In a very interesting development 7 men were arrested for alledgedly modifying there cable modems to uncap bandwidth. They defendants could each face a year in Jail and have to pay restitutions. [Toledo Blade]
My question on this one would be. 1. Did they buy there own cable modems and if they did can’t they do as the damn well please with the config. 2. If they used software to make the change to a cable modem that is owned by the cable company is that in itself illegal.
Well if they have that great of a service than the actually increase in throughput was defnitley not that much more of an increase. Most cable modems are 10mps connections and even when a computer is plugged into a true dedicated T1 he or she will never reach the capacity of the 1.5mps circuit due to latency and other net centric issues. If the users were downloading massive amounts of files this probably flagged there account before the uncaping did.
I am on the cable modem network being spoke of in this article (buckeye-express) offered by buckeye cable (http://www.buckeyecable.com) and the modems are provided by the cable company as well as the NIC free of charge, and you are bound by a lengthy terms of service and acceptable use contracts that state amoung other things that modifying the modem in anyway without their consent is illegal under Ohio and FCC laws, etc.
So no, it wasn’t their property to tamper with, and they were morons to assume the cable network admins wouldn’t notice massive, irregular amounts of bandwidth in use on their individual nodes.
Below are links to the agreements of use these individuals would have been under, it seems excessive, but most ISPs have similiar policies I suppose. I’ve used the cable modem service for 2 years now with no problems and I seriously do not understand what they needed to hack the service for, download rates are unbelieveable, but up speeds are limited. One great thing about this service over others is that there are no “bandwidth limits” ie; 20megs a day, etc as I know some taxed broadband service providers impose or offer as a cheap service plans. I’ve downloaded gig’s of shit daily sometimes, all covered under my $45 a month fee!
Buckeye Cable Terms of Service )
Acceptable use )
Also a residental agreement )
FYI: The Toledo Blade is a subsidary of the media company that owns Buckeye Cable and other media companies in Pittsburg :)