[ale] OT: What the hell is XSS in Comcast land?

Mon Aug 12 22:01:06 EDT 2013

My old one did work both phone & internet on battery.

On 08/12/2013 12:11 PM, Lightner, Jeff wrote:
> He may have told you that but I found the battery prevents successful
> power cycle of the entire box which makes sense.   If phone is already
> broken because internet isn’t working then it doesn’t hurt to pull the
> battery.
> 
>  
> 
> It also implies your internet service should last for the length of the
> batter.  I’m not sure if that is the case.
> 
>  
> 
> *From:*ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] *On Behalf Of
> *Don Kramer
> *Sent:* Monday, August 12, 2013 11:44 AM
> *To:* Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> *Subject:* Re: [ale] OT: What the hell is XSS in Comcast land?
> 
>  
> 
> The battery in the box is just for the VOIP, a tech once told me says
> it's just to keep Digital Voice working for up to eight hours in event
> of power failure.
> 
>  
> 
> On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 11:34 AM, Lightner, Jeff <JLightner at water.com
> <mailto:JLightner at water.com>> wrote:
> 
> I'll admit I haven't read the other 300 emails in this thread so forgive
> me if this has already been covered.
> I want to note that last week we'd had a cable outage in our area for
> several hours.   When it came back up I was able to get my network
> service back by power cycling my old Motorola Surfboard (docsis 2.0
> compliant) cable modem.
> 
> My neighbor however lost phone and internet.   (Phone went away because
> it relies on internet.)
> She had the Comcast all in one box.  Findings from my work and call to
> Comcast:
> 1)  There is a batter in this box.  It can be removed from the bottom to
> completely power cycle it as simply removing power doesn't help.
> 2)  There is a reset button on the back of the box (on hers it was
> covered by a little green sticker that said something like verified or
> checked that I had to remove).   After power cycling (including removal
> of the battery) I had to do this.
> 3)  Even after doing the above they had to send a signal to reset from
> their side.
> 4)  The default SSID and password for the router came back after the
> reset.  It is recorded on a label at the bottom of the box.
> 
> Using the default SSID and password I was able to get in to do admin to
> change both.
> 
> What was really disturbing to me was that this admin page is available
> via WiFi connection rather than requiring direct wired connection.   I'd
> rather prefer people with cantenna's not be able to not only steal WiFi
> but actually be able to lock out the real user by changing security
> information.   (It of course drops the currently connected WiFi session
> when you do the change of SSID but then you log back in with the new
> SSID and password you set.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org <mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org>
> [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org <mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org>] On Behalf Of JD
> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 11:13 AM
> To: ale at ale.org <mailto:ale at ale.org>
> Subject: Re: [ale] OT: What the hell is XSS in Comcast land?
> 
> On 08/12/2013 09:49 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>> That leads to an interesting question.  I wonder how the telephony
>> traffic gets mixed in and what ip it has when it exits.  I wonder if
>> it even uses ip to get to the comcast data center.
> 
> I don't know what Comcast does, but I know how I'd architect this.
> Voice is on a guaranteed bandwidth IP channel and provided with the
> highest QoS possible on the network. It uses a different subnet than
> normal IP traffic and it is probably tagged to a specific VLAN to get
> higher QoS across the entire Comcast WAN.  DOCSIS 3 has some great
> features that DOCSIS 2 and lower didn't support. v3 makes bandwidth
> management much easier for cable network providers - dynamic QAM hops
> are the coolest - well, with more channel bonding support too and IPv6
> support. DOCSISv2 doesn't do those things. As long as anyone uses a v2
> device, it makes taking advantage of the v3 capabilities much harder.
> 
> I'm positive that U-Verse does something very similar. Bandwidth is
> reserved on different DSL frequencies just for VoIP, just for TV, and
> then ISP traffic gets whatever is left for that specific run. It all
> uses IP from the main u-verse box.
> 
> The goal for all the service providers is that any extra service you
> specifically think of as "Comcast" or "TPC" work as well as possible.
> With internet, they can blame upstream providers for the experience
> sucking. Hard to shift blame for TV or phone service that are 100%
> internal services, right?
> 
> I had Comcast phone service for a year or so. It had issues:
> * Service outages almost every Thursday afternoon at the same time for
> an hour.
> TV and internet still worked, just VoIP didn't. An hour outage wouldn't
> normally be an issue, except this happened at the specific time when a
> weekly business meeting was scheduled.
> * Couldn't call certain numbers on TW and other VoIP services.
> * Call quality sucked about 20% of the time. I think that was related to
> the very long run from the curb to my demarcation point. Even with huge
> coax, they couldn't get a signal that met specs in the room where I
> wanted service. It was close enough that it worked most of the time, so
> I left it.
> 
> When the 12 months of cheap phone service was up and comcast had re-run
> new, larger, coax to my home, I canceled the VoIP. Bought a $5/month
> wholesale plan and never looked back.  About a year later, I switch the
> internet from residential to business - got another new coax - needed 2
> lines for some reason
> - residential TV can't share business lines, I guess.  About 6 months
> later, killed the residential TV completely. OTA I receive about 70 TV
> channels using a home-built $20 DB4 antenna.
> 
> It seems that the trick to getting new coax run for free is to add a new
> service and if there is **any** issue at all, have them fix it in the
> first 30-60 days.
> If they can't, cancel.
> 
> On the SMC business class modem - Comcast owns it - I plug my routers
> into it with the static IPs configured.  If I attach a non-static IP
> device, the SMC provides a 10.1.x.x IP automatically.  According to the
> tier 3 guy, Comcast changes the root password on these routers daily to
> ensure that fired router configuration techs can't do anything bad 1 day
> later.  Setting a local-admin password on the router has never worked
> correctly. I won't bore you, but after an hour with a teir3 person, we
> couldn't solve it. They refused to replace it without a truck roll for
> $90.  I treat that router as a hostile network now.
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org <mailto:Ale at ale.org>
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> 
> 
> 
> Athena(r), Created for the Cause(tm)
> Making a Difference in the Fight Against Breast Cancer
> 
> ---------------------------------
> CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail may contain privileged or
> confidential information and is for the sole use of the intended
> recipient(s). If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure,
> copying, distribution, or use of the contents of this information is
> prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this electronic
> transmission in error, please reply immediately to the sender that you
> have received the message in error, and delete it. Thank you.
> ----------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org <mailto:Ale at ale.org>
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Don Kramer
> donkramer at gmail.com <mailto:donkramer at gmail.com> - email / 404-213-7738
> - cell
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> 

-- 
Sent from my home PC running Fedora19 to you and NSA, FBI, CIA, HSA
and God only knows who else!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!