AT&T banning Bitcoin nodes by closing port 8333 in cable boxes | Hacker News Reader

AT&T banning Bitcoin nodes by closing port 8333 in cable boxes

lists.linuxfoundation.org

44 pointssinak17 comments

"The FCC's Open Internet rules protect and maintain open, uninhibited access to lawful online content. The rules specifically prohibit: [...] Blocking: Broadband providers may not block access to lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices." [0]

[0] https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/articles/2042314...

And yet they all do it. T-Mobile blocks port 465 so you can't send outgoing email via SSL on your own email server. They want you to use their insecure outgoing mail server that anyone can use to send email as anyone else.

> And yet they all do it.

The rules are fairly new, and enforcement is complaint driven. Until people complain and win, they'll all continue to do it.

There's a difference between blocking a customer's access to external services, and blocking an outgoing web server port like 80 or 443.

The terms of use of your residential internet contract most likely prohibits using your connection in a "commercial" manner (running a full scale web server) out of your home.

> There's a difference between blocking a customer's access to external services, and blocking an outgoing web server port like 80 or 443.

There's obviously a difference.

It is less obviously a relevant difference in regards to the FCC's Open Internet rules.

> The terms of use of your residential internet contract most likely prohibits using your connection in a "commercial" manner (running a full scale web server) out of your home.

To the extent that they purport to limit your right to use applications, devices, etc. that are not themselves unlawful on that connection, such provisions would appear to be in direct violation of FCC Open Internet regulations, which is probably among the reasons the ISPs with such rules also generally opposed the FCC adopting those regulations.

I am a network engineer for TWC specifically running the business class fiber network. As far as I know and can tell with my own connection we do not block anything for our residential customers.

I always speak up internally for customers rights and privacy and I implore anyone else in charge of a network do do the same.

Ditto. I work for an ISP as well and, while I know ISP's don't get a lot of love (especially from the more tech-savvy customers), I feel better knowing that least I'm helping to Do The Right Thing(TM).

The company I work for is pretty small as far as ISPs go (our customer base numbers in the four digits) so our headcount is pretty small too. While it sucks sometimes, I am personally in charge of exactly how our network is ran and have complete freedom to do whatever I want however I want (so long as it doesn't significantly affect the bottom line, of course). I try to run things the way I want my ISP to (I live outside our service area so I don't have our service but I do have blazing fast FTTH so that makes up for it.)

I (we) don't block anything although sometimes it would make my job a lot easier... nor do I even bother forwarding to the customer all those requests I got from "Echelon" (on behalf of HBO) complaining about people torrenting Game of Thrones. Although, on a side note, I stopped receiving them after I started enforcing FCrDNS on our incoming mail gateways. :-)

AT&T bans port 25 as well so you cannot run a SMTP server, they do that to cut down on spam.

I remember my son was in an out of town Soccer game, and we stayed in a hotel. One of the other families brought their XBox 360 and tried to plug it into the Ethernet port and unplug the custom game console controller that rented Nintendo 64 games and plug the XBox 360 into their TV set. For some reason their Internet blocked access to the ports that the XBox 360 used to sign in and play games so they couldn't play anything. I guess they wanted to force people to rent N64 games on their custom video game console controller?

If enough ISPs block port 8333, the Bitcoin programs will have to be changed to be like the Bittorrent clients to use a random port and connect via a tracker or something to that port.

Did you call the front desk for assistance?

I used to work as a network analyst for a company providing high speed Internet for hotels across North and South America. The default network policies were quite aggressive (to limit network (ab)use). Other than opening up specific ports for various VPNs, the greatest number of calls received was to enable network access for gaming consoles.

Next time, give the front desk a call and ask. In an industry where customer satisfaction _really_ is a concern, they should be more than happy to forward your call to someone like me to help. :)

No it was another family who tried to hook up the XBox 360. I didn't think to tell them to ask the front desk to unblock the ports. It was years ago, and my son is in high school now and left the middle school behind.

Next time I encounter that situation I will advise them to call the front desk to unblock the ports.

It's been years since I had Internet service from AT&T -- thank $deity! -- but the block on 25/TCP outgoing (on my account) was removed very quickly after I made my request.

They recently started blocking XMPP ports which is quite an annoyance. I literally can't think of a single logical reason they would even do that.

What's the motivation?

I thought Bitcoin wasn't really that network intensive?

The motivation would presumably be to mitigate damage done by malware-- it's not uncommon for malware authors to use infected machines to mine Bitcoin.

But using that motivation, then they should block other ports as well if they suspect that IP address is infected.

You should all be using a VPN, even if it only connects to a server in the next city. It's more for basic privacy from their intrusion more than anything security related.

The less your ISP knows about you, the better off you are.

For what it's worth, "tcptraceroute" is a great tool to help diagnose these kinds of things.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com