gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (12/12/87)
PC Pursuit canceled my account a week or so ago because they found
a bunch of times when the account was in use for multiple sessions.
Their terms&conditions specifically prohibit this.
It happened because I talk to multiple sites via PC Pursuit and have
several outdial modems. To fix it, I have changed my L-devices and L.sys
entries so that only a single outdial modem will be used for PCP calls.
To do this, I changed L.sys from saying "ACU" to "ACUHAYESpcp", and
added an "ACUHAYESpcp" line to L-devices that only covers one dialer
rather than three. This is the same way the uucp manual recommends setting
up for a WATS line.
If for some reason that line is already in use (inbound or outbound)
then I won't be able to call out on PCP, but until gnuucp can be improved
to handle this sort of locking in a better way, it's the best I can do.
I recommend that you fix this ASAP if you are using PCP. They gave me
another account without trouble, but said that if it happens again it is
unlikely. They are trying to weed out the folks who got one PCP account
and gave it to all their friends. And, when I call through them multiple
times, I'm using more than my fair share of dialers.
--
{pyramid,ptsfa,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com
"Watch me change my world..." -- Liquid Theatretadguy@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Tad Guy) (12/12/87)
In article <3603@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: >PC Pursuit canceled my account a week or so ago because they found >a bunch of times when the account was in use for multiple sessions. >Their terms&conditions specifically prohibit this. >It happened because I talk to multiple sites via PC Pursuit and have >several outdial modems. >{pyramid,ptsfa,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@toad.com > "Watch me change my world..." -- Liquid Theatre They have "blacklisted" my account twice so far. The first time was because of the huge amount of use that my account was generating (or so they say), and they wanted to be sure that it was really me using the account. After talking to their director of network operations (or some such title), he cheerfully gave me a new account. The second time was even more questionable. The account was again "blacklisted", but this time for 67 counts of concurrency in October. We do have multiple dialout lines, and we talk to multiple sites using PC Pursuit, but the software involved is wired against using PCP more than once at any one time. Simply, it is impossible for this site to have been concurrent. I explained this and the account represensitive gave me a new account and indicated that they would be monitoring it's use. I also seriously doubt that my PC Pursuit ID and password have been compromised. What does all this mean? My sensible guess is that PC Pursuit isn't noticing that we have broken a connection until after we have started a new connection. We do a sweep of all our uucp neighbors with traffic waiting every 15 minutes at night. Often, many PC Pursuit calls are placed in quick succession (but never more than one at a time). Perhaps we are just going too fast for PC Pursuit? My paranoid guess is that they have discovered how sites that use it heavily are offsetting PC Pursuit's profit (compared to simple BBS users). The contract they provide makes it clear that PC Pursuit is usage insensitive, and the director of network operations repeated that, but... Hopefully it won't happen again. ...tad Tad Guy (804)-440-4529 UUCP: tadguy@xanth.UUCP Department of Computer Science or: ...!uunet!xanth!tadguy Old Dominion University new ARPA: tadguy@odu.edu Norfolk, Virginia 23529-0162 old ARPA: tadguy%xanth.UUCP@SUN.COM