Net-block issues

Wed Aug 15 18:36:36 UTC 2001

On Wed, Aug 15, 2001 at 08:38:35AM -0700, Roeland Meyer wrote:
> It is with wry amusement that I have been following the MAPs debate,
> on NANOG, recently. 

Indeed.  Every time anything related to spam, or more specifically the
MAPS blackholes, makes its way to NANOG, all the net.k00ks come out of
the woodwork begging for sympathy, and remind us once again that they
lack the mental capacity needed to Do The Right Thing and get
themselves un-blackholed.  Our mailboxes grow quickly despite the fact
that nothing interesting, or of operational relevance, is discussed.

> Then you make this comment, it couldn't dove-tail more
> beautifully. Those that do not know what MAPs is, please review
> http://www.mail-abuse.org/.

Those who continue to contribute to this nonsense, even though it's
gotten to the point where it's clearly off-topic and best suited for
spam-l, inet-access, or just about any list other than this one,
please review <http://www.maps.org/>.

> [...] MAPS has recently announced intention of charging for their
> service, in order to raise money for legal fees (they are under
> legal attack).

Quick, time for us to contribute to their legal defense fund.  It's
amazing just how how scary some of the individuals and organizations
pestering them with threats of gratuitous litigation are.

> The problem is that MAPS was distributing the lists and there were
> many local copies, within places like EarthLink and AOL. As long as
> those copies are maintained by MAPS, this is not a serious problem.

As has been pointed out earlier, MAPS subscribers are required to stay
current.  If they're not, perhaps it's time to enforce the terms of
their membership agreement, though I'd imagine this too requires a
good amount of time and money...

> The result of an net-block being listed in MAPS is that entire
> chunks of the Internet cannot reach that net-block.  This is done at
> the provider level.

Really?  Are you aware of any large service providers _currently_
filtering transit customer egress/ingress using the MAPS RBL?  

> a net-block can be issued, to a new business, that may be perfectly
> useless and neither the ISP or the business knows about it until it
> is too late.

I'm sure many people do check newly allocated IP space before using
it, to confirm it's not in a commonly used blackhole list, and
nobody's filtering their route announcements (ie outdated and/or
misconfigured bogon filters).  And those who don't, should.

> If anything argues for a centralised systems approach, the MAPS
> functionality does. IMHO, this makes it an ICANN issue. Yes, this
> also politicizes it somewhat. 

I think you're taking this way too seriously.  What next, ringing up
the United Nations New World Order(tm) because some blackhole said boo
to you?

-adam