Vonage Hits ISP Resistance

Thu Mar 31 07:46:24 UTC 2005

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Jamie Norwood wrote:

>
> On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:33:49 -0800, Alexei Roudnev <alex at relcom.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Heard of a little thing called 'spam'?
>>
>> So what? You can use your car as a weapon; should we prohibit you from car
>> driving?
>
> No, but if your car doesn't have seat belts, we don't let you drive
> it. Basic SMTP lacks safety features that are needed, ergo,
> retrictions were placed on it.
>
> As was mentioned, my point was just that the question posited was
> flawed. SMTP isn't restricted for competition and money-making
> reasons, but because to not restrict it can have quite undesired
> implications. The question was why was one ok, and the other not. The
> answer is because of spam.

Ah NANOG, where people ask rhetorical questions and get answers...

It seems a bit simplistic (and misses the point of the original rhetorical 
question) to say that it's common to block the SMTP port "because of 
spam."  Having been involved in weighing that business decision a few 
times, it's tended to be more a matter of balancing the direct and 
indirect effects of being a spam source on an ISP's operations (lots of 
staff time dealing with spam complaints, bad reputations, ending up on 
blackhole lists) with the effects of turning off a service some customers 
find useful.  In general, the people who will be upset by an ISP not 
blocking outbound spam are not the ISP's customers, while those upset 
about the ISP blocking legitimate outbound SMTP are.  But ISPs sometimes 
decide they can't afford to make the customers who want outbound SMTP 
happy.

That's why the rhetorical question asked earlier made some sense.  ISPs 
aren't going to be blocking VOIP "because of spam," at least not until 
they start getting bombarded with complaints about their customers using 
VOIP services for automated telemarketing.  But they may block it because 
they think the benefits of blocking it (reducing traffic, keeping VOIP 
business to themselves) outweigh the costs of customers getting annoyed. 
If it's ok to block SMTP for that reason, why not VOIP, or why not the 
web?

I'll note again that these are rhetorical questions.  They don't need to 
be answered.

Personally, if the colo provider who hosts my mail server were to block 
outbound SMTP, the service would become pretty useless to me and I'd have 
to take my (non-paying) business elsewhere.  If my GPRS provider were to 
block it, I probably wouldn't notice.  Likewise, if the colo provider 
blocked VOIP, I probably wouldn't notice, but if my DSL provider did, it 
would be a problem.

An ISP who blocks VOIP is going to have some customers get upset, just 
like an ISP that blocks outbound SMTP.  They may even lose some business. 
But will they lose enough business to offset whatever gain they think 
they're getting?  I think I can guess the answer, but actual numbers from 
those who've tried it would be far more interesting than the speculation 
we've been seeing here.

-Steve