Clueless service restrictions (was RE: Anti-spam System Idea)

Thu Feb 19 15:20:45 UTC 2004

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 11:41:37 +0700, "Dr. Jeffrey Race" said:

> The identities of chronically mal-administered systems are well
> know.
> 
> There are some practical implementation problems at the margin but
> for (I am guessing) 95% of the cases, it is trivially easy.

So we're left with the conclusion that the fact there's a problem at all
indicates that there's a massive failure at the ISP level. It's either failure
of will, or failure of clue - though I suspect the former.

What *real* incentive is there for an ISP to take action?  I mean, we all
*know* that support is usually a money sink, and nobody wants to turn off a
paying customer and then have to spend the time talking them through fixing the
problem.  So if you're finding that your T-3 is finally full, and it's all spam
and P2P file sharing, you have to ask which costs more, actually dealing with
the problem users (and possibly scaring them off to a competitor), or just
biting the bullet and getting an OC3.

Other than the fear of a forklift upgrade of infrastructure, the only other
thing that currently works to motivate most ISPs is public derision on NANOG,
blacklisting, and anything else that is the equivalent of a swat across the
nose with a rolled up newspaper and a stern "Bad Puppy. You pooped on the
carpet, no doggie treat for you".

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