"Default" Internet Service (was: Re: Points on your Internet driver's license)

John Curran jcurran at istaff.org
Sun Jun 13 01:54:27 UTC 2004


The real challenge here is that the "default" Internet service is
wide-open Internet Protocol, w/o any safeties or controls.   This
made a lot of sense when the Internet was a few hundred sites,
but is showing real scaling problems today (spam, major viruses,
etc.)

One could imagine changing the paradigm (never easy) so that 
the normal Internet service was proxied for common applications 
and NAT'ed for everything else...  This wouldn't eliminate all the
problems, but would dramatically cut down the incident rate.

If a site wants wide-open access, just give it to them.  If that turns 
out to cause operational problems (due to open mail proxies, spam 
origination, etc), then put 'em back behind the relays.

/John



More information about the NANOG mailing list