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HADOPI Letter


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I have never stayed anywhere where they put the WiFi code up on the wall. I always got it on a printed form with the room number when I checked in.

I think the form they sign when getting a WiFi password is important.

Nothing complicated, just a printed A5 sheet with "carbon" copy for you to keep.

Makes it all sort of official.

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Chancer, one option you can think about.

My router/modem is placed upstairs in my little office, it has its own Wifi connection with a passcode, downstairs I have one of those jobbies you put into a mains socket to get t'internet via the mains wiring, that has its own wifi connection, With its own passcode thats different from the routers one. Maybe one of these can be used for guests and the Wifi connection from the router just for your use. Not sure if you can get a few of these for each room and what that would mean for bandwidth. Anyway is it worth a thought?

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[quote user="AnOther"][quote user="Cathar Tours"]Basically you need to get their name, address etc. plus the mac address of their device. You can collect the latter when they login via the portal but the free versions don't allow you to store their name, address etc. so you would have to keep a paper list.

This means you may still get a letter but you can hand over the users name, address, phone number and mac address (the latter they will have anyway) then they will go after them and not you.[/quote]You think ?

MAC addresses can be spoofed but even if not there is no log or record of what machine any  particular and genuine MAC address belongs to making it useless for tracing anybody and just what do you imagine they are going to do to a 3rd party anyway even if they did track them down ?

The bottom line, at Chancers level at least, is that the account holder is responsible for everything and even if they were the offenders laying it off to others won't wash.

The stupidity and futility of HADOPI is that it can only monitor P2P or torrents, it cannot monitor direct downloads so anybody so minded can download what they want whenever they want and for as long as they want and with a risk factor so low as to be dismissed as next to non existent.

[/quote]

Of course they can be spoofed if you know what your doing but since 9/11 all network chip sets have to also transmit their hard wired mac address.

These days however a smartphone or tablet and a bit of software is all you need to torrent download from any WiFi connection. There are so many routers out there that have no WiFi password it's unbelievable. I download via a smartphone and it works fine moving from one WiFi connection to another. Start it up and carry on with your day and by the end your have your film or whatever. Staying somewhere that has no WiFi protection is a dream for some of us and you don't even need a laptop to abuse it.

The only way to truly protect yourself from abuse is not to offer WiFi either paid for or free.
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Not an option in the modern world I'm afraid.

The letters, and TBH I believe they are no more than annoying pièces of paper, are just the price of doing business.

 

Nomoss, thats another form and bit of hassle for no benefit to me and added hassle and complication for guests, in summer there can be 5 changeovers a day, I dont believe that even if people regularly download what they shouldnt that the procedure will be escalated to any action against me, if it did I dont think a signed bit of paper would help me in the slightest.

 

Modern families have so many internet devices that in summer I regularly run out of IP addresses and they start whinging that son number 5 could not use his tablet number 3 at ' O clock in the morning so they wake me up to complain, when there are lots of guests I have to regularly reboot the router, its something to do with the plage of IP addresses being too small (although you would think there would be more than enough) and the lease time whatever that is. When I take my next Holiday it will be without anything even a phone just like I did for the whole of 2004.

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[quote user="Department71"]Chancer, one option you can think about.

My router/modem is placed upstairs in my little office, it has its own Wifi connection with a passcode, downstairs I have one of those jobbies you put into a mains socket to get t'internet via the mains wiring, that has its own wifi connection, With its own passcode thats different from the routers one. Maybe one of these can be used for guests and the Wifi connection from the router just for your use. Not sure if you can get a few of these for each room and what that would mean for bandwidth. Anyway is it worth a thought?
[/quote]

 

Thats effectively what I have, the Freebox is for my use either Wi-Fi or ethernet, then there is a seperate TPlink router for the guest Wi-Fi, problem is that Free who do the reporting for Hadopi just see the IP address (tell me if I am talking b0ll0cks here!) of the Freebox not what is downstream of it, in any case all these kind hearted "solutions" so that I can say "it wasnt me guvnor" count for nothing, according to Hadopi I or you the muppet who pays the bill is responsable, they are not in the slightest bit interested in knowing who might have actually done the downloading even if you tell them.

 

The law has changed, they can no longer cut off your internet access and the last time I had looked this organisation costing millions employing hundreds of foncs had only taken one person to court and that was overturned on appeal, as I said earlier its just about job creation and scaring the majority of the populace into compliance, i am not going to let it complicate my life, give customers grief or lose any sleep over it.

 

If I get a lot more avertissements I will wallpaper the stairwell with them, my garage wall in the UK is covered with pay and display parking tickets!

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[quote user="Chancer"]problem is that Free who do the reporting for Hadopi just see the IP address (tell me if I am talking b0ll0cks here!) of the Freebox not what is downstream of it,[/quote]Correct not b0ll0cks that's why without significant expense or completely impractical monitoring protecting yourself is so difficult.

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Thanks for that ANO.

 

Can you enlighten me a little more on the subject whilst remaining simple cos you know I pretend not to understand these things.

 

So is an IP address the thing that is attributed by the FAI (internet provider) in this case Free and would be the same if I use the Freebox or a router in its place?

 

Subject to the above then when a secondary router is fitted like my guest network it does not have its own IP address and is just acting as a switch and is invisible to Free who are the ones that have no choice but to grass me up to Hadopi?

 

Do computers, tablets, smartphones etc not have any identifiers of their own like the IMEI number or whatever mobile phones have?

 

How do the septic tanks and the GHCQ etc track down terrorists if they can get no further than the IP address of say an internet café?

 

Somewhere amongst all this I have seen mention of Mac addresses, if they are relevant and not too complicated could you explain them?

 

I ask these questions as I will soon be getting my French friend who configured the guest network to come back and play with it (the bridage is still not functioning and the problem of running out of IP addresses if that is what is is when there are lots of new guests and devices arriving each day) and also to look at my computer, I would like to understand what he is doing, language is not a problem but the language of computers is!

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To answer your questions simple style from my Uni notes on simple network principles.

Every router connected to the Internet has a two unique identifiers, it’s IP address and Mac number. The Mac number is totally unique, it is hardwired into the router and is not duplicated anywhere else in the world so yes you could think of it as an IMEA number.

The ISP’s (IP) address is broken down in four groups of numbers. The first two are normally reserved to identify the ISP you are using (in your case Free) and where it is physically located (France). This is how, for example, the BBC can block you from using IPlayer because it knows you’re in France and even who your ISP is.

The Mac address is primarily used for the VOIP phone service (if you use it which I suspect you do). I dial your phone number, it gets converted to your routers Mac address, it finds your router and the phone rings at your end. The Mac address is also used for other things but it is mainly irrelevant to you.

Your second WiFi router is probably not really a router, it’s a WiFi access point. Its address cannot be seen by your ISP. Indeed no device (in theory) in your home that connects to the Internet via your router can be seen by the ISP using it’s IP address.

This is because in a normal situation all the device connected directly or indirectly to your router from inside your home have IP addresses starting 192.168 and these are invisible on the Internet. The reason for this is simple, it would be impossible to give every device in the world its own unique IP address so they cheat by using these 192.168 numbers.

As an example if you use the admin login to your router you will find it has an IP address (probably) of 192.168.1.1, every Free router has this same number. Now think of it as having a bucket full of IP addresses 192.168.1.10 to 192.168.1.256 (it’s actually called a DHCP server). Somebody connects to your network and it gives them an IP address from the bucket. Under normal circumstances it would be highly unlikely that you would ever have 246 (256 – 10) devices connected. Just to take care of the possibility that this could happen the devices rents the IP address (it’s actually called leasing). At the end of the lease period the number goes back in the bucket to be used again.

It works on a FIFO system, First In First Out, plus a time (lease) period as well. The first bit, FIFO, means that as each device gets added and given and IP address it is placed at the top of the list. When it is switched off or disconnected it gradually moves down the list and then falls off the bottom back into the bucket and can be reused. If your reconnect within the lease time the IP address moves back to the top of the list and we start again. Alternatively if a device does not reconnect in a given time period (lease period) the IP address is released for reuse.

Now then you might have spotted a problem that I can explain how it is fixed.

If your router has only one IP address on the ISP side how does it know where to send the data when it gets to your house? It’s simple actually. In amongst the data whizzing back and forth is the Mac address of the device. Imaging inside your router there is a spread sheet. In one column is the Mac address and in the other is the IP address of the device in your house. Your router simply looks down the list for the Mac address then looks at the IP address and sends it to the device. Therefore you’re ISP and your router must know what that Mac address is.

Like an IMEA number it is unique and it can be traced down to the actual device anywhere in the world. Not something the likes of you and I can do but certainly somebody like GCHQ could do.

There is a limited amount of searching you can do using http://www.coffer.com/mac_find/ This however only works on the first six characters and can only tell you who the vendor is. GCHQ and those like them can decode all 12 characters. The chain in theory is then simple for the likes of GCHQ. They know the Mac address which leads to the serial number of the device it is in which can be traced to the retailer to the person who bought it. Phones are not a problem because of the SIM card but computers and tablets can be because they are often sold and resold second hand. They may be able to find the PC’s original buyer but after that..........

As mentioned a Mac address can be spoofed but for quite a while now for “national” security reasons the real hard wired Mac address is always placed inside the data packets to help “the war on terrorism”.

Your friend can do one of two things to “fix” your problem. Give the DHCP server the maximum 246 IP addresses to use and/or reduce the “lease” time to say a couple of days.

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[quote user="Cathar Tours"]Your friend can do one of two things to “fix” your problem. Give the DHCP server the maximum 246 IP addresses to use and/or reduce the “lease” time to say a couple of days.[/quote]A fair enough explanation but how do either of those 'fix' anything ?

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[quote user="AnOther"][quote user="Cathar Tours"]Your friend can do one of two things to “fix” your problem. Give the DHCP server the maximum 246 IP addresses to use and/or reduce the “lease” time to say a couple of days.[/quote]A fair enough explanation but how do either of those 'fix' anything ?

[/quote]

You said

"the bridage is still not functioning and the problem of running out of IP addresses if that is what is is when there are lots of new guests and devices arriving each day)"

Once a person has left your establishment within a few days the IP address should have been returned to the bucket (DHCP server) to be used again. If people can't connect because they can't get an IP address then the bucket does not have enough addresses so you need to add more. You can have as few as you like but the maximum (without major changes and your ISP router may not like the changes) is typically 246.

Do the maths. Lets say you have 10 people stay every day for only one day it would take 24 days to use up all the IP addresses. Seeing as the norm is to cancel the lease every four of five days if your guy has set the bucket to hold 254 IP addresses (which includes yours by the way) I cant see it could run out unless he has allocated say 100.

I know from playing with my dads Orange router (Livebox) that the default allocation is something like 100 but you can change it to the maximum via the routers admin interface. I never found a way to change the lease time unfortunately.

It's the router that has the bucket of IP addresses and not the other router/WiFi access point. You can only have one bucket in each network.

I had a look for some software that might help you with the HAOPI problem and found the following.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/bluegatehotspot/

This will get your users basic information required to pass on to HADOPI that may shift the blame from you to them. Just the fact people will see it might deter them from abusing your hospitality. Show it to your techie chap and see what he thinks.

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I will look into that thanks.

 

ANO that was the problem he was referring to, TBH I wont look on the Hadopi warnings as a problem until such time as they take action which I doubt they ever will.

 

Re the IP addresses, in the summer there could be 10 guests arriving and leaving each day if they are families and I found that those were the types to all have multiple devices, they spent a fortune to bring the kids here to sensibilise them to the WW1 history and they spend all day in the apartment on the wifi never going out [:(] ALBF's kind of people [:D]

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[quote user="Chancer"]they spend all day in the apartment on the wifi never going out [/quote]

I had a friend who worked in Egypt with a tour group.

He told me that 99% of their customers spent all day recording their experiences through their "devices", and that not one of them paid any attention to the world outside their toy.

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Interesting but not economical in my world, perhaps to someone else or the Hôtel chains who get a favorable rate, €215 for the box then €15.50 per month, if you send the box back for repair and they do the usual French trick of saying they didnt recieve it/cant be repaired/damaged by Customer they shaft you for €720.

 

But it does seem to be a solution to a risk that I'm still not sure exists except in the hypothetical, their misrepresentation of the fines €75000 for someone aiding and abetting or destroying evidence of terrorism I find particularly nasty.

 

They claim to be used by the major hôtel groups so I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has stayed at one of them exactly what they had to do once given the code when they first tried to connect, was it intrusive or a pain? Did they have to do the same for each device they had?

 

Many thanks.

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Typically in public locations like airports say such systems require an email address (which doesn't have to be real and [email protected] usually works !), or on a more local basis such as hotels etc. by the issuing of a one time access code so it's not generally onerous.

The system linked to is HADOPI proof by virtue of it prohibiting access to P2P/torrent sites, something anybody with a bit of nous can do themselves with a proxy PC as I mentioned earlier.

Having thought about it a bit another technique comes to mind and that is traffic shaping by which I mean restricting the bandwidth and the quantity of data available to individual  users and whilst that won't stop them actually visiting P2P sites and attempting to download via torrents if the speed and the data allocation are set low then it becomes pointless as they will never be able to get whatever it is they are after so will give up trying.

For simple surfing, FaceTwit, and email etc., all you practically need to provide, 256kb speed and say a 200mb quota should be enough.

You can buy WiFi access points with traffic shaping software or you can use an off the shelf router which supports the openWRT firmware which is FREE.

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I had wondered if the bridage whatever that is called in English (throttling) would effectively prevent whatever this torrenting sh1te is from happening, its supposed to be part of the guest router and supposedly set up but doesn't appear to be working.

 

I looked at that firmware but even the beginners guide went over my head, I found the bandwidth limiting (is that the phrase) thingy but it sounded like a padded push up bra to me and the lines of code were definitely not ma thang baby!

 

How slow would a connection need to be to prevent people downloading movies and watching TV/films on the internet? And within that speed what would they be able to do? Watch youtube videos, open photo files etc.

 

Or perhaps look at it another way, how fast could I allow it to be that would still make it take too long for someone to download something illegal? I still dont know what it was, was it music or video, a film etc. I'm sort of hoping that they dont respond to my request for more info (it was a box to click) so that I will know that they arent really taking it seriously, I explained that we are an Apparthôtel and that it could have been one of 4 guests.

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Few if any ISP provided routers will have any meaningful facilities for throttling much less the setting of quotas and it's the latter which would be the real key to inhibiting downloading as most things downloaders will be after will quickly and easily bust a couple of hundred MB's long before completion leaving them with nothing to even surf with and they will have some cheek if they come bleating to you about that !

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What you need to work out is if your willing to let the many be disadvantaged by the few if your considering throttling for P2P etc. Firstly companies and education establishments use P2P. JANET gives access to P2P and Bit torrent with files spread across different university servers over multiple sites. Business can use P2P as well.

Last summer when working for my dad I was also working on my thesis, uploading and downloading large amounts of data. I'm in digs in Cologne at the moment and am doing the same, particularly high def photo's. On holiday in Portugal although that was a hotel, they got a very bad review from me (and others) because of their bad WiFi access.

People use free WiFi access for all sorts of things and what I am trying to say is that because you have an aparthotel you might find throttling back and reducing your guests access may have an detrimental effect on any reviews you might get which may effect your business.
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Oh dear how out of touch you are with the real world. Why do you think he offers free Internet then, as a courtesy, more out of necessity I would suggest. If not then he could simply turn it off. I like millions of others wouldn't stay anywhere where there was no access to the Internet.
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[quote user="AnOther"]Sadly another demonstration of the arrogance of youth.

[/quote]

I wonder if your parents generation thought the same about yours? Like you were created by your parents generation we were created by yours, perhaps you should look in the mirror.

Being old does not automatically mean you are right and remember who is and will pay for your healthcare and state pension. Fortunately it won't be me nor many like myself, not after what your generation has done to us this year. It's not an arrogance that we hold towards your generation just a terrible dislike and contempt.
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