> >"well, I did a traceroute to the source and it passed through one of
> >your routers".
>
> Was that true?
I have no idea, I only have the complainant's word for it. But I was assuming
here that his traceroute to the spam source did indeed show a router within
our domain.
> Post
> the IP so that the rest of us can try doing traceroutes also.
I no longer have it. I'm not sure I *ever* had it. All I had was the headers
from the offending spam that the complainant sent me. They didn't show any
of our servers, so it was clear to me that there wasn't anything I could
reasonably do about it.
> (I for one wasn't aware that NCAR gave connectivity
> to anybody except NCAR.)
We belong to a number of cooperative research networks, such as
Abilene, the vBNS, Front Range GigaPop (FRGP), etc. The purpose of
these is either to provide high speed connectivity between academic and
research institutions, or to share the cost of a high bandwidth
commodity Internet hookup. Because NCAR was the first in the area to
start this process, most of the links in to these various networks go
through us. But a number of these links and routers are not even owned
by us, they are owned collectively by organizations such as FRGP (and
yes, I'm sure the FRGP has an acceptable use policy that would not
permit any of its members to be spam houses). In addition to that,
most of the links are redundant links, which means that even if we did
block someone's access, it would hurt only us, by damaging our
credibility with the other institutions we are cooperating with. It
wouldn't even succeed in cutting off the source.
> Let's just say that it would be a Better World if everyone who provides
> bandwidth to spam sources would be somewhat more pro-active about its
> elimination.
This is an arguable point. I think it is conceivable that, if places
like NCAR were forced to police the content of IP packets routed
through here, that the cure could be worse than the disease. NCAR does
not have the resources to do this, so if there were ever a requirement
that we do so, a lot of these cooperative agreements would most likely
end. I think this would be an extremely high price to pay. Think about
what would happen if this were required of the backbone providers. This
is like killing the host body to wipe out the germ.
> NCAR is taxpayer supported. I are a taxpayer. I do not wish to have even
> 1/100th of 1% of my federal tax dollars spent in providing bandwidth to
> spammers.
This argument at least means nothing. I too am a taxpayer, and the government
does lots of things that I don't approve of and that I would rather they
didn't spend a penny of my money on, but this argument doesn't seem
to stop them.
> The MAPS RBL has "blackholed" some fairly large organizations because they
> were repeatedly and persistantly providing connectivity to spammers.
This isn't quite the same thing. You are now referring to a consistent
and demonstrable pattern. I was referring to a single incident. I think
it's a waste of time to get traffic carriers involved at this stage.
There isn't a chance in hell that any IP service provider is going to
terminate or even threaten to terminate someone's access based on a
single complaint or incident. The complaints at this stage should be
directed to the actual source of the problem, where it can be fixed.
That is all I am saying.
> >To me, this is like expecting the phone company to prevent illegal use
> >of the phone system.
>
> No, that is a seriously flawed analogy.
>
> It is more like expecting the Village Elders to take a stick and whack
> the Village Idiot over the head when he gets drunk on a Saturday Night
> and then goes around trashing other nearby villiages.
No, it's not. It's like expecting our Village Elders to deal with the
neighboring village's idiot for something he did to yet a third village,
because he might have walked through our village on the way there.
*His* village's elders should be handling that. Our Village Elders
are quite willing to deal with our own idiots, and we have done so when
we have had to (mostly cases of SMTP servers accidentally left open
that were quickly closed when discovered).
> So you would prefer the kind of Internet where numerous Village Idiots
> are left to run rampant with no restraints whatsoever??
I certainly never said any such thing. What I am saying is that people
realistically in a position to apply the restraints should be the ones
to do so.
--Greg
