At 1:46 PM -0800 1/7/02, John Gilmore wrote: >I thought ISPs were supposed to be bit-pipes. End-to-end unrestricted >connectivity is the basic feature of the Internet. This feature is >what made the Internet superior to every preceding network. If my ISP >was filtering my mail or my packets, I'd complain.
Bit pipes yes ... but some ISPs are trying to add "value added services". The average home user has trouble running firewalls and virus checking sofware and would likely pay to have someone else handle these services at the ISP. The reason it is not commonly available is that firewalls and particularly virus filtering requires lots of computing resources. This translates into a need for a whole new class of network device that provides "network edge services". For example: http://www.cosinecom.com/library/b_ipsdp.html I suspect that we will see in the next few years a proliferation of add on services to our base internet connectivity. This will be akin to paying for caller id or call forwarding on our phone services. If you don't need it, you won't subscribe, users that do need these services will have the option to buy them from their ISP. Now having hardware in ISPs that have the ability to scan all traffic at full Gigabit data rates could be abused in the future ... but that's a different thread of discussion. Paul -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
