The Highway Forums Resources HELP Forum Info regarding ISP

[*][color:blue]ISP: "Internet Service Provider", which technically is a company that provides access to the Internet to its clients.[*][color:blue]IP: "Internet Provider" but better known as an "identifier". An IP number is similar to a Zip Code address in that each set of numbers represents and increasingly specific place. A more technical explanation is here:

Every computer that communicates over the Internet is assigned an IP address that uniquely identifies the device and distinguishes it from other computers on the Internet. An IP address consists of 32 bits, often shown as 4 octets of numbers from 0-255 represented in decimal form instead of binary form. For example, the IP address 168.212.226.204.

in binary form is

10101000.11010100.11100010.11001100.

[/LIST]Using the above IP address 168.212.226.204, the end user is identified with the "204", providing that the IP is "static"; i.e., it never changes. However many ISP's provide "dynamic" IP's to their clients, which means that the last set of numbers change, sometimes with each connection to the Internet.

So, to address your question about being able to ban individual users, for example, from a board like this one. If the IP is "static", it is quite easy to block that IP number access to the board. If, however, the IP is dynamic, you would either have to enter each of the IP numbers individually as they change. (Obviously this can be a tedious task.) Or, a much easier method is to enter just the first 3 sets or even 2 sets of octets rather than all of them. What this does is to block a broader area. The drawback in doing this is that the broader the scope the more people are affected. In fact, one can easily block an entire "domain", e.g., AOL.

Fortunately, the scripting for this particular board allows us to block "undesirables" in several ways so that only that individual is blocked and normally no one else is affected.

Does that answer your question(s)?

In reply to:

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Still, wondering how EZboard claims that they can ban someone by ISP, especially for those using the dynamic schema.

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I think that your confusion is due to semantics. From what you have said, it seems that the people using EZBoard are using "ISP" to mean "Domain". In other words, they could block the first 2 sets of IP numbers (remember that this would effect a very broad area) and thus effectively block all users for that particular "Domain" aka "ISP"; e.g., AOL, Compuserve, etc. Again, the series of numbers in an IP is akin to a Zip Code: "country, state, town, district, individual".

I've seen some board do this, either out of ignorance or necessity, perhaps because the board software doesn't allow any other options for dealing with "rogues". The result is that the one individual is blocked by so are myriad others, which doesn't set well with many.