<OT> How do ISPs work?

[Tony Alfrey]

vu pham wrote:
> Tony Alfrey wrote:
> [...]
>> Question:  Is this actually possible, i.e. that an ISP could give 
>> selective web access to a particular web browser?  Does a web browser 
>> somehow encode within its packets some identification?
> 
> Web browsers send many properties in their HTTP requests. One of the 
> properties is "User-Agent".
> 
> On my desktop, Firefox set the following value for User-Agent:
> 
> Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.14) Gecko/20080416 
> Fedora/2.0.0.14-1.fc8 Firefox/2.0.0.14
> 

Yes, thanks.  Very little difference in the User-Agent for SeaMonkey and 
Firefox (only the last piece of the string).  Maybe I was just imagining 
this; I can't imagine what motive they would have for restricting 
certain User-Agents unless they had someone who was specifically using 
SeaMonkey to hog their bandwidth.

BTW, how did you determine the User-Agent for your browser?  I had to do 
a Google search and found a piece of javascript that does this.


-- 
Tony Alfrey
tonyalfrey at earthlink.net
"I'd Rather Be Sailing"