Abuse procedures... Reality Checks

Wed Apr 11 23:46:45 UTC 2007

--- rsk at gsp.org wrote:
On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 03:44:01PM -0400, Warren Kumari wrote:

> The same thing happens with things like abuse -- it is easy to deal  
> with abuse on a small scale. It is somewhat harder on a medium scale  
> and harder still on a large scale -- the progression from small to  
> medium to large is close to linear. 

: First, I don't buy this.  I think dealing with abuse is *much*
: easier for large operations than small.

The original email I sent was about *how* you deal with it.  J. Oquendo vociferously defended his position when he finally got around to saying, "...if someone cannot get out somewhere, they're obviously going to get in touch with me as to why. Once this is done, it is explained [...] I've always contacted someone [...] after about 3 attempts at getting someone to assess their network..."

I said this doesn't scale even to hundreds of thousands of customers much less higher numbers.  There are definitely scaling issues with this method of dealing with abuse.   You can't just hire more phone monkeys linearly to the number of customers you have. 

<snip>

: Second, I don't really care how hard it is.   It's YOUR network, YOU
: built it, YOU plugged it into our Internet: therefore, however hard
: it is, it's YOUR problem.  Fix it.

Not always.  I have inherited various networks over the years that were already built by folks that didn't care.  You do the best you can to get it to as good a network as possible, but you never completely reach the goal of "good".  

Additionally, upper management gives or takes away manpower many times without the understanding of what 'should' be done to be a good netizen and this defines how much effort can be spent on fixing the problems.    The only thing a person can really do is quit and move on.  That's not always an option.  There're very few interesting-to-operate networks here in Hawaii.  So, you focus on the top priorities: keeping the current customers and getting more by operating the network in as efficient a manner as possible.  Myself, I work outside business hours to try to be a good guy, fix stuff and serve the Hawaiian community in an altruistic manner, but there's only so much stuff one person can do.

<snip>

scott