Digex transparent proxying

Fri Jun 26 05:02:39 UTC 1998

I went searching through my email (since Digex support claimed customers
had been notified of Digex's intent to start transparent proxying) and
found that I did get "a message" that I'd missed while out of town for
Linux Expo.  Here's the message:

---
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 19:37:03 -0400
From: DIGEX Customer Support <support at digex.net>
To: DIGEX Customer Support <support at digex.net>
Subject: DIGEX Service Enhancement Notification: 06/02/1998 0400 - 0800
EDT

Service Enhancement: 06/02/1998 0400-0800 EDT
Location: DCA1 POP, Washington, DC

During a configuration window between 4am and 8am on 06/02/1998, DIGEX
will be upgrading the dca1-cpe router to which your leased line is
connected.  These upgrades will increase the speed at which you retrieve
web pages, as well as improve your web surfing experience.  The downtime
will be minimal, 15 minutes at the most.

We apologize for any inconvenience this scheduled maintenance will cause,
and trust the changes to be made will improve your Internet connectivity.
Please feel free to contact the DIGEX Customer Service Team with any
questions concerning this maintenance, referencing trouble ticket
TT-LL0025428.

---

That's pretty darn cryptic.  "We'll be upgrading the router you connect
to...to increase the spead at which you retrieve pages and surf".  What
does that mean?  More memory for the router?  A faster CPU module?

Why didn't they just come out and say "We'll be reconfiguring the router
to which you connect to do policy based routing so we can hijack all your
web traffic and run it through a web cache...we'd rather blow our $ on
marketing than continue to invest in the infrastructure required to
support our leased line sales." 

Digex is seriously missing the point that not all customers are an office
of drones surfing the web all day.  We (FDT) use Digex for transit. 
Several ISPs use FDT for their internet connectivity.  By forcing all our
traffic through a web cache, they've seriously impacted the service we
provide to our customers and the service our customers provide to their
customers.  Many hours have been wasted at FDT and by FDT's customers
debugging problems that I'd originally written off as "user BS" as the
description of the problem was just too off the wall to believe.  

I think we have at least one customer interested in the possibility of
legal action against Digex.

------------------------------------------------------------------
 Jon Lewis <jlewis at fdt.net>  |  Spammers will be winnuked or 
 Network Administrator       |  drawn and quartered...whichever
 Florida Digital Turnpike    |  is more convenient.
______http://inorganic5.fdt.net/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key____