Cable modem - Secure mail

[Paul Melson]

On Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 05:55:49AM -0400, Sean wrote:
> 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. 

	Right, but the cable modem acts as a bridge, so 
	any interface that you can sniff traffic on is 
	going to be behind that bridge. Regardless of 
	the network topology in use, the only time you 
	should be able to sniff traffic coming across a 
	cable modem (or any bridge) is if it's destined 
	for your local MAC address(es) or if the bridge
	is not properly configured.  I have seen this 
	(incorrect) behavior on a few LanCity modems that 
	TCI configured for use with METS.  However, the
	ineptness of some technical staffer is hardly 
	something that's specific to any one make or 
	model of cable modem. :)


PaulM

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