Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt

Fri Oct 26 21:56:20 UTC 2001

There is another issue here.  I hope the DI has another method of gauging
performance.  We all know well that ICMP is being fully blocked by some.  Is
there no other way for DI to try to approximate the proximity of a customer
to their servers?  If a network is blocking ICMP, how is the decision of
proximity made.

----- Original Message -----
From: "JC Dill" <nanog at vo.cnchost.com>
To: <nanog at merit.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 4:23 PM
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt

>
> On 12:45 AM 10/26/2001 -0700, James Thomason wrote:
>
>  >(We are of course, ignoring the fact that this is an "attack" not a
>  >"request" or a "probe", or some other form of well intentioned traffic.)
>
> I don't like using the term "well intentioned".  Spammers repeatedly claim
> that they have good intentions when they send spam, because *some* people
> supposedly like getting their unsolicited email.  It's not enough to have
> good intentions, you MUST put yourself in the shoes of the recipient and
of
> those who transit your packets and see how THEY feel about the traffic
> before you can be said to have "good intentions" about sending it off.
>
> And that's what got Digital Island into this mess.  They didn't really
stop
> to think about what level of probe qualifies as unintrusive and "good
> intentioned" from the point of the recipient, only from their end as the
> entity that desires to send the probe.  Because it's good for their needs,
> they assume the other end will see the "joint benefit" and not be
> bothered.  But they were (obviously) wrong.  Now that they know, they need
> to pull back and redesign their probes from point of view that is more
> sensitive to the needs and concerns of the recipient.
>
> For a start, they shouldn't probe any network that hasn't (yet) requested
> any content from them.  Then, if they probe in response to a content
> request, the probe should SAY THAT so the recipient understands the mutual
> benefit.  Finally, the procedure for stopping the probes needs to be
> reconfigured for ease of use for the recipient who wants it stopped NOW,
> not for the convenience of DI.
>
> jc
>