ISP Information:
Software that is offered for free download. See shareware.
ISP Glossary:
freeware - bonomi@c-ns (Robert Bonomi) wrote in messagenews:: In article , craig wrote: Hypothetical question here. Consider two companies connected by a leased line. Company B has an excellent internet access package -- all bells and whistles in for example Germany. Company A is in UK, and can't get similar package for love nor money. IT guy in poor old company A thinks "why not just route our traffic out over their internet connection over the leased line". So, is this allowed? I guess what I'm asking is whether this sort of thing is commonplace, if there are any laws against it, or it is down to the discression of the ISP (in whatever country). Such things are *extremely* common. In the 'old' days, the _only_ way to get connected to the 'net was to "know somebody" who was already connected, and arrange a link THROUGH them. You had to agree to play by _their_ rules, and if there was _any_ question about misbehavior, they'd turn off your connection 'right now' -- rather than having _their_ upstream disconnect *them*. It was not at all uncommon for corporate *internal* point-to-point links between diverse locations to be used for 'net traffic, when they weren't busy with more important stuff. For a long time, the *primary* link between the U.S. and Europe (specifically the U.K.) was a dedicated link via the Trans-Atlantic cable. It was used for co-ordinating _real-time_ analysis of seismic events. When the link was needed, it was needed "right now" -- no time for establishing a "dial up" or other 'switched' connection. So, they had this high-capacity full-time dedicated connection going across the Atlantic. But, when an 'event' was _not_ actually in progress, the line was entirely idle. "Somebody" realized that there was an opportunity to put this under-utilized resource to a "good use" in the non-time-critical periods -- which was the vast majority of the time, Thus, they started shovelling USENET, and e-mail, across it. With priority encoding, so that 'business' could/would preempt the entire capacity when needed. NOTE: _some_ providers have *contract* restrictions that prohibit 'reselling' service. Just like some providers prohibit running 'servers' on residential circuits. These things are always amenable to negotiation, usually involving paying for a 'higher priced' level of service. If the contract doesn't __expressly_ forbid it, the provider has *no* say in what you do on _your_ network. Caveat: there may well be an IP "addressing" issue -- Company "A", in your example may have to use IP addresses that are among those that Company "B"'s ISP allocated to Company "B"; with B granting A permission to use a specified subset of those addresses.Thanks for all the feedback folks. And just to quosh suspicion ;-), itIS a hypothetical question -- i.e. I am not currently doing this, andthis is actually a pretty unlikely route for us to even consider.However, when discussing such subjects with money people, it it thesort of suggestion that may well get chucked in. I ain't looking for acheaters route to connectivity which is why I asked.Cheers,Craig
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