Downloads... by IP Range.

[BBFG#]

I don't believe any of this. NI has (did have) issues updating login status but you could just go to your download page anyway.
Where are the terms of service agreements discussing using an IP in your login key?

Your belief is not required.
I haven't seen anything stating this or even eluding to it in EULA or FAQ.
Still, this is what is happening, and when I contacted the first company, they were the ones that told me they do it. Now I'm getting the same thing happening from two others and because the providers are reversed, I can't blame it on the providers. So eliminating that, this becomes a best guess as the possible cause. (Given the information that it is a method sometimes used).

I can log on fine to NI using either service provider.
I can only download from my account using the one provider and not the other though.

And I'll know more if NI gets back to me on this.

[DarkStar]

Re Camel Audio FAQs
See "File Access Error Messages" here
http://www.camelaudio.com/faqs/Alchemy/ ... hould_I_do
and this FAQ
http://www.camelaudio.com/faqs/User_Acc ... rt_account

I now have three companies that use "IP-Range" as part of their ID process. So once I register with one ISP, I can't ever change it for a better deal with another ISP since it won't allow me access to the user account for things like downloads and updates. .

That wording is a lot more than a "best guess"

[whyterabbyt]

Re Camel Audio FAQs
See "File Access Error Messages" here
http://www.camelaudio.com/faqs/Alchemy/ ... hould_I_do
and this FAQ
http://www.camelaudio.com/faqs/User_Acc ... rt_account

I now have three companies that use "IP-Range" as part of their ID process. So once I register with one ISP, I can't ever change it for a better deal with another ISP since it won't allow me access to the user account for things like downloads and updates. .

That wording is a lot more than a "best guess"

Yeah, and the core claim in it is actually directly contradicted by Camel's advice.

If this happens please try downloading the files using a different ISP - perhaps a friend or family member can help, or you if you work for a company with an internet connection you could download the files at work and put them on a DVD or USB stick.

[trimph1]

FUD is in the air I guess.

[samsam]

^^ And Camel's advice is somewhat contradicted by what their support is currently using as an explanation for why I've been locked out of my account for a week.

EDIT: I don'y claim to understand what's going on, just saying what's happening to me and what support is saying.

[BBFG#]

Here is what they said about ISPs and IPs:

We have a choice of ISPs, but they all use the same exchange technology so there is no real service competition.
The main problem of blocked downloads is happening because of "floating" IP addresses - our server doesn't allow that, because it looks like a dodgy hacker request rather than a legitimate attempt to download files. When most users click a download link the IP address remains the same from the moment it's clicked to when the file finishes downloading. In this case the IP address could change at any time, so the initial click request to download is received from IP address X but the actual download happens on IP address Y.
... we can't set any account to allow this type of behavior - it's a security risk. This doesn't mean you are the security risk (we trust you ...), it's related to how our site works.
It is inconvenient, and we recognize that, but it affects < 0.1% of our users. We may be able to fix it in the future, but will have to live with it for the time being.

So, in general...

[Last] responded to say "your IP address won't cause a problem".
... if you run in to this problem, get in touch with support and mention the floating IP address specifically.

As I said it only seems to be these three companies as of right now and the problem is in having one address that is xx.xxx.xx.xx for its address 'range' and the other is xxx.xxx.xx.xx for its address range.

But it raises the question of why it's just them and ALL the other companies I deal with don't have this issue.
With Camel, the issue is now moot. With NI, I've always been able to work around it because I know what the issue is and have the initial registration where I have more options to use (although it requires some travel on my part).
This 'new registration' - I unfortunately used the other IP range and it may prove to be the biggest problem since it isn't the same IP range of my studio computer.
I'm waiting for both of them to get back to me on this ATM and see what comes of that.

[sin night]

Using ip as an unique id is silly (at best!) as long as IPv4 is in use. Maybe with IPv6...

I'm pretty sure nobody is so insane to lock the license to the ip, since with IPv4 it's impossible not to use dynamic addresses and nat (there aren't enough ips!)... not to mention the ip addresses are somehow geo-localized (and I should really emphasize on "somehow")... It would be laughable to use an IPv4 as unique id which should be kept for a long time, it can't work.


The mac address is way more effective as an id, since it is unique (or it should be... there are/were some network cards that allow[ed] changing the mac address, for the record I had an US Robotics Gigabit ethernet card with this feature, and in some cases - linux - you can even mask the mac address with very little effort)... but, given it's quite likely for a user to switch often the network interface (cable, wifi, external dongles, etc) it seems to me a way to raise more support requests than needed (some companies actually do use the mac address as id, but in my opinion is not a good strategy).


But let's go back on the subject of the thread: IP.
Additional rules, for example keeping the same ip while downloading a file or trying to geo-localize the requests (how frequent they are and where they come from), is a totally different thing from using the ip as an id and they make sense.

I don't have much experience with networks and I never set up or even used any of such filters; but if I were to, I would correlate geo-localization changes and the elapsed time between changes and, if the time between two different connections from different zones is bigger than the reasonable minimum time to travel between these zones, I would raise a warning (and possibly have a policy to deny the connection or have it wait for a reasonable amount of time).
So, if there's a false positive triggered by the same user by accessing from the same place but through two different providers, I would try to check:
1) If at least one of the providers is doing nat (so they don't give you a public ip for the session, instead they give you one of their private network and then they show only a few public addresses on the net)
2) If the providers are giving you addresses which are supposed to be far from each other from a geographical point of view.

A traceroute test may give some insights on what's going on (but it's far from being a perfect tool).

The policy for positive (and false positive) is up to the company the website belongs to; if I were to set up such kind of protection, I would lock the account to the first "area" (group of ip) at least for a "reasonable" (a few hours? even a day?) amount of time when the filter is triggered, and I would increment the lock time (or completely lock the account and make it wait for manual unlock) if the filter continues to trigger for a certain account.

I think the isp do have a role (a big role!) in this kind of issues, since I'm pretty sure the filters in use are set up so they keep the false positive very next to zero (they are a big problem both for customers and companies, nobody wants to deal with them). Customer support may (should?) be able to take care of this kind of problems... but the problem is likely to be the isp, in my opinion.

[BBFG#]

I would say the 'IP', floating or not is a bit of a misnomer, even though that was their best specualtion at the time. Maybe it has more to do with the "exchange technologies" as they stated also.

We have a choice of ISPs, but they all use the same exchange technology so there is no real service competition.

And I only use one at a time, so the request and the actual download would be on the same IP address, (However I see where it might be seen as a different one when using another company than the one I registered with). I know I've used the major phone companies with no such problem between them as long as the account was registered on a phone provider. It seems specific to be between the phone provider and satellite provider, which makes their server 'see' it as a 'floating IP'. (exchange technology?)

So then it still comes back to why their servers do this while the majority of others do not.