Comcast changes naming convention

pll at lanminds.com pll at lanminds.com
Fri May 2 10:03:48 EDT 2003


In a message dated: Fri, 02 May 2003 09:44:26 EDT
Jack Hodgson said:

>but now Comcast has changed the naming to
>
>    c-<current IP addrs separated by dashes>.ne.client2.attbi.com
>
>     eg: c-24-34-217-135.ne.client2.attbi.com
>
>Ah well.
>
>I suspect this is Comcast fixing a weakness in their system that made 
>it easier for customers to setup dynamic DNS, and thus run evil, 
>illegal servers.

Other than making it so you no longer have to look up your IP address 
using nslookup, I don't see any real difference.  Who cares what the 
host name assigned to the IP is in their dns?  AFAICT, this doesn't 
prevent you from doing anything you could do before.

(I say this as a non-cable modem-owning comcast subscriber.  Others 
with cable-modems and experience with Comcast might know something I 
don't.)

Of course, what it looks like is happening is this.  M1 used MAC 
address assignment as a control mechanism to decide who could connect 
to their network.  If that MAC needed to change for some reason, 
there was then human/manual intervention needed to update the records 
they maintained.

Their current scheme looks more like they're using the IP address as 
the hostname, which makes it really easy to configure your DHCP and 
DNS servers to be in sync all the time.  So, what this means is 
probably that they're no statically assigning IPs to MAC addresses, 
and that every time your cable modem re-boots, you'll get a different 
IP.  So, yeah, that *could* pose a problem with people running 
private DNS servers, but that's what dyndns is for :)

>Is it me, or do these Comcast folks have more tech smarts that the 
>att/mediaone people?

I don't think there any smarter or any dumber.  There not much 
different than any other network admin, though often put into 
impossible positions.  Personally, I don't envy them :)

It's got to be tough to be told to build a global network WAN 
infrastructure, told to make it secure, but also knowing that the 
extent of the security is really only as strong as the millions of
systems connecting to your network which you have absolutely no 
control over.


>Is it me, or do these Comcast folks have more tech smarts that the 
>att/mediaone people?
>
>-- Jack Hodgson
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>gnhlug-discuss mailing list
>gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
>http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
>

-- 

Seeya,
Paul
--
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