[LINK] RFI: Dynamic IP-Addresses on Consumer Broadband

[grove at zeta.org.au]

On Fri, 19 Oct 2007, Roger Clarke wrote:

> Maybe someone can help with an oddity that's arisen with my MSc(ECOM) 
> candidates up here in Hong Kong.
>
> Contributions to the Discussion Boards make clear that both HK and mainland 
> China ISPs are making frequent changes to consumers' IP-addresses.  [Which 
> presumably makes censorship even harder, but that's no bad thing!]
>
> I floated the cause as perhaps old or low-quality network software resulting 
> in relatively frequent dropouts.
>
> Several candidates (these are mostly 26-40 year-olds, many with at least one 
> postgrad qual, half in CS/IT) suggest that the main factor is to prevent 
> people signing consumer contracts and running servers. (We went through that 
> phase 3-4 years ago in Oz!).
>
> Any insights much appreciated.

If you are using a protocol like SSH to tunnel data or map a port to
another remote system and the Client has its IP address allocated via DHCP 
for example, then the remote system may well reject the refreshed IP 
and make it hard to keep tunneling or gain remote access to certain 
services.     It becomes an exercise in keeping the Client 
IP updated on the ACL's on the Server.

I was just thinking about this tonight, after seeing Lateline's report
on the Great Firewall of China and they described China as an Intranet
with 3 gateways.    So I sort of thought how we do it to get in to work from
home and rather than using a VPN we just SSH tunnel into various 
systems and gain access to the Intranet from there.

And then some sort of software was mentioned to "bypass" the 
Firewall and break out of the Chinese Intranet.   So it is possible that
the "software" is some sort of SSH tunneling to a web proxy in another
country and all sorts of port forwarding done, that the Govt filters
cannot see.   But I am only speculating.


rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
David Hicks, Nuclear Power, WorkChoices, Reconciliation, Tampa, Iraq, AWB,
Children Overboard, Global Warming.  "Who do you trust?" - John W Howard