"Dennis Ferguson" wrote in message
...

No, there's no traps for non-Internet cable subscribers. This is why
you can sometimes go to Best Buy, buy a cable modem, plug it in and
then call the cable company to program it on. Everything to everyone
in your neighbourhood is sent through one or more (unused for TV)
television channels, the cable modem gets it all, picks out those packets
which are addressed to you and discards the rest.

This is `secure' only because the configuration and operation of the
modems is controlled entirely by the operator on the RF side of the modem.
There is a standard called DOCSIS which the modems must conform to which
standardizes the configuration interface and is intended to minimize the
possibility that the user can fiddle with any of it. This seems to work
well enough (and maybe the idea of watching your neighbours' Internet
traffic is boring enough?) that I haven't heard of people hacking the
modems
the way they do digital cable and DBS receivers, though who knows?


No more interesting than cell phone calls, I suppose. But Billy Tauzin was
so concerned that radio hobbyists would be listening in on phone calls that
he pushed through the cell phone frequency capable scanner ban.


In any case, I think whatever permits cable operators to sell their
service will work equally well for BPL since the situations are
exceedingly similar.

Dennis Ferguson

I suppose, except for the RFI. What can we SWLs do if there's nothing but
BPL hash on the radio? Maybe the Perv in Eammus, Pennsylvania will QSL his
kewl noodie pix downloads.

Frank Dresser