[NTLUG:Discuss] DSL vs. Cable modem

[MadHat]

Richard Cobbe wrote:
> 

<SNIPITY-Do-Dah>

> > 1) Due to internet research, I believe cable connections are far less secure than DSL lines.
> 
> Really?  I certainly haven't heard anything about this.  I know some
> ISPs will set up a firewall for you, but I think this is a per-ISP
> thing.  Me, I have a DSL connection, and I'm getting friendly with
> ipchains, portsentry, logcheck, cfengine, and friends.
> 

This has been an argument for a long time, like since the cable modems
came out.  The argument isn't that cable modems are unsecure per say,
but that the networks being set up by the cable companies are insecure. 
With the cable modems, they are suposedly using a simple routing scheme,
where the traffic is sent to a pop for you neighborhood and then
broadcast to that network, so that anyone in your neighborhood would be
able to capture all your network traffic and therefor get your user
names and passwords.  This could happen a lot of places if the network
infastructor was not designed for security (not just with cable).  You
can set up your firewall, but you can't protect yourself once outside
the firewall.  I have not hooked up eith DSL or Cable yet, so I can not
speak from experience, but only from what I have read.  Supposedly, with
DSL they are using smart switches such that you only get the traffic
intended for your node, rather than for every node on the switch.  I
don't know if the technology hasn't been ported to cable, or if the
cable companies just didn't want to spend the extra money, but this is
the issue I have always heard about.

-- 
MadHat