ISPs' willingness to take action

Mon Oct 27 03:40:28 UTC 2003

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <kenw at kmsi.net>
To: <nanog at nanog.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 8:01 PM
Subject: ISPs' willingness to take action

> By the way, can anybody explain to me a legitimate use for port 135/137
> traffic across the Internet, like it's somebody's private LAN?  Seems to
me
> anybody who still thinks that's legitimate is living in the past.

> So, the big question: why don't ISPs do more of this?  Are they afraid of
> client reaction?  Doesn't wash, for me: most clients would be highly
> grateful, and all it really takes for the remainder is fair warning.
Cost?
> Again, you can judge for yourselves how low the fruit you choose to pick;
> the biggest gains have the best ROI.

> Happy clients, liberated bandwidth, faster servers -- what's to loose?

Problem is, some applications, like Outlook for example (if I remember
correctly), like to use the 135, 137, 139 and others to connect to the
Exchange server.  You block them, and it will start to croak.  You have alot
of home users not using a VPN to connect to their office exchange servers.
I used to do this myself at times.

When you sell a service to someone, and neglect to mention you block certain
incoming ports, especially to a possible business user or home user trying
to access their office, you put yourself in a really bad position.

--------------------------
Brian Bruns
The Summit Open Source Development Group
Open Solutions For A Closed World / Anti-Spam Resources
http://www.sosdg.org
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