Ethernet to Your ISP

Today I was chatting in the #snort-gui channel on irc.freenode.net, and someone (who shall rename anonymous) mentioned that his ISP provides Ethernet connectivity. This surprised me because my previous employer had DS3 circuits as one might see in the image below.Tapping a DS3 connection requires specialized gear (as shown in the DS3 tap, but access to Ethernet is more readily available.

How many of you have Ethernet connectivity to your ISP?

The reason I ask is that many monitoring deployments place the wire access device (e.g., a tap) between the border router and your firewall. If you have Ethernet to your ISP, you could place the tap in front of your border router. This scenario would provide visibility to traffic addressed to the Internet-facing interface of your border router. You could monitor for attacks against the router without having to tap a T1 or DS3 connection.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Some providers in India are providing Ethernet connection to Internet users.The clients essentially connect to providers local network. Some implementations I saw had Catalyst switches with port security enabled. But more commonly the clients are connected to 100 mbps hubs.
7:44 AM
Anonymous said…
Comcast Business in Baltimore puts an Alcatel device which has a fiber input, but it is handed over to the client in Ethernet.
10:49 PM
Anonymous said…
Would love to have straight Ethernet feed to my home. Right now, I've got cable modem which then feeds me Ethernet.

Price does matter, so does it cost more than your typical broadband connection?
Chuck
3:32 AM
Anonymous said…
Seems like it would be rather expensive given the length limitations of ethernet. Really can't imagine it being cost effective at all.
5:51 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Five Reasons I Want China Running Its Own Software

Image
Periodically I read about efforts by China, or Russia, or North Korea, or other countries to replace American software with indigenous or semi-indigenous alternatives. I then reply via Twitter that I love the idea, with a short reason why. This post will list the top five reasons why I want China and other likely targets of American foreign intelligence collection to run their own software. 1. Many (most?) non-US software companies write lousy code.  The US is by no means perfect, but our developers and processes generally appear to be superior to foreign indigenous efforts. Cisco vs Huawei is a good example. Cisco has plenty of problems, but it has processes in place to manage them, plus secure code development practices. Lousy indigenous code means it is easier for American intelligence agencies to penetrate foreign targets. (An example of a foreign country that excels in writing code is Israel, but thankfully it is not the same sort of priority target like China, Russia, or Nort
Read more

Cybersecurity Domains Mind Map

Image
Last month I retweeted an image labelled "The Map of Cybersecurity Domains (v1.0)". I liked the way this graphic divided "security" into various specialties. At the time I did not do any research to identify the originator of the graphic. Last night before my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class I heard some of the guys talking about certifications. They were all interested in "cybersecurity" but did not know how to break into the field. The domain image came to mind as I mentioned that I had some experience in the field. I also remembered an article Brian Krebs asked me to write titled " How to Break Into Security, Bejtlich Edition ," part of a series on that theme. I wrote: Providing advice on “getting started in digital security” is similar to providing advice on “getting started in medicine.” If you ask a neurosurgeon he or she may propose some sort of experiment with dead frog legs and batteries. If you ask a dermatologist you might get advice
Read more

A Brief History of the Internet in Northern Virginia

Image
Earlier today I happened to see a short piece from the Bloomberg Businessweek "The Year Ahead: 2016" issue, titled The Best Places to Build Data Centers . The text said the following: Cloud leaders including Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and upstart DigitalOcean are spending tens of billions of dollars to construct massive data centers around the world. Microsoft alone puts its total bill at $15 billion. There are two main reasons for the expansion: First, the companies have to set up more servers near the biggest centers of Internet traffic growth. Second, they increasingly have to wrestle with national data-privacy laws and customer preferences, either by storing data in a user’s home country, or, in some cases, avoiding doing just that. The article featured several maps, including the one at left. It notes data centers in "Virginia" because "the Beltway has massive data needs." That may be true, but it does not do justice to the history of t
Read more