How many protocols...

Mansey, Jon Jon_Mansey at verestar.com
Wed Jun 12 21:18:44 UTC 2002


Imagine the sceanrio, customer calls ISP, " hey I cant connect to my work
VPN through your connection", ISP, "Ahah, you need our business service, not
the $20/m home user service, let me put you through to a business service
sales person who'll be happy to take your $50/m, then you'll be able to work
from home"



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Crist J. Clark [mailto:crist.clark at attbi.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 1:34 PM
> To: Stephen Sprunk
> Cc: nanog at merit.edu
> Subject: Re: How many protocols...
> 
> 
> 
> Stephen Sprunk wrote,
> > Thus spake "Magnus Boden" <mb at ozaba.cx>
> > > I wouldn't call it an isp if they only allowed tcp, udp 
> and icmp. It 
> > > should be all ip protocols.
> > >
> > > There can be a maximum of 256 of them. The isp shouldn't 
> care what 
> > > the ipheader->protocol field is set to.
> >
> > There is at least one ISP here in the US that filters protocol 50 
> > (IPsec ESP). Does that mean they're really not an ISP?
> 
> If they are an ISP they are an aggressively clueless ISP. Why 
> on Earth would you block ESP? Some strange marketing ploy to 
> charge more to allow people to use VPNs? Ever heard of 
> transport mode? Does it actually cost them more to move ESP 
> packets than TCP/UDP/ICMP packets? Are they under some 
> mistaken impression ESP would be a bandwidth hog? Do they 
> block GRE (protocol 47)? Do they block Checkpoint's FWZ 
> (protocol 94)? Or any of the other zillion VPN protocols 
> (some which ride over TCP and UDP too)?
> 
> Exactly which ISP does this? They deserve some public 
> humiliation for doing something that breathtakingly stupid to 
> their customers.
> -- 
> Crist J. Clark                     |     cjclark at alum.mit.edu
>                                    |     cjclark at jhu.edu
> http://people.freebsd.org/~cjc/    |     cjc at freebsd.org
> 


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