who offers cheap (personal) 1U colo?

Sun Mar 14 05:40:10 UTC 2004

sean at donelan.com (Sean Donelan) writes:

> If the block list operators think it is a "dialup" range, they
> pre-emptively block all the addresses in the range.

that's because at $30/month there's no budget for a "dialup" provider
to call their worm-infested customers one at a time and talk them 
through "Windows Update", and the "free" "antivirus" software they
include on their customer cdroms is crippleware or adware or both.

providers who refuse to enter the "race to the bottom" can get their
dialup blocks delisted from any blackhole list operator i know of,
just by demonstrating clue and conviction.

> It has very little to do with the quality of the ISP's abuse desk.

long term, it does.  my sister is in sbc-dsl territory and before i
linuxed her and tunneled her, i had a terrible time getting e-mail from
her.  the /24 that her nat/dsl box got by dhcp had a dozen open proxies
in it.  sbc's abuse desk sure as hell didn't want to hear from me about
it and the owners of the infected pee cee's wouldn't've wanted to hear
from me even if i'd had some way to identify them and offer them a free
linux upgrade if they'd just open their front door and lead me to their
pee cee.

> ... But large DSL or cable address ranges, even if the addresses are
> statically assigned to specific customers, are pre-emptively blocked.

there's a sound statistical basis for this.  and a strong abuse desk
(which would show up as higher-than-$30/month-fees) would change those
statistics and improve the reputation of that "kind" of address space.

> I suppose ISPs could create boutique service provider subsidaries for
> serious-minded professional power-users.  Ask ARIN for independent
> "elite" IP address ranges. Maybe even get a different 1-800 number for
> customer service and abuse complaints.  Of course, customers would pay
> more for this "elite" service.

rather, i think that your employer and other dsl providers ought to get
into the $50/month 1U colo business and market this to their power users
and budget for a strong abuse desk for the small amounts of address space
used by that function.  (and if you do, please send me the URL and details.)

it would be marketing suicide to offer a different dsl-dhcp ip address
to people willing to pay enough to budget for an abuse desk.  but if you
call it colocation then it doesn't look as if you're cheap bastards for
not being willing to budget for a strong abuse desk for ALL your customers.
-- 
Paul Vixie