UPC Breaks the Internet

UPC continues to manage to make me irate, today its the fact that *every domain* whether it exists or not, on UPC it exists. How is this so? because UPC has unilaterally decided that should a website, server, or domain not exist that they will serve advertising to me instead – how very helpful (sarcasm!).

Only its not at all helpful. Most modern browsers have the option already at the application level, without breaking the inherent functionality of the Internet. Effectively this is what happens:

• if a website exists, UPC will give you its correct IP Address.
• if a website does not exist, UPC will pretend to be that website, and give you the IP Address of a server in the United States, which currently shows a search page with advertisements.

There is a couple of issues I have with this. First and foremost, I’m already paying a hefty fee by European standards for my Internet access, and don’t appreciate having my internet experience co-opted so that my ISP can earn an extra buck or two… particularly when I did not sign up to this!

Secondly is the privacy concerns this raises, if every domain thats misspelled goes to this server in the US, what is stopping UPC from simply logging all these requests – privacy laws are much more lax in the United States than here in Europe. Particularly why this is worrying is there is no other obvious motive for having the server over there in the first place, why not a Dublin hosting provider? I’m very suspicious of this.

This is in direct contradiction to how the Internet, or any network for that matter, is designed to work. If something your looking for doesnt exist, whatever program is looking for it has functionality to handle that absence smartly. Since all domain queries return a site address, its fairly obvious that applications that rely on being able to know if a site no longer exists will stop functioning correctly. This will likely be a subtle change and not something thats readily obvious to the observer – which makes those of us with home networks have even more overhead to deal with. Thanks UPC!

If you feel this is all a bit too much, you can change your DNS settings to the following, which I’m assured by UPC tech support will not behave badly when a site doesnt exist:

1. 89.101.160.8
2. 89.101.160.9

You can also use the various free dns providers out there.

The Mozilla Phone

image care of mozphone.com

The Awesomer linked me onto this blog about (conceptual) open source phone development. It seems to be a blog dedicated to conceptuals of how an opensource/mozilla phone would look and operate, in association with Mozilla’s concept series.

The Mozilla Phone is an experiment in the open-source development of a conceptual phone. Put in motion by Aza Raskin of Mozilla Labs as part of its Concept Series, the project is led by Billy May as well as the combined insight of all those with an idea and a keyboard (and maybe a Wacom). While some of the problems will deal with industrial design, a great deal of the focus will be put on physical interface issues and basic user-phone interaction.

[The Open Web Phone] via [The Awesomer]

ALTO disaproves of Eircom/EMI deal

Silicon Republic is reporting that ALTO, the Alternative Licensed Telecoms Operators group whose membership includes BT Ireland, Magnet Networks, NTL, Chorus, Smart Telecom, Budget Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Colt Telecom, Complete Networks, Digiweb, ESB Telecoms, Verizon and 3 Play Plus, dissaproves of the “draconian deal” struck between Eircom and EMI which would put customers at risk of having their Internet connection cut off after a 3 strikes and your out rule.

While we obviously do not condone illegal downloading or any illegality on or over the internet, we firmly disapprove of any draconian measures that would compromise the privacy, speed or services offered to broadband users. We do not need measures to further impede the development of next generation broadband in Ireland – Ronan Lupton of ALTO

You can read more about ALTO’s reaction at Silicon Republic.