Monday, June 14, 2004

What NTL Broad band did last summer

It happened in UK last month that 137 (UDP), 138 (UDP), 139 (TCP), 445 (UDP & TCP), 593 (TCP), 1433 (TCP), 1434 (UDP), 27374 (TCP)
were blocked by NTL broadband services on the pretext of Virus vulnerability. This inturn affected MS SQL users a lot as 1433 was blocked.

I request the whole group to debate this issue. I am putting the initial crux of these articles as they appear on the NTL Broadband Site.

However those who wish to browse can do the same at

1. http://www.cooljules.co.uk/ntl.htm

To my horror on the 8th of June 04 NTL have shut down port 1433 across their network on a permanent basis. Microsoft SQL Users can no longer develop software via ODBC across the Internet or use Enterprise manager. (they have also stopped other ports such as exchange)
This article refers to why NTL have done this: There main reason seems to be to stop viruses! Which now, I can't wait to see if they shut down port 80, 110, 25 and 21 since viruses run on those too. They stopped access without advanced warning stopping my ability to work from home. I now have to find another provider if I cannot convince them to change their mind.
I have huge long term concerns about the use of global port blocking via comms companies and I hope the they don't decide to shut down all but 4 ports of the Internet. Whats next? MSN, Online gamming disabled...Who knows and NTL will do this without any warning. I think Microsoft should put up a stand against their products been blocked by companies like NTL. They havent blocked competitor databases such as MySQl So I feel its a very anti Microsoft move.
Government guidelines state that we should be able to work from home if we want to, to help reduce congestion and enable more time to be spent with family, however this move ensures that Microsoft SQLServer developers can no longer work from home.
2. http://www.ntlworld.com/tunnel.php?task=portBlocking


Ports 1433 (TCP), 1434 (UDP) Blocking these ports is likely to prevent the use of MS SQL Server and on occasion disrupt normal connections. This disruption is because these ports are above 1024. Ports above 1024 are used occasionally for 'temporary' communications e.g. the fetching of web pages. This is not a common practice, but it is worth noting that blocking these 2 ports may cause the (very) occasional "page not found" error due to port blocking. In these cases, if a customer tries to load the page again, or visit another site, the connection will work as normal.