And NAT traversal only works if you focus on broken NAT implementations. If you have a "secure" NAT like a firewall may implement, then there is no such thing as workable NAT traversal.
You have that backwards! NATs are tasked to facilitate communications (same as routers).
Yes, firewalls can be configured to restrict communications. And you can have a combined NAT+firewall that is so configured.
Just likes routers vs firewalls. Routers forward packets as well as they know how, firewalls selectively drop them, router-FW combos can configured either way.
Reliance on restrictive centralized firewalls is a pretty 1990s mindset, and doesn't lead to good security outcomes in the current world where users constantly suffle devices between networks, and vpn in to your network, etc. You just end up making your internal network unusable for production work.
That's an interesting viewpoint and would go against practically everyone's (except the IETF's) expectation for the NAT to provide a default firewall-esque policy.
I suppose if you view NAT to "facilitate communications" then mapping a port for all inbound IPs instead of symmetric makes sense.
In my experience people behind NAT very much like Skype, games, WebRTC, file sharing etc to work. They're usually not very knowledgeable about firewalls but most often used host-based firewalls. Which is good since they're generally much more easier to configure according to your app needs.
They can simply make sure your iBeacon proximity uuid doesn't get registered with the OS if you aren't a certified vendor.
No uuid registration with the OS and people using your app will not get a background notification for your iBeacons.
This would leave app developers with only having the ability to detect beacons when their app is foreground, or during background processing time.
Note: There are no checks like this today. You can advertise any UUID you want, and have your app subscribe for notifications if the os detects the iBeacon in the background.
and now, they never will, which would be the focal point of any antitrust attack.
Also, the DOJ does not have sole authority to challenge.
Here is the breakdown for telecommunications (taken from DOJ website, http://www.justice.gov/atr/icpac/3b.htm)
Telecommunications. Mergers involving telecommunications
service providers usually are subject to competition policy
review or challenge by:
One of the federal antitrust agencies (only the DOJ has
jurisdiction to review mergers involving telephone
companies; both the DOJ and the FTC have reviewed mergers
between cable television firms);
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC);(8)
The PSC of each state in which the parties do business
(although most state PSCs lack jurisdiction over cable
television mergers and some lack jurisdiction over mergers);
In the case of cable television, county and municipal
authorities with responsibility for granting and overseeing
cable franchise agreements;
The attorney general of each state in which the merging
parties do business; and
Private entities such as competitors to the merging parties.
As with mergers involving electric power firms, review by
any of these entities is nonexclusive. Approval of a
transaction by one entity does not preclude a separate
challenge by any of the other entities, nor does it bar
another entity from seeking adjustments that exceed
concessions that resolved the concerns of other bodies.
I suspect the DOJ (who has sole jurisdiction in telecommunications) will object, and that comcast is just willing to fight it out in court.
Isn't that simply because they have a "gentlemans agreement" not to have overlapping coverage, so that (to an individual customer) they are essentially a monopoly?
The physical network is absolutely a natural monopoly - the cost to run copper out to every house in a region is fixed, and any player in the market would need to do just that in order to compete effectively. From a cost efficiency perspective, the ideal number of such networks is one, just as it is for electricity and water.
What's different is that electricity tends to be heavily regulated, and water is generally a public utility. Cable providers are historically under no such constraint, because we tend to think of them as television content providers first and foremost, and the TV bit of the business is not a natural monopoly. Unfortunately that is where they make their money, and that leads to some really obnoxious behavior, including price gouging people who want their network services but not a TV content subscription.
Probably the best solution would be to go the same route that many other countries do and require network operators to share network bandwidth with anyone who can pay for it. That would allow us to re-instate market competition on top of the bit where it cannot occur naturally, while still allowing them to maintain their regularly scheduled TV industry whatever-ness.
Cable TV also seems like a natural monopoly for the same reason as cable Internet — the cost of running the cable itself. Even before cable modems, most places only had one cable company. And my understanding is that cable franchise agreements were written with that assumption. Maybe I don't understand your argument, though.
Different layers of the OSI model are different. Everything up to layer 3 on the local network is a natural monopoly. But above there it's not, and outside that local network it's not.
In the US, this fact was pretty clearly demonstrated when the regulatory overhaul of the telephone industry in the 1990s introduced competition by requiring owners of the local copper to share it, and also by how people are able to choose their long distance carrier. The latter would be analogous to being able to choose among any number of ISPs while still using the same copper to handle the last mile.
I'm not an expert, but I think what you describe is exactly what happened with telephone service in the United States (i.e, the breakup of Ma Bell, etc.)
It wasn't the breakup of Ma Bell, but the telecommunications deregulation bill of the mid '1990s did include a provision that required local phone service operators to sell access to their network to newcomers at wholesale prices.
Unfortunately, cable companies live under a different set of regulations, so the same rules don't apply to them. Meanwhile the industry progressed to the point that in many markets companies that were once just cable and phone companies now offer the same menu of services. But the law hasn't changed to keep up with that, so the net result is that we've got a regulatory regime that cripples an already anemic competitive environment by arbitrarily giving an enormous advantage to only one of the players.
Right, by design, which is the reason I have crap internet service and no real choices. It's collusion, pure and simple, I don't know why it has been allowed to go on for so long.
It's definitely not, these companies trade territory, and when an upstart that's not part of the collusion (like Verizon FIOS) comes in, they finally upgrade and cut prices on that part of their network to be competitive, so that it's not profitable for them to come in.
