The recent surveillance scandal where US basically monitors all data through routers in the US is one of the most important events this century. It also scares me when I hear the "I have nothing to hide"-argument frequently that I ask myself "Did we even learn anything from the cold war?". In this post, I will discuss some of the key aspects of why PRISM is a bad thing for society and why we should stay away from it as good as we can.
Fiber was the third type of internet connection I had after dial-up and ADSL. Even though I was just 14 years old at the time the fiber was set up, it felt as it was the Christmas eve when I was 5 years. I already knew back then fiber was the future of computer communication and a 10Mbit synchronous line would soon be upgraded.
However, one thing has been remaining silent since the setup of the fiber connection. The gateway (or modem/home central as some call it) has no admin panel and the documentation seemed to be close to none on the internet. The gateway was an Allied Telesis iMG616BD and had only Fast Ethernet ports. The fact that it had only Fast Ethernet ports means I can send and receive max 100Mbit through my current fiber cable unless my ISP (Eidsiva Bredbånd) gives me a new gateway and upgrades the equipment on their end. The fact I did not get any way of entering any admin web-panel on the modem or find any documentation on the device encouraged me to find more information, as this was a black box on my network I barely knew anything about.