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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

Yes I didn’t understand this as squatting and made me question if I understood the post. As it is a topic I admit to not being too deeply knowledgeable about.

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I think in general the author's definition of squatting is reasonable. I see it to mean "living on land you don't own" or more directly "using IP addresses that you don't own".

My point is about fully private networks that aren't connected to the internet. I would argue that in this case you do own all of the addresses, even if someone else owns them on the public internet.

Thanks. I have a question then.

If you squat as per this definition, can you divert internet traffic designated foe the real IP address to your server?

Or does it only divert it for computers on your network?

The author is only talking about private networks. This does however occasionally happen on the public internet (or when a government turns their country into a private network and does this maliciously). The most common source is "BGP Leaks" which is a fun search.

My favorite example is when a Turkish ISP accidentally declared themselves to be the best route to anywhere, and the whole Internet simply took their word for it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080228131639/http://www.renesy...

That's like saying if I create a 3D model of my neighbour's car and drive it around the streets of a videogame I am "squatting my neighbour's car" or "using a car I don't own".

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