[ale] Firewalling question

[jeff_hubbs at mcgraw-hill.com]

I'm no SMB/NetBIOS expert, but maybe what's happening is that your firewall is
letting *out* some sort of identifying NetBIOS "broadcast."  Other machines on
your same cable segment will get their browse lists populated with your "inside"
machines and the listings would show up in other people's Network Neighborhoods
even after your machines were turned off or completely disconnected.

Seems to me that an average cable modem user is simply going to be subject to
having all kinds of traffic bounce off of his Ethernet card.  Seeing as it's so
easy to have your a** hanging out with a Windows machine sitting on a "hostile"
network, I can't imagine setting up a cable modem connection without a firewall.
What makes cable modems possible at such low cost, it seems, is that there isn't
any per-drop "smarts" in place - you'd might as well have run Thinwire from
house to house.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but if I placed a Windows machine on
my cable modem and enabled NetBEUI, would I start seeing every other machine in
my neighborhood that also has NetBEUI enabled?  If so, geez, I could put a VMS
machine in my apartment, stick a terminal server in an apartment in another
building, and have LAT running between them...








Wandered Inn <esoteric at denali.atlnet.com> on 05/06/99 10:38:04 AM

To:   masmith at bsat.com
cc:   Jeff Hubbs/Tower at Tower, "'Christopher R. McNabb'" <ilive at mindspring.com>,
      "'Gary Maltzen'" <maltzen at mm.com>, "\"'\\\"ALE List\\\"'\"" <ale at ale.org>

Subject:  Re: [ale] Firewalling question




"Michael A. Smith" wrote:
>
>         Cablevision actually does display machines in the "Network
Neighborhood".
> I don't know how they group machines into a network neighborhood because I
> only have 10 but I know there are more than 10 people using Cablevisions
> cable modems.  Once you click on a machine, you won't see any drives or
> shared files(at least in NT or using Samba in Linux).  I would like to know
> how they do this.  It appears to be secure but who knows.......

Famous last words.  I would not assume that it's secure, particularily
considering it's the cable company.  They are new to this thing..

The other thing is, I don't think you want random traffic cloggin up
your network.  If there's no purpose, then it should stop.  If there is
a purpose, (and it was me) I damn sure would like to know what it is.


--
Until later: Geoffrey         esoteric at denali.atlnet.com

It should be illegal to yell "Y2K" in a crowded economy.
     -- Larry Wall, creator of the programming language Perl