IP Address Query

[CatherineJ]

Can someone advise me as I have possible problem on another forum which I moderate on.

Am I correct in thinking that IP Addresses are unique to a specific machine.

We have a situation where there are 5 members (who appear to be nothing but stirring little sh£ts) are originating from one IP address.

The IP address in question belongs to NTL (Are NTL different in any way).

Many thanks in advance.

[Mikey G]

I'm on NTL, as i understand it the way NTL dish out the IP's more than one person can get the same address.

[CatherineJ]

Thanks for that.

Would it seam odd that 5 people on a very niche forum have all the same IP address, particularly when the 5 all have troll like tendancies?

Edited by CatherineJ on Friday 23 June 19:17

[ThatPhilBrettGuy]

If the post are close together in time, it's the same person.

[Mikey G]

Chances are its the same person. When i moderated on a few forums some years ago we had a problem with someone who ended up getting banned via IP, then we started getting messages from other members saying they were unable to get on the forum, turns out they were all on NTL and had the same IP as the original perpatrator.
I'm not sure how the network really works but at a guess i would say the IP address's issued by NTL are in general similair for a given area.

[ATG]

Unless NTL are for some reason hiding their customers' IP addresses, it sounds like one person to me. In general, as far as home users are concerned, IP addresses are unique to individual ADSL routers or modems at any given time. Most users IP addresses will change from time to time, put if you see the same IP address submitting posts over the period of a day or two, I'd say you could be 99% confident its the same person, or at the very least that it is coming from people who are using the same local area network.

p.s. I defer to MikeyG when it comes to NTL, coz i know nothing about what they get up to.

Edited by ATG on Friday 23 June 19:31

[ErnestM]

.....or

It could be that they are all on the same network, using the same public IP and using network transalation for their private IPs.

Just block the offending IP

ErnestM

Edited to add - too slow...

Edited by ErnestM on Friday 23 June 19:31

[aldi]

NTL do use transparent proxying, so the IP you see could just be the IP of NTL's proxy. Possibly.

[mattley]

ATG said:

Unless NTL are for some reason hiding their customers' IP addresses

what, by extensive use of proxy servers for instance.

NTL use transparent proxys extensivly, full list here

www.cableforum.co.uk/forum/article.php?a=10

If you do a reverse DNS lookup from here www.dnsstuff.com (Second box down in the middle) on the IP address in question and the answer is in that list it's a proxy server.

[percy flage]

What software is the forum using? Can you block the IP? You'd run the risk of blocking other members, but a temporary ban might make the person think again.

Alternatively, send tehm an e-mail or a private message if your BB allows this and quote the Computer Misuse Act at them.

[CatherineJ]

Thanks guys that is very helpful.

[BliarOut]

Post the IP... I'm sure one of us can have a dig around NTL and suss what's going on. Could be an NTL proxy or could all be on a LAN using NAT.

[xiphias]

NTL customers have static ips afaik.

[BliarOut]

xiphias said:

NTL customers have static ips afaik.

Nah, we're DHCP but on eight day leases.

[JamieBeeston]

If you give us the IP, we can tell you with an accurate certainty if it's the same person or not.

[thepassenger]

Start > Run > type CMD and click ok.
Type tracert <ip.address.of.muppets>

If you see something like this appear at the final hop "bagu-cache-7.server.ntli.net" then they're pretty much hiding behind one of NTL's proxies. Blocking that hostname/IP will stop all the people comming from that proxy to your server; I've not yet looked to see if cosh-cache-9 (mine) and bagu-cache-7 (friend up north) have the same IP.

Depending on your forum software and how much control you have over it you might find that you can combat these idiots without using a shotgun approach. Disallow unregistered users to post, make all users require modorator/administrator approval before registering and so on. You might even find their is a plug-in that allows you to set certain words as bad and to reject a post with them (or hold for moderator approval), plus if they're just being spammers Akismet have started to support certain forum software (Akismet is a anti-spam solution for blogs, works pretty well).