Re: Verizon FIOS Terms of Service

On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 04:42:13PM -0700, Jim Snow wrote:
> They seem to only want you to use FIOS within one household:
> 
> "3.7 If you subscribe to Broadband Service:  ...  3.7.2 You may connect 
> multiple computers/devices within a single home to your Broadband modem 
> and/or router to access the Service, but only through a single Broadband 
> account and a single IP address obtained from Verizon."
> 
> Though they word it in a way that tells us what we are allowed to do 
> (implying that anything else is forbidden), instead of explicitly 
> telling us what we're not allowed to do.  It sounds to me that they 
> aren't sharing friendly (which is a shame because I have FIOS and an 
> olsr node on my roof and I would like to connect the latter to the former).

The TOS is vague about permissions.  The business contracts I sign are
explicit about forbidden activity, as are the acceptable uses farther
down in the TOS.  It is interesting that the TOS does mention sharing,
but only in a commercial context.  However, it is their party, and they
can throw me out if they want, for any reason they invent.

I am more worried that some clown with an 0wned laptop will park outside
and start broadcasting spam;  the TOS assigns responsibility for abuse
to me.  That's fair, but nonetheless they are grounds for terminating
my service.  Worst case, Verizon cuts me off, I shut down the PTP node,
and restart with Comcast, who will no doubt be making increasingly
desperate offers to get me back after I leave.  Ain't Competition Grand?

My biggest potential concern about Verizon is that they monkey with DNS;
invalid domain queries sent to their server will return pointers to
Verizon advertising.  OTOH, I run my own named "server" for my own 
internal network, and Verizon is unlikely to block or even understand
DNS queries to the IP addresses of the root name servers.  If they do,
I just route my DNS requests up the VPN to my external server at
rimuhosting.  If necessary, I can route all the traffic they don't 
want to carry up the VPN.

Anyway, my concern about using Comcast was that if they cut me off for
running a PTP node, I was back to dialup (which was the only other
alternative in our neighborhood, no DSL available).  Now that there
are two broadband alternatives, I can take more risks - and they can
take fewer.  In time, when municipalities and volunteer groups like
PTP offer third and fourth alternatives, it will be very hard for
any provider to throw their weight around too much.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          [email protected]         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs

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