IP issues and Multi

[Tomthebuffalo]

Alright. Skulks want me to get everyone in the open because theres been rumours and suspicions directed towards me regarding other peoples accounts. So heres a post trying to explain it.

Apparently the Ip's for Mishmand and Lt_stirling were the same as mine when they posted on this forum..
I've never logged onto someone elses account on our external forum, so I dont know.. something must be strange there.

Regarding the accounts I got given access to... :

Twister : Has been given to Colleague of Henning, Renata and Ashimar I am told. There is now seemingly some anger at me for not being more open about my giving away of it. But geeze, Fom and Corleth are blimmin pacted, so there was no danger of spies coming in.

Mishman : On holiday currently? Will ask him about his account when I see him monday. Coruscation and I will keep running it until then. If he doesnt want it anymore, will be deleted.

I dont know what else there needs to be explained...
These apparent rumours that I have several accounts is sh*t.

Coruscation and Marc can look at my account.
They will tell you that there has never been any transport from Twister or Mishman.

I feel a little bit saddened, and hurt that people jumped to these conclusions. And I dont understand the IP things. So I hope someone can figure that one out.

[2kcastle]

Edit: Deleted content about twister because i was wrong.

As for the other two accounts it was me that spotted the same isp address for all three accounts.
Now i did a lot of checking, everything from asking shendemiar and skulkrinbait, both of which know a lot about this sort of thing to internet searches about it. All the evidence i've found tells me that there is no legitimate way of three people, using seperate computers ending up with the same isp address. in mishmans case i know him and tom are friends so it could have been explained away, but tom has told me that he's never spoken to lt_stirling and as they live about 140 miles apart the isp shouldnt even be similar.
So does anyone know of a way to explain three people using different computers, one of them in a different county ending up with the same address ?

[intchanter]

IP addresses can be funny things. (Warning: technical material ahead.)

Most information sent over the Internet requires a target and return address (just like sending a letter through the mail/post). Under the most prevalent standard, there are a little over four billion such possible addresses. These addresses identify the endpoints of a connection to a certain degree.

Most consumer routers and some that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use are configured to provide Network Address Translation (NAT) to allow more than one computer to share a connection.

What this means is that if someone comes over to your house to use your Internet connection, or if you have an open wireless access point that they connect to, they will almost always appear to be behind the same IP address as your computer.

This can also happen for two persons who have the same ISP in same cases. I have personally seen it happen primarily for land-based wireless carriers in my part of the US.

IP addresses can also change with time, most especially with dial-up providers, but technically for any connection that does not have a static IP address.

Here's a bit more on how NAT works, if you're interested:

Let's say the IP address that websites see you coming from is 99.54.26.10. Your ISP has a NAT router, and assigns IP addresses on the inside to the 10.x.x.x range, of which your personal connection is assigned 10.0.5.9. You also have a NAT router, and assigned computers on your personal network in the 192.168.0.x range, and the computer you currently use is 192.168.0.101

Your computer asks for a connection to Google's web server to request a search page. To do that, it makes a connection to 192.168.0.1, which is the internal IP address of your router. The router in turn asks its gateway for the same thing, but usign its external IP address (10.0.5.9) to talk to the internal IP address of its gateway (10.0.5.1). That gateway then makes the request of Google's servers (some simplification here) using its external IP address (99.54.26.10).

What Google sees is a connection from 99.54.26.10, and it responds to it. That response is then passed back through to the computer that originally requested it.

Apologies in advance for the length and for anything that may be unclear.

[n00bs]

It is not imposible.

A lot of ISPs are multi-national and operate as one big network across national boundaries. Some ISPs do NATing because they cant get IPv4 address allocations which means that a number of users may appear as though they have the same IP. It iis also possible that they work for the same company and are playing while VPNed in to work.

Is it probable? Getting the same IP from a NATing ISP is unlikely. Getting the same IP as someone you work with? Pretty likely. I would guess there must be other players working for my company (35K employees) and come to think of it, my profile probably lies about the whereabouts of my physical shell. By that metric I would probably register as a multi...

[2kcastle]

I'll admit to being a bit thick and not really understanding a lot of that, could that give 3 people 140 miles apart the same isp address, posting over a period of about 4 weeks ?

[n00bs]

2kcastle said:

I'll admit to being a bit thick and not really understanding a lot of that, could that give 3 people 140 miles apart the same isp address, posting over a period of about 4 weeks ?

A question: Do you have the IP and the user-agent strings from the logins in question? That may tell us if it is a compagny or an isp and if it is operating in the countries in question. It will also tell us if they are playing on their cells, which, as intchanter pointed out, makes it more probable.

The short version: This is suspicious, but not the definite proof I get the impression you thought it was.

[2kcastle]

I dont want to post toms isp address because i really dont know enough about this sort of thing, obviously if tom doesnt mind then i will or if skulkrinbait thinks its safe to do so then he can access them as well and post them here.

Added:
Noobs said " The short version: This is suspicious, but not the definite proof I get the impression you thought it was. "
Ive got to admit that i thought this was absolute proof, its the same evidence that condemned harvmeister when his isp matched members of digg on their forums.

[Tomthebuffalo]

I dont know what these things really mean.
But sure, if it help clears my name then post my Ip.
Just realised that Mishman might have been round here when he posted his post. Although not sure, need to confirm.

[intchanter]

Another way for an IP address to appear on the traffic from more than one person is a proxy (not eproxy ). These are often used to access blacklisted sites from work, school, et cetera, and don't need to have any relation to the Internet connection of the person doing the web surfing.

They can be run privately or publicly and often support themselves through advertising.

As with NAT routers, you wouldn't see the IP address of the person browsing, but only of the proxy.

[2kcastle]

I'd checked on the possibility of a proxy server, but couldnt see any reason for the three of them to be using one. and if he had of been, tom would have mentioned it.
If it helps the isp in question is : 62.253.128.14.

[Tomthebuffalo]

Despite some peoples perception of me, I'm not a huge techno expert. And havent a clue about all these IP things. But after googling it...

Wikepedia says this...

Attention:
This IP address, 62.253.128.14, is registered to NTL cmbg-cache-4.server.ntli.net and is shared by multiple users.

We have Ntl broadband.
I think Mishman has the same.

Still have no clue about lt_stirling though....

[intchanter]

Anyone who wants to check this information for themselves can use:

www.dnsstuff.com/

They've been adding clutter to the page (in the past it was just the DNS tools), so you'll have to scroll down to get to the IP information tools.

This is a great site for all sorts of information related to an IP address or domain name.

[kae]

www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

[n00bs]

tomthebuffalo said:

Despite some peoples perception of me, I'm not a huge techno expert. And havent a clue about all these IP things. But after googling it...

Wikepedia says this...

Attention:
This IP address, 62.253.128.14, is registered to NTL cmbg-cache-4.server.ntli.net and is shared by multiple users.

We have Ntl broadband.
I think Mishman has the same.

Still have no clue about lt_stirling though....

The name of the server, ...cache..., is a strong indication that it is indeed a webcache. In that case, it is not strange that people show up with the same IP if they have the same internet provider (as intchanter correctly pointed out).

According to your profile, you are in Cambridge so I assume that mishman is there too. Lt_sterling is in Keele according to his profile. Ntl's service area tool is broken, so I cannot say if they are in Keele, but it is not unlikely that he is an ntl user too.

I gotta say that I am less than convinced.

[n00bs]

2kcastle said:

I'd checked on the possibility of a proxy server, but couldnt see any reason for the three of them to be using one. and if he had of been, tom would have mentioned it.
If it helps the isp in question is : 62.253.128.14.

My guess is that it is a transparent proxy, in which case tom would not have to configure anything and probably wouldn't even be aware that there was a proxy.

The original proxies, that had to be configured in your browser, has almost left the building completely. Transparent ones are so much easier to manage.