> Definitions matter; words matter. If AT&T had chosen to write their TOS > agreement so as to prohibit anything that, functionally, is a server > from connecting without its own public, static IP address, they'd have > found themselves losing all their corporate clients, who have lawyers > and systems folks too, and who understand that, in some senses, almost > any Windows workstation is a server. (See Steve Gibson's Shields Up for > some discussion of how a Windows PC with NetBios enabled is, > fundamentally, a server.) AT&T/RR/etc. are *not* going to disallow > everybody using Windows from buying their services. Nor are they going > to say, well, run any server you want, and use as much bandwidth as you > like, as long as you run it over NetBIOS, for reasons I'll leave as an > obvious exercise to the reader. Nor, for that matter, are they going to > say, "hey, you get x gigabytes per month, and we'll charge you extra for > using more than that", as folks who aren't going to use even a fraction > of x will gravitate toward a provider who gives them an open pipe. > Not to nitpick, but AT&T blocks all port 137, 138 and 139 (udp & tcp) traffic directly at the cable modem to prevent this. I do agree with the general idea of your post though. They don't want you causing trouble, or degrading the network. As for the 'read only internet' comments, there's nothing that says you cannot ftp into your webhosting provider, or AT&T *free* web space (http://people.mn.mediaone.net), and put your own content up. Or content via the various chat protocols, email, news, IRC, or by contributing to projects on the net. They simply don't want you chewing up bandwidth doing it from your low cost home internet connection =) -- Matthew S. Hallacy CACU, PWGCS, and BOFH Certified http://techmonkeys.org/~poptix GPG public key 0x01938203