Worm Bandwidth [was Re: Santa Fe city government computers knocked out by worm]

Fri Nov 28 23:24:51 UTC 2003

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Petri Helenius wrote:
> If you are an access provider, specially in the consumer space, you can
> do many things to help the "Greater Internet" by keeping your own back
> yard in good shape.  In the transit business, you are expected to
> deliver the bits regardless of the content so there the only viable
> option is to drop packets where the source or  destination addresses
> don´t make sense.

What is the difference between a transit provider and an access provider,
specially in the consumer space?  Why is a transit provider expected to
deliver the bits, but the access provider isn't?  Since the bulk of
Internet access is actually provided by wholesale providers (e.g.
AOL/Earthlink buy wholesale modem access from UUNET/Level3), who is
the access provider and who is the transit provider?