I was such a douche do this poor guy

[lordlundar]

Uh, no it's not. They've got every right to notice that an insane number of connections are being attempted through a port on their service, and then take steps to protect other customers from infection. It's not like they're saying "Hey, stop looking at that porn, dude."

This. Basically, they're blocking the port at their end, which goes all the way from their systems right up to your modem. A port is used from the modem to your machine, so there's a point they can block it.

(God I hope I got that right. I am not fond of network theory, can you tell?)

[Lehk]

This. Basically, they're blocking the port at their end, which goes all the way from their systems right up to your modem. A port is used from the modem to your machine, so there's a point they can block it.

(God I hope I got that right. I am not fond of network theory, can you tell?)

just to clarify a "port" is more of a numbered tag for the connection than what the term port implies. there is no capacity difference between 1 connection on each port and 65535 connections on one port. (please note that if you were to try either one of these examples your network admin or ISP would likely call and ask "excuuuuse me.... WTF you doing?" and your computer might well crash)

on the listening end (i won't say server because in a peer to peer environment both/all clients may be listening to each other) a given port or port range will determine what software service receives a connection attempt.

[BlaqueKatt]

Hi, I'd like to welcome you to the internet. Here on the internet, we have a whole lot of resources, but all of those individual resources are limited.

Yay! we've all been officially welcomed to the internets-nice choice of a greeter they made...

Since these resources are limited, there are people called "network administrators" and "network engineers".

and to BK-one of them is known as spouse...

[MadMike]

It still bothers me, though, that I became something I despise today.

It happens to the best of us. We're only human, and once in awhile we're going to screw up. But what sets us aprt from the sucky customers is that we know we screwed up, and we try to make it right.

For example, I once blew up in front of a cashier at the supermarket when my total ended up being a lot more than I thought it would be. Just to clarify, I didn't blow up at her, but that's probably what it looked like. It was back when I was still with my evil ex, money was tight from her not working and constantly running up the bills, and I couldn't afford to spend a lot on groceries or anything else. So I kind of freaked when I saw the total.

The cashier timidly offered to recheck it, and I told her no, it wasn't her fault, it was mine for not keeping track. I apologized several times, but the poor girl seemed really upset, and I can't say I blame her. I can be scary when I blow up like that, even to the people I'm not upset with.

After that, I started bringing along a calculator so that nothing like that would ever happen again. Although it was even better when I finally came to my senses and kicked that evil bitch to the curb.