight »

bombcar wrote: post #53
kmeisthax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opt-out is buy business-class service[0]. My guess is that the 2x price increase Xs4all was charging for their plan was a bridge too far for most customers. It's important to keep in mind that the vast majority of people rent their modem, don't know or care what a /29 is, and is calling tech support because the plug is loose or the modem needs a power cycle. Bulk-blocking SMTP happened because open ports are botn…

Even if the provider is stupid AF you can usually get around the residential restriction by starting the discussion with the business side of the company; once the salesman has a nibble he's not gonna cut you free if he can help it. And then get a 2 year term on whatever seems a "good deal" at the time (I had cable speeds and 5 IPs) and once that is up call them and "drop down" to whatever you actually need (cable sp…

Still sounds like a huge hassle compared to municipal fiber.

Re: Tell HN: Spectrum is blocking TCP/UDP 5060 at my home

#70

Post by techsupporter »

voidwtf wrote: post #45
techsupporter wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where I am, we used to have a different, "nerdy" ISP [Xs4all] I remember Xs4all, sorry to hear they went under. I also miss the brief moment when we had line sharing on copper telco networks in the United States. Most people were perfectly happy with the standard offerings from their local telco, but those of us who wanted more could connect with an ISP who offered service via a dry pair DSL connection. I loved my…

We had a similar type of “tech” ISP in the USA with a lot of similar features called Speakeasy back in the early 2000s. You could get static ips easily, delegated control of your reverse dns upon request, they encouraged connection sharing by offering an additional email account and IP address for $6/mo and even had guides how to setup different SNAT and masquerading scenarios on Linux. They were so cool compared to…

Yep, I think we're talking about the same Speakeasy ("I loved my time on Speakeasy, for example."). I remember they used to assign IPs almost at random; you wouldn't get a larger subnet, you'd just get more IPs sent down your connection and it was up to you to have the routing equipment to handle them.

This was also the rise of the OpenWRT software on the WRT54G (and GS!) because no consumer-level hardware coult do it. So many Linksys devices bricked from failing tftp sessions, but it worked so well if you could incant it onto the device.

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