- Concerning ISP’s. If 3 people, all from the same ISP in the same small town, and don’t know each other, all register at this message board, or any other board for that matter, and one of them is a “repeat offender” and is a really bad guy, will all of those 3 people be banned because they have the same IP address, even though 2 of them are innocent? (I seem to have heard that all people from, say, Earthlink, have the same IP address, so I assume it is the same for all ISP’s)
No two people can have the same IP address – at least, not at the same time. The IPs are usually assigned when you dial up and are freed to go to another user when you disconnect. If you’re on a cable modem, it’s assigned when you turn on your computer and stays there until you turn it off (though its possible the same IP address is still “assigned” to you if it’s not needed elsewhere).
If the ISP is going to ban a user, it will determine what user was using the IP at the time of the violation. If they do it by IP address alone, they are idiots.
No ISP has just one IP address for all its users. They always have a range from which they assign as needed. At any given moment, all IPs have to be unique (not counting those behind proxies or firewalls), otherwise there’s no way to make sure the data meant for you is going to you.
I beg to differ. If an ISP decides to use address translation, quite a few people might look as if they share one IP address as soon as their traffic leaves their ISPs network. Quite the same principle as used on many corporate networks. You’re right, though, that most ISPs allocate a separate, registered IP address per call.
S. Norman
I think the OP was refering to being banned from a board like this one, not being banned from the ISP.
Glenoled
This is really best suited for our forum “About This Message Board,” so I’m moving it there… - Jill
We only ban IP addresses when we’re certain that there are no innocent bystanders. So far as I know, there have been no exceptions. It’s only useful rarely… We can’t do a thing against AOL IPs, for instance.
Spiny Norman is right. When I was doing work for General Electric recently, I noted that they only had 2 IP numbers shared by all their plants I was at, even in different counties.
Also, many of the smaller IP’s get their numbers from Sprint or MCI, so you can have a different IP and get the same number as someone else.
And it also works the other way - I have found on my ATT@Home line that they can switch IP #'s WHILE I am posting. The browser will seem to hang a few seconds and the “status line” at the bottom says “Seeking network settings”
Sorry to have to contradict you, Chronos, but I’ve slipped a time or two.
It’s been caught and rectified as soon as possible in every instance.
One of the worst ones that comes to mind is a little cybercafe where a couple of idjits signed on and raised some hell. I accidentally threw out a perfectly nice poster who signed on to read the board over his morning coffee at the same time I was dealing with the problem children.
Another time I banned what I thought was a cable modem addy . . . but the miscreant (who had cable in the past, but had dropped it by that time and was back on dial-up) caused me to deny the SDMB to 3 or 4 other people at the same time. Since the problem was also fond of creating multiple screen names as well it took a little time and convincing before I was sure it wasn’t another bunch of the same old thing.
We do our best but we’re not perfect and I apologize to anyone I’ve ever mistakenly banned in these sorts of circumstances. I fix 'em as soon as I can.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator