The Hackmeeting is a lovely event. Entry is free, everybody is helping out.

However, the network is weird. There is a firewall at the ISP nobody has access to. It already successfully blocks incoming traffic preventing use of certain services already. In addition, there is shaping (which I can understand) and even more port blocking installed at Hackmeeting. The only available ports are ssh, imaps, smtps, pop3, pop3s, smtp, imap. No public sniffer installed, but I guess some inofficial ones are running. I switched off my honeypot anyway.

So: no instant messaging possible so far. I am going to talk to the admins to get at least IRC, AIM and Jabber working. I wonder if anybody is using these protocols at all. I would consider free networking part of the game. There is some bandwidth paranoia and a idealistic preference for intranetworking in place I assume. I would prefer unhindered communication.

The above port list even means: no http. Just started a discussion about this as I don‘t get that point at all. Let‘s see what the outcome of all this will be. For me this would mean: no weblogging as I am using XML-RPC to post my stuff. It only works becaused I plugged my base station directly in the de-militarized zone, behind the firewall. And, oh my god, no anon-cvs as well. Useless.

I consider limited internet access to be one of the problems today: NAT and port blocking at the ISP side is already preventing people from using the net effectively. I want to set up servers, I want to access my machines from the outside, I want to do peer-to-peer networking, dynamic file exchange and most important: i want to experiment and learn with the network. With the current access mechanisms, this is not possible.

For the near future this means: i need my own VPN available to no longer suffer from weird restrictions.