Cable modem - Secure mail

[Sean]

On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, Paul Melson wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 11, 2000 at 07:47:01PM -0400, basher584 wrote:
> > >From what I read around is that anybody in my "neighborhood" could sniff
> > the network.  So I am worried about getting my mail from my old ISP
> > through their POP-email server (as the password is the same as the
> > dial-up (out of my control)).  Is this worry justified?
> 
> 	If the cable modems are configured properly, this
> 	should not be the case.  They should work like
> 	bridges and only traffic destined for your MAC
> 	address(es) should be passed on.  However, I have 
> 	seen several of TCI's LanCity modems act in a 
> 	confusing fashion, where they would arbitrarily
> 	pass packets to the local machine that weren't
> 	destined for it, so your concern is not without
> 	base.

I don't think LanCity's are the only modem's that do that. The modem
itself is a bridge between the LAN and your machine, but the actual
network is using a bus toplogy rather then a star topology network where
you could use a switch to control traffic by MAC addresses. Therefore
packet sniffers would work and as long as you were sitting on the same
segment you were trying to sniff.