What can a ISP do to stop you from playing online poker (long)

[Percula]

Well in the wake of the online bill to "ban" online poker passing the house this week, I have seen a lot posts from people saying things to the effect that there is nothing that can be done to really stop someone from playing online. I addressed this from a technical stand point in this thread 2p2 post But I wanted to make sure the information was out there, so everyone can be sure of what they are talking about.

First a little background. I have been a network engineer since the early days of the Internet. I have built and ran IPS's, datacenters and worked for several fortune 500 companies in this capasity. I currently work for a company that makes the best of breed IPS appliance and have worked for a major firewall manufacture.

I am not going to go into the bill (wording and implications of the bill) too much, other than to point out that part of the bill talks about "access to" gambaling servers.

Now a little technical background. The Internet is built on the TCP/IP protocol. Each resource on the Internet has an individual IP address, e.g. 4.2.2.2. Your PC has an IP address that is presented on the Internet as does any server on the Internet. Traffic is transfered in the form of packets of data. Each packet contains information for the funtion of TCP/IP, like the source and destination IP address, e.g. from your IP to PokerStars game server. All IP addresses on the Internet are registered; basically your IP along with basic information from your ISP indentifies you, to the point that if a court ordered your ISP to turn over their records they could see that you were assigned IP X.X.X.X on any given hour of any given day, i.e. you are trackable.

TCP/IP traffic can be encrypted, e.g. a VPN or secure traffic like to a poker site while playing online poker. However since TCP/IP has to establish a connection to the server, that inital information needs to be "in the clear" and then the encryption is setup between the client (your poker client) and the server (the gaming server at say PokerStars). This intial communication in the clear means that every application basically creates a finger print or signature if you will that is indentifiable.

In the history of the Internet there have been several things that have fallen into the "wrong, against the law" but often done catagory, e.g. sharing of copyrighted music and videos. There has been some push to stop this, mostly by the copyright holders. Things like peer to peer or P2P networks and applications (e.g. bit-torrent) have been developed to help avoid detection of trading of music, programs, etc. These networks/applications have been somewhat successful, however they are far from perfect and easily defeated by a semi-capable network engineer.

Also in the the same lines as the P2P networks proxy networks have been setup to avoid detection of avtivities on the Internet that might get one in trouble, e.g. surfing playboy at work. These too are easily defeatable by any half decent network eningeer.

All in all there is a on going war on the Internet with goverments, businesses and individuals and groups all fighting to stay one step ahead of the other. Some want to stop activities, others want to keep doing something. Bottom line there is literally billions of dallors spent every year in this war... This is big.

So lets say that the bill passes and gets signed into law and ISP's are ordered to stop access to gambaling servers. (let's not debate this here, that is not what this post is about).

So what if anything can they do to stop you from starting up PokerStars and playing poker for real money? A lot!

There is a technology called IPS or Intrusion Prevention System that is used to stop this type of traffic. A couple of years ago it would have been a firewall doing the working of stopping unwanted traffic, but frankly in this day a firewall is nothing more than a pourious screen to stop the big chucks, the IPS is todays answer to more and more advanced and sneeky attacks and attempts to do things that are not allowed. An IPS scans each and every packet that passes thru it. It is capable of spotting the signature of each application that is trying to pass traffic thru it and then based on rule sets either allow or disallow the traffic to pass. They are capable some truely incredible feats with incredible speeds.

IPS manufactors go to great measures to stay up or ahead of the Internet world. Some even go to the extent of paying people outside of their company to bring up new and interesting issues. There are VERY active on the Internet.

Some would suggest that something like a P2P network or a proxy network would end up being used to access poker sites. And I am 100% sure that if the bill passes and becomes law and IPS's are asked to block access, that they will and they will likely be of a much better quality than exists today.

Guess what, with a good IPS system on a network, I can stop, dead in its tracks, any P2P or proxy network in existance today. If someone comes out with an update or new program/network it is only going to buy a week or two before I have an update to the IPS to stop it assuming the IPS company didn't already know about it already have a filter for it. Someone will come up with something new, the IPS manufactures will counter it, something new will be done and defeated yet again. It is a on going war, punch for punch, blow for blow.

So what does all this mean?

Bottom line, the average player is not going to be willing or capable to mess with all the BS to get around a blockage. Those that do will only be staying one step ahead in a on going war. The player pool will dry up. The big MTT's (WPT and WSOP) will get smaller and the "fad will fade". This could spell the bust of the poker boom.

So now that you know that it is technically possible to prohibit you from playing online, get off your multi-tabling ass and make your voice heard. Call your senators, talk to your friends, school mates, co-workers, anyone that will listen, and get them to call their senator too.

[mrhat187]

Only thing I am curious about you say "billions" is spent on this war, well isn't the number around 70 million people gamble online? 23 million I think play poker.......so you have maybe an estimate of cost to stop everyone? I think the money point is the most important part, people will say "I think gambling should be banned" But if congress replies with "It is going to cost 4 billion a year to stop this industry we have to make cuts to (insert government program) or we have to tax (insert new tax)" the person may then think "hmmmm, never mind it doesn't bother me that much"

[LesJ]

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The Internet is built on the TCP/IP protocol. blah blah blah blah blah

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I can't believe you come on here and post this crap like you know what you are talking about. The internet is made out of tubes!

[uphigh_downlow]

What??

How can IPS work against me if I decide to use a simple VPN based out of town, for all my internet activities.

My traffic while in the US is simply encryted, and cannot be decoded. How can you find a fingerprint in an encrypted packet.

Unless you invest bazillions of resources.

[Zele]

Yeah, is what you're talking about feasible (for the entire US's internet traffic) given an enforcement budget of no more than $10MM?

[StellarWind]

An obvious approach to circumventing this technology is to create an encrypted pipe between the user's PC and a proxy data center in a neutral country.

Everything that flows between the poker client and server goes inside the pipe. This specifically includes the IP packet headers with the address of the poker site. The IPS cannot determine what is inside the pipe. Nor can it tell where the enclosed packets will go once the proxy puts them on the internet.

Nothing novel about what I've said so far. It's well-known technology and I'm sure your corporate data network clients would know exactly what to do about it. They would have the IPS block the entire pipe. After all, it's their network and they can do that.

Not so easy for the Government. The law doesn't seem to provide for blocking pipes with unknown content and there would be serious First Amendment issues if it did. As long as the proxy service maintains an appropriate distance from the gambling sites and has non-gambling users you won't be able to establish that any particular pipe is carrying gambling traffic as opposed to any of a thousand other things that someone might want to keep private.

[redbeard]

while i hope stellar is right it still doesn't seem to change the fact that the majority of the fish will not be willing to go to these steps to link up to a gambling site and the pool of these fish will dry up. i know, i know the sky is falling some will say, but it seems to be a somewhat realistic problem.

[uphigh_downlow]

[ QUOTE ]
while i hope stellar is right it still doesn't seem to change the fact that the majority of the fish will not be willing to go to these steps to link up to a gambling site and the pool of these fish will dry up. i know, i know the sky is falling some will say, but it seems to be a somewhat realistic problem.

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what stellar said has a more common name. Its called VPN, something commonly in use on the internet.

so dun wry a whole lot about connecting to poker sites. We shud be more worried about loss of players who wont go thru the trouble

[antneye]

If it is so easy to block sites deemed illegal, how come they government can not stop kiddie porn? Is someone seriosuly going to tell me that the government cares more about poker than kiddie porn?

I am calling my senators and raising a shitstorm......just because it would be reckless not to, but I do not believe this will do anything to online gaming other than officially make it illegal. Theres a lot of illegal stuff out there....the real question is going to surround enforcement. This is (IMHO) nothing more than an election year ploy for the conservative base........you won't here a word about it after election day.

[PE101]

Great post! Interesting follow-up discussion.

I agree that this is typical, election-year pandering. I'm afraid, though, that if/when this type of legislation passes the technical and legal issues will outweigh sanity. The player pool will drastically be reduced, and the game just won't be as much fun or as profitable.

I think we have a real problem on our hands here...