Posted by Oink, oink on August 01, 2003 at 14:54 [212.159.85.34]
In Reply to: Re: Pigs Might Fly Too posted by Teach on August 01, 2003 at 11:54
Hi Teach,
What you say is perfectly correct. AOL (and other ISPs) re-use dynamically allocated IP addresses and different people will get the same address over time. There are limits - it has to be the same router, so in a limited geographical area. It is known to be a small area, otherwise no more than 255 subscribers could use AOL at once (each part of an IP address represents two hex digits) and different routers cannot have clashing addresses otherwise traffic couldn't be routed to the right one!
What stretches incredulity beyond breaking point is being asked to believe that the same limited address range has 20 supposedly different people, all in the same small part of the UK, all into watersports, all abusing and impersonating the same posters and all agreeing with one another!
If you look at IP addresses of other posts which do not share these characteristics, there are very few or no other such 'coincidences'. It will be slightly more likely with AOL because of its high number of users.
I am pretty sure that there are one or two innocent AOL posters who were caught up when this address range was banned because of what the troublemakers did. But most posts with that very small address range are by the same person or small group of people who pretend to be different posters talking to one another when nobody else replies to them and who caused the original trouble.