Cable modem question,PLEASE!

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Hello world!

I read in Peter Norton's "New Inside The PC" book that cable modems receive
all the data that it's in the area (probably till the nearest node) and they
only process the data that is sent to a particular modem.
So my question is...technically someone using special equipment can also
gain access to the data that was intended for someone else?

Thanks in advance,


--
Yours truly,
Alon Brodski

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

And that equipment is called a Sniffer.

Alon Brodski wrote:
> I read in Peter Norton's "New Inside The PC" book that cable
> modems receive all the data that it's in the area (probably
> till the nearest node) and they only process the data that is
> sent to a particular modem. So my question is...technically
> someone using special equipment can also gain access to the
> data that was intended for someone else?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Alon Brodski wrote:

> Hello world!
>
> I read in Peter Norton's "New Inside The PC" book that cable modems receive
> all the data that it's in the area (probably till the nearest node) and they
> only process the data that is sent to a particular modem.
> So my question is...technically someone using special equipment can also
> gain access to the data that was intended for someone else?
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
>

Data is normally shipped as cleartext. If you are worried about folks
with sniffers reading your data, you can use VPN to encrypt the data,
but that only works with nodes that already support VPN.
--
Cheers, Bob

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Hey!

Thanks for your help!

Well,to be honest I'm not worried about Internet at very least.I have real
life worries to worry about....
My little baby girl half the globe away from me and my kidney stones
And also in my immidiate neighborhood noone has cable Internet...Buying and
selling drugs here is what most people do in their free time
I was just curious purely from technological point of view.
What do you mean by "cleartext"? Unencrypted? And how I can encrypt every
transaction over the Internet.
Like what I download and what sites I visit....I do use VPN to access my ISP
(that I also work for)...Meaning that here in Israel those who use cable to
access Internet have Open Access Dial up VPN connection (PPTP or L2TP).And
no IPSec 'cos ISP doesn't support it.So in this case...what could be done,
if anything?


--
Thanks in advance,

Yours truly,
Alon Brodski




"Bob Willard" <BobwBSGS@TrashThis.comcast.net> wrote in message
news:uhfLxkgVEHA.3620@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> Alon Brodski wrote:
>
> > Hello world!
> >
> > I read in Peter Norton's "New Inside The PC" book that cable modems
receive
> > all the data that it's in the area (probably till the nearest node) and
they
> > only process the data that is sent to a particular modem.
> > So my question is...technically someone using special equipment can also
> > gain access to the data that was intended for someone else?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> >
> >
>
> Data is normally shipped as cleartext. If you are worried about folks
> with sniffers reading your data, you can use VPN to encrypt the data,
> but that only works with nodes that already support VPN.
> --
> Cheers, Bob
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware (More info?)

Alon Brodski wrote:

> Hey!
>
> Thanks for your help!
>
> Well,to be honest I'm not worried about Internet at very least.I have real
> life worries to worry about....
> My little baby girl half the globe away from me and my kidney stones
> And also in my immidiate neighborhood noone has cable Internet...Buying and
> selling drugs here is what most people do in their free time
> I was just curious purely from technological point of view.
> What do you mean by "cleartext"? Unencrypted? And how I can encrypt every
> transaction over the Internet.
> Like what I download and what sites I visit....I do use VPN to access my ISP
> (that I also work for)...Meaning that here in Israel those who use cable to
> access Internet have Open Access Dial up VPN connection (PPTP or L2TP).And
> no IPSec 'cos ISP doesn't support it.So in this case...what could be done,
> if anything?
>
>

Cleartext is another word for unencrypted.

There is no way to encrypt everything that goes over the net, because
encryption relies on having the source node and the target node have
an agreement about the encryption mechanism before the encrypted
message is sent. But, since many nodes do not support encryption at
all, there is no way to get them to understand encrypted messages
that you send and no way to get them to send encrypted messages to
your node.

Using VPN between your PC and your ISP is a good start since that
protects your data over the "last mile". I don't think there is
any general way to guarantee that nobody monitors traffic that is
forwarded by your ISP between your PC and other internet nodes.

In the USA, certain government groups are rumored (just a rumor,
and you didn't hear it from me) to have the ability to monitor ISP
traffic; but the only agencies with that ability are those with
TLAs in which the last letter is a vowel, and the only departments
with that ability are those with TLAs in which the first letter
is "D".
--
Cheers, Bob