Re: Announcing Peering-LAN prefixes to customers

[Mark Tinka]

On 3/Jan/19 22:08, Andy Davidson wrote:

> There are no stupid questions!  It is a good idea to not BGP announce and 
> perhaps also to drop traffic toward peering LAN prefixes at customer-borders, 
> this was already well discussed in the thread.  But there wasn’t a discussion 
> on how we got to this point. Until the Cloudflare 2013 BGP speaker attack, 
> that sought to flood Cloudflare’s transfer networks and exchange connectivity 
> (and with it saturating IXP inter-switch links and IXP participant ports), it 
> was common for IXP IPv4/6 peering LANs to be internet reachable and BGP 
> transited. 

That's interesting to learn.

Running a few exchange points in Africa since 2002, the news was that
the exchange point LAN should not be visible anywhere on the Internet.
It would be interesting to know that this wasn't the case in other parts
of the world.

Mark.

Re: Service Provider NetFlow Collectors

[Mark Tinka]

We were on Arbor for quite some time, but are now moving to Kentik.

Mark.

On 3/Jan/19 05:37, Nick Peelman wrote:
> We rolled a large(ish) ElasticSearch cluster last year out of SuperMicro 
> Microclouds (3U, 8 nodes per chassis, Xeon-D based processors), mostly 32GB 
> of RAM per node, and M.2 PCIe SSDs as well as HDD storage.  ES is a finicky 
> beast to maintain. It can handle a node completely dying or disappearing from 
> the network, but not when one runs out of space (at least not gracefully).  
> Maintaining retention and rotation is tedious at best (yay curator).  We’re 
> dumping a boatload of log data there, as well as Flow data using Elastiflow, 
> which provides the necessary collector bits as well as all the pretty Kibana 
> graphs and stuff.  Probably overbuilt, but I can pretty much keep whatever 
> logs we want in perpetuity, we have plenty of headroom, and searching is 
> incredibly fast.
>
> ELK is an awesome set of tools, but be warned, there be dragons.  Admin’ing 
> even a small cluster can be time consuming and frustrating, and requires a 
> pretty stout linux and server background, or at least some really good 
> troubleshooting skills and an ability to turn to the code when the docs fall 
> short.  Doing a larger cluster could easily be a full time job.  Still, all 
> in all, I’m happy with the cost of ours, including my time building it and 
> continued time maintaining it, compared to what the yearly outlay was going 
> to be for Kentik.
>
> -nick
>
> On 31 Dec 2018, at 11:40, Mike Hammett 
> mailto:na...@ics-il.net>> wrote:
>
> I just recently rolled out Elastiflow. Lots of great information.
>
>
>
> -
> Mike Hammett
> Intelligent Computing Solutions
> http://www.ics-il.com
>
> Midwest-IX
> http://www.midwest-ix.com
>
> 
> From: "Michel 'ic' Luczak" mailto:li...@benappy.com>>
> To: "Erik Sundberg" mailto:esundb...@nitelusa.com>>
> Cc: nanog@nanog.org
> Sent: Monday, December 31, 2018 3:40:40 AM
> Subject: Re: Service Provider NetFlow Collectors
>
> Don’t underestimate good old ELK
> https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/netflow-module.html
> + https://github.com/robcowart/elastiflow
>
> BR, ic
>
> On 31 Dec 2018, at 04:29, Erik Sundberg 
> mailto:esundb...@nitelusa.com>> wrote:
>
> Hi Nanog….
>
> We are looking at replacing our Netflow collector. I am wonder what other 
> service providers are using to collect netflow data off their Core and Edge 
> Routers. Pros/Cons… What to watch out for any info would help.
>
> We are mainly looking to analyze the netflow data. Bonus if it does ddos 
> detection and mitigation.
>
> We are looking at
> ManageEngine Netflow Analyzer
> PRTG
> Plixer – Scrutinizer
> PeakFlow
> Kentik
> Solarwinds NTA
>
>
> Thanks in advance…
>
> Erik
>
>
> 
>
> CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This e-mail transmission, and any documents, files or 
> previous e-mail messages attached to it may contain confidential information 
> that is legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, or a 
> person responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you are 
> hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of any of 
> the information contained in or attached to this transmission is STRICTLY 
> PROHIBITED. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the 
> sender immediately by replying to this e-mail. You must destroy the original 
> transmission and its attachments without reading or saving in any manner. 
> Thank you.
>

Re: plaintext email?

[bzs]

On January 16, 2019 at 00:04 jo...@iecc.com (John Levine) wrote:
 > > > Sudden plot-twist!
 > > > 
 > > > A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic 
 > > > forms of
 > > > encryption in the messages all along!�
 > >
 > >Did you mean steganographic?
 > 
 > No, stenographic, like, you know, double rot13.

Well slap my butt and call me Gregg!

-- 
-Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die| b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD   | 800-THE-WRLD
The World: Since 1989  | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

Re: plaintext email?

[cosmo]

You're way too close to the truth. The steganographic code is based on
typos. (bit rate is rather shit)
Now you must be  Elluminated

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 9:06 PM John Levine  wrote:

> > > Sudden plot-twist!
> > >
> > > A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic
> forms of
> > > encryption in the messages all along!
> >
> >Did you mean steganographic?
>
> No, stenographic, like, you know, double rot13.
>
> R's,
> John
>

Re: plaintext email?

[John Levine]

> > Sudden plot-twist!
> > 
> > A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic 
> > forms of
> > encryption in the messages all along!�
>
>Did you mean steganographic?

No, stenographic, like, you know, double rot13.

R's,
John

Re: plaintext email?

[bzs]

On January 15, 2019 at 13:58 clinton.mie...@gmail.com (cosmo) wrote:
 > Sudden plot-twist!
 > 
 > A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic forms 
 > of
 > encryption in the messages all along! 

Did you mean steganographic?

I only ask because someone might learn something if they have the
right term, it's an interesting topic for those who are interested:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography

-- 
-Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die| b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD   | 800-THE-WRLD
The World: Since 1989  | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

RE: the e-mail of the future is the e-mail oft the past, was Enough port 26 talk...

[Keith Medcalf]

On Tuesday, 15 January, 2019 12:10, James Downs  wrote:

>On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 06:46:07PM +0100, Tei wrote:

>> Is very hard to replace a open protocol,  wrapping may work if the
>> protocol is mostly abandoned (IRC) but thats not the case for
>> email.

> IRC is far from abandonded. There are lots of very active networks,
> 2 of which I use continously.
>
> But, it's been a week of non-NANOG talk, so

Plus there is IRC by web pages -- you know where all the Twit's hang out .. 
Twittering amongst themselves.

---
The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven says a 
lot about anticipated traffic volume.

Re: Your opinion on network analysis in the presence of uncertain events

[Mel Beckman]

I know of none that take probabilities as inputs. Traditional network 
simulators, such as GNS3, let you model various failure modes, but probability 
seems squishy enough that I don’t see how it can be accurate, and thus helpful. 
It’s like that Dilbert cartoon where the pointy haired boss asks for a schedule 
of all future unplanned outages :)

https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-01-29

 -mel

On Jan 15, 2019, at 11:59 AM, Vanbever Laurent 
mailto:lvanbe...@ethz.ch>> wrote:


I took the survey. It’s short and sweet — well done!

Thanks a lot, Mel! Highly appreciated!

I do have a question. You ask "Are there any good?” Any good what?

I just meant whether existing network analysis tools were any good (or good 
enough) at reasoning about probabilistic behaviors that people care about (if 
any).

All the best,
Laurent

Re: plaintext email?

[Bryan Fields]

On 1/15/19 5:16 PM, Christopher Morrow wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 5:07 PM Aled Morris via NANOG 
> wrote:

Please don't post empty messages to the NANOG list.

-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net

Re: plaintext email?

[Christopher Morrow]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 5:07 PM Aled Morris via NANOG 
wrote:

> You can hide your secret message  by writing:
>
> dash dash space return
>
> Followed by your message.
>
> It’ll be hidden from all but the Internet illuminati
>
>
-- 

is that true?


> Aled
>
>
> On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 at 22:00, cosmo  wrote:
>
>> Sudden plot-twist!
>>
>> A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic
>> forms of encryption in the messages all along!
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 1:06 PM Bryan Fields 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 1/15/19 12:24 AM, b...@theworld.com wrote:
>>> > I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.
>>>
>>> It's like having an @aol.com address.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Bryan Fields
>>>
>>> 727-409-1194 - Voice
>>> http://bryanfields.net
>>>
>>

Re: plaintext email?

[Aled Morris via NANOG]

You can hide your secret message  by writing:

dash dash space return

Followed by your message.

It’ll be hidden from all but the Internet illuminati

Aled


On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 at 22:00, cosmo  wrote:

> Sudden plot-twist!
>
> A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic
> forms of encryption in the messages all along!
>
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 1:06 PM Bryan Fields 
> wrote:
>
>> On 1/15/19 12:24 AM, b...@theworld.com wrote:
>> > I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.
>>
>> It's like having an @aol.com address.
>
>
>>
>> --
>> Bryan Fields
>>
>> 727-409-1194 - Voice
>> http://bryanfields.net
>>
>

dyn internet intelligence

[Mehmet Akcin]

can someone from dyn reach out to me offline?

https://dyn.com/dyn-internet-intelligence/

i have been trying to subscribe and pay for this service and i am getting
sales people ping me and not follow up with price information (which is
weird...)

thank you

Re: plaintext email?

[cosmo]

Sudden plot-twist!

A small elite group of NANOG participants have been using stenographic
forms of encryption in the messages all along!

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 1:06 PM Bryan Fields  wrote:

> On 1/15/19 12:24 AM, b...@theworld.com wrote:
> > I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.
>
> It's like having an @aol.com address.
>
> --
> Bryan Fields
>
> 727-409-1194 - Voice
> http://bryanfields.net
>

Re: plaintext email?

[Bryan Fields]

On 1/15/19 12:24 AM, b...@theworld.com wrote:
> I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.

It's like having an @aol.com address.

-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net

Re: plaintext email?

[James R Cutler]

Warning —top posting also with interspersed comments.

👍🏻  <— that’s a thumbs up
> On Jan 15, 2019, at 1:36 PM, b...@theworld.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Re: Top Posting
> 
> To me it depends on whether there's any chance the reader won't know
> what precisely you're responding to in which case in-line is
> warranted.
> 
> I don't have any quoted text in this msg (is that top posting?), is
> anyone lost?
> 
> THE REAL REASON for my responding at all is because there are people
> who lurk and sometimes manage lists who will react angrily, often in
> private email (cowards! :-) ), to a top-post as if you violated some
> inarguable rule and you maybe should be banned or at the very least
> are very rude, similar in tone to if you'd spammed the list or
> whatever.

I am appalled at the nastiness regarding posting prejudices.
"But, but, if your cognitive processes do not match mine, you are an idiot.”
“Why should I love my neighbor as myself? I am so much better"
> 
> I just thought I'd point out it's just a formatting opinion, a
> judgement call by whoever is responding, and nothing more, it's not
> some rule everyone accepts so lose the self-righteous tone.
> 
> If anything I suspect it might have to do with the MUA one uses.
> 
> Maybe, at the very least, accept that the person who top-posted is
> looking at a very different layout than you are, one where that
> top-post looks just fine?

And the viewer/replier may have significantly different cognitive skills.
> 
> I use Emacs/VM for email. It's quite good at, for example, splitting
> the screen so I can look ahead (or behind) in the message if I've lost
> track of some context, or even opening multiple related msgs (even if
> already filed) simultaneously to go back and review what's been said
> already, or forward even to see if one is about to say something which
> has already been adequately addressed.
> 
> It's probably quite a bit different than the one-way upside-down
> (date-wise) scrolling on some vendor-supplied smartphone app.
> 
> I've used them when I've had nothing else and I haven't a clue how one
> can do much else than essentially "more" thru the latest, silo'd, 10^9
> spams interspersed with the occasional bit of ham 20 lines at a time
> so I guess I can understand why some become desperate and angry to get
> others to format their email for their convenience.
> 
> Maybe your problem isn't the top-posting but your lousy MUA?

Or, perhaps, attitude?
> 
> -- 
>-Barry Shein
> 
> Software Tool & Die| b...@theworld.com | 
> http://www.TheWorld.com
> Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD   | 800-THE-WRLD
> The World: Since 1989  | A Public Information Utility | *oo*


James R. Cutler
james.cut...@consultant.com
GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net

Re: Top Posting Was: Re: plaintext email?

[James R Cutler]

On Jan 15, 2019, at 1:06 PM, John Levine  wrote:
> 
> By the way, have you changed and memorized all your passwords for this
> month yet?

No, I do not follow a predictable rhythm in changing passwords. Some change 
frequently, some change infrequently.

I only remember my login password, my iDevice PINs, and my 1Password password. 
1Password generates and remembers all the rest.

Changing passwords frequently is not effective if passwords are re-used between 
multiple sites. This continues to be the number one rule the I try to inculcate 
in my clients.

Re: Your opinion on network analysis in the presence of uncertain events

[Vanbever Laurent]

> I took the survey. It’s short and sweet — well done!

Thanks a lot, Mel! Highly appreciated!

> I do have a question. You ask "Are there any good?” Any good what?

I just meant whether existing network analysis tools were any good (or good 
enough) at reasoning about probabilistic behaviors that people care about (if 
any).

All the best,
Laurent

Re: the e-mail of the future is the e-mail oft the past, was Enough port 26 talk...

[Grant Taylor via NANOG]

On 01/15/2019 10:46 AM, Tei wrote:
I think the newsgroups died because was expensive for ISPs and filled 
with nasty stuff (warez and porn).


I believe newsgroups are still very much so alive and quite active.  I 
see 15k ~ 20k messages / 50 ~ 75 MB of /text/ newsgroups daily on my 
server.  My ~15 (I don't remember the exact number and can't be bothered 
to loo) peers will likely agree with me.


I see content on Usenet that is not available elsewhere.

There's also the binary news servers that are used to trade warz and 
pr0n and other untold things.



Gopher died because HTML was a improvement in every possible way.


I still see references to people using Gopher multiple times a year.


IRC still exist,


Yep.  I use it daily.


because it don't need to be hosted by a ISP.


I don't think an ISP is required to host any of the things being 
discussed in this email.



Forums still exist.


Yep.

Some of them even gateway into other communication mediums.


Mail list still exist (we are on one) Homesites where replaced by blogs.


Based on what I /personally/ see, mailing lists and usenet are roughly 
comparable.



Gmail?


Meh.

G Suite accounts are expensive.  I believe you have to pay by email 
address and get quite pricey.  "Free" alternatives have a place because 
can be cheaper than that.


Gmail have not added the "Foo has read your message" or "Foo is replying 
to your email". Two things that would be easy for them to do in Gmail 
to Gmail communication, and would be must-have features for a mail user. 
So maybe they don't aim to world domination?


I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  Email is not 
instant messaging.


Is very hard to replace a open protocol,  wrapping may work if the 
protocol is mostly abandoned (IRC) but thats not the case for email. 
I don't think email is going to be replaced soon.


There are people who say it yearly.  But I never believe them.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die



smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Re: plaintext email?

[Grant Taylor via NANOG]

On 01/15/2019 11:37 AM, b...@theworld.com wrote:
P.S. No, you already read the quoted text, that's how it got to be 
quoted text.


Are you making reference to having read the quoted text in a different 
email?


An email that someone might not have received, much less read yet?



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die



smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Re: Your opinion on network analysis in the presence of uncertain events

[Mel Beckman]

I took the survey. It’s short and sweet — well done!

I do have a question. You ask "Are there any good?” Any good what?

 -mel

On Jan 15, 2019, at 10:59 AM, Vanbever Laurent 
mailto:lvanbe...@ethz.ch>> wrote:

Hi NANOG,

Networks evolve in uncertain environments. Links and devices randomly fail; 
external BGP announcements unpredictably appear/disappear leading to unforeseen 
traffic shifts; traffic demands vary, etc. Reasoning about network behaviors 
under such uncertainties is hard and yet essential to ensure Service Level 
Agreements.

We're reaching out to the NANOG community as we (researchers) are trying to 
better understand the practical requirements behind "probabilistic" network 
reasoning. Some of our questions include: Are uncertain behaviors problematic? 
Do you care about such things at all? Are you already using tools to ensure the 
compliance of your network design under uncertainty? Are there any good?

We designed a short anonymous survey to collect operators answers. It is 
composed of 14 optional questions, most of which (13/14) are closed-ended. It 
should take less than 10 minutes to complete. We expect the findings to help 
the research community in designing more powerful network analysis tools. Among 
others, we intend to present the aggregate results in a scientific article 
later this year.

It would be *terrific* if you could help us out!

Survey URL: https://goo.gl/forms/HdYNp3DkKkeEcexs2

Thanks much!

Laurent Vanbever, ETH Zürich


PS: It goes without saying that we would also be extremely grateful if you 
could forward this email to any operator you know and who may not read NANOG.

Re: plaintext email?

[Brian Kantor]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 02:23:48PM -0500, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
> Without reading further... which of your recent postings is this a reply to?
> Obviously you already know, because you said you don't need to see the
> text to know the context...

Gentlemen, this is getting petty.  Perhaps it's time to drop
the subject?  Or at least take it to private email?
- Brian

Re: plaintext email?

[Brian J. Murrell]

On Tue, 2019-01-15 at 00:24 -0500, b...@theworld.com wrote:
> I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.
> 
> Why dig through what you've already read to see the new comments?

Because in long discussion threads, you lose the context to exactly
what a particular person is replying to/about.  When they answer inline
(or bottom posting if there is just one thing to say) you get the
context as to what they are talking about.

> Actually in an ideal world previous included bits would be links
> which
> could optionally be expanded via one shared remote copy but lo I
> wander.

Right.  So you are actually advocating for inline/bottom-posting with
appropriate trimming and the added benefit of being able to collapse
the trimmed quote.  That could very well and easily be an MUA feature. 
But you started your message by saying you prefer top posting.

> You should try some of the internet governance (I know, oxymoron)
> lists where people will inline a megabyte of discussion to add just
> "+1!" or "I agree!" or "congrats!" in the middle or bottom. It's like
> Alice's Restaurant.

That's a different problem that IMHO, top posting actually perpetuates:
lack of trimming.  Top posting makes it too easy to send along the
entire copies of all of the messages that previous top-posters posted
and didn't trim.  When you encourage inline replying or bottom posting,
it seems to point out, only if slightly more, than one could trim the
useless content as one goes by it to inline/bottom post.

Cheers,
b.




signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part

Re: plaintext email?

[valdis . kletnieks]

Without reading further... which of your recent postings is this a reply to?
Obviously you already know, because you said you don't need to see the
text to know the context...











Nope, it wasn't the one about how things became quoted text.

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 13:36:38 -0500, b...@theworld.com said:
> I use Emacs/VM for email. It's quite good at, for example, splitting
> the screen so I can look ahead (or behind) in the message if I've lost
> track of some context, or even opening multiple related msgs (even if
> already filed) simultaneously to go back and review what's been said
> already, or forward even to see if one is about to say something which
> has already been adequately addressed.

And how many times did you have to hit control-alt-meta-cokebottle to
trace out which one this was really a reply to?

Re: the e-mail of the future is the e-mail oft the past, was Enough port 26 talk...

[James Downs]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 06:46:07PM +0100, Tei wrote:

> Is very hard to replace a open protocol,  wrapping may work if the
> protocol is mostly abandoned (IRC) but thats not the case for email.

IRC is far from abandonded. There are lots of very active networks,
2 of which I use continously.

But, it's been a week of non-NANOG talk, so

Cheers,
-j

Your opinion on network analysis in the presence of uncertain events

[Vanbever Laurent]

Hi NANOG,

Networks evolve in uncertain environments. Links and devices randomly fail; 
external BGP announcements unpredictably appear/disappear leading to unforeseen 
traffic shifts; traffic demands vary, etc. Reasoning about network behaviors 
under such uncertainties is hard and yet essential to ensure Service Level 
Agreements.

We're reaching out to the NANOG community as we (researchers) are trying to 
better understand the practical requirements behind "probabilistic" network 
reasoning. Some of our questions include: Are uncertain behaviors problematic? 
Do you care about such things at all? Are you already using tools to ensure the 
compliance of your network design under uncertainty? Are there any good?

We designed a short anonymous survey to collect operators answers. It is 
composed of 14 optional questions, most of which (13/14) are closed-ended. It 
should take less than 10 minutes to complete. We expect the findings to help 
the research community in designing more powerful network analysis tools. Among 
others, we intend to present the aggregate results in a scientific article 
later this year.

It would be *terrific* if you could help us out!

Survey URL: https://goo.gl/forms/HdYNp3DkKkeEcexs2

Thanks much!

Laurent Vanbever, ETH Zürich


PS: It goes without saying that we would also be extremely grateful if you 
could forward this email to any operator you know and who may not read NANOG.

Re: plaintext email?

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 10:37 AM  wrote:
> To me it depends on whether there's any chance the reader won't know
> what precisely you're responding to in which case in-line is
> warranted.

In a one-to-one private email you can reasonably assume that either
the recipient is familiar with the chain of discussion or is
sufficiently invested to scroll down for any missing context.

In a mailing list or multiple-recipient message, that's not a fair
assumption. A more reasonable assumption is that the recipient has not
been monitoring the thread until something specific you wrote caught
their eye. In that situation, asking them to hunt through a long chain
for the little bits of relevant context is, well, rude. And if you run
folks around in circles responding to the same questions because the
context that answered those questions was hard to find, that's even
worse.

Which is why top posting to a mailing list is considered rude. At least IMHO.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



-- 
William Herrin  her...@dirtside.com  b...@herrin.us
Dirtside Systems . Web: 

Re: plaintext email?

[bzs]

On January 15, 2019 at 00:40 valdis.kletni...@vt.edu (valdis.kletni...@vt.edu) 
wrote:
 > A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.

P.S. No, you already read the quoted text, that's how it got to be
quoted text.

-- 
-Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die| b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD   | 800-THE-WRLD
The World: Since 1989  | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

Re: plaintext email?

[bzs]

Re: Top Posting

To me it depends on whether there's any chance the reader won't know
what precisely you're responding to in which case in-line is
warranted.

I don't have any quoted text in this msg (is that top posting?), is
anyone lost?

THE REAL REASON for my responding at all is because there are people
who lurk and sometimes manage lists who will react angrily, often in
private email (cowards! :-) ), to a top-post as if you violated some
inarguable rule and you maybe should be banned or at the very least
are very rude, similar in tone to if you'd spammed the list or
whatever.

I just thought I'd point out it's just a formatting opinion, a
judgement call by whoever is responding, and nothing more, it's not
some rule everyone accepts so lose the self-righteous tone.

If anything I suspect it might have to do with the MUA one uses.

Maybe, at the very least, accept that the person who top-posted is
looking at a very different layout than you are, one where that
top-post looks just fine?

I use Emacs/VM for email. It's quite good at, for example, splitting
the screen so I can look ahead (or behind) in the message if I've lost
track of some context, or even opening multiple related msgs (even if
already filed) simultaneously to go back and review what's been said
already, or forward even to see if one is about to say something which
has already been adequately addressed.

It's probably quite a bit different than the one-way upside-down
(date-wise) scrolling on some vendor-supplied smartphone app.

I've used them when I've had nothing else and I haven't a clue how one
can do much else than essentially "more" thru the latest, silo'd, 10^9
spams interspersed with the occasional bit of ham 20 lines at a time
so I guess I can understand why some become desperate and angry to get
others to format their email for their convenience.

Maybe your problem isn't the top-posting but your lousy MUA?

-- 
-Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die| b...@theworld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD   | 800-THE-WRLD
The World: Since 1989  | A Public Information Utility | *oo*

Re: the e-mail of the future is the e-mail oft the past, was Enough port 26 talk...

[Tei]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 at 09:21, Bjørn Mork  wrote:
..
> open protocols, just shut off SMTP completely. They'll
> probably "invent" something much better as an excuse... And the masses
> will love them for that, because it finally removed the spam "problem".
>
> And everyone has a gmail account anyway, so why bother with outside
> email?

I think the newsgroups died because was expensive for ISPs and filled
with nasty stuff (warez and porn).
Gopher died because HTML was a improvement in every possible way.
IRC still exist, because it don't need to be hosted by a ISP.
Forums still exist.
Mail list still exist (we are on one)
Homesites where replaced by blogs.

Gmail?
G Suite accounts are expensive.  I believe you have to pay by email
address and get quite pricey.  "Free" alternatives have a place
because can be cheaper than that.

Gmail have not added the "Foo has read your message" or "Foo is
replying to your email". Two things that would be easy for them to do
in Gmail to Gmail communication, and would be must-have features for a
mail user.  So maybe they don't aim to world domination?

Is very hard to replace a open protocol,  wrapping may work if the
protocol is mostly abandoned (IRC) but thats not the case for email.
I don't think email is going to be replaced soon.

-- 
--
ℱin del ℳensaje.

Re: ASNs decimation in ZW this morning

[Colin Johnston]

sorry top posting,
yup whatsup doesnt work in harare.
phone circuits land ok though and checked ok

col

Sent from my iPod

> On 15 Jan 2019, at 15:42, C. A. Fillekes  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 10:34 AM C. A. Fillekes  wrote:
>> 
>> So @meileaben on twitter this morning notes:
>> 
>> Many #Zimbabwe Internet routes withdrawn around 9:30 UTC amidst civil unrest 
>> in the country. near-realtime on #RIPEstat here: https://stat.ripe.net/ZW  
>> #OpenNetworkIntelligence #ZimbabweShutdown
>> 
>> https://twitter.com/meileaben/status/1085118237157851136
>> 
>> wondering if anyone here has additional info on that.  Looing at 
>> stat.ripe.net/ZW now it looks as though one (out of an original 18, current 
>> 9) ASN has recovered, but kind of curious as to what exactly happened there. 
> 
> So Bloomberg notes that a number of ISPs were shut down to quell online 
> protest
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/by-killing-the-internet-zimbabwe-kills-commerce-and-the-lights
>  but are there no work-arounds available, if implemented? 

Re: ASNs decimation in ZW this morning

[C. A. Fillekes]

On Tue, Jan 15, 2019 at 10:34 AM C. A. Fillekes  wrote:

>
> So @meileaben on twitter this morning notes:
>
> Many #*Zimbabwe*  Internet
> routes withdrawn around 9:30 UTC amidst civil unrest in the country.
> near-realtime on #*RIPEstat*
>  here: https://
> stat.ripe.net/ZW   #*OpenNetworkIntelligence*
>  #
> *ZimbabweShutdown* 
>
> https://twitter.com/meileaben/status/1085118237157851136
>
> wondering if anyone here has additional info on that.  Looing at
> stat.ripe.net/ZW now it looks as though one (out of an original 18,
> current 9) ASN has recovered, but kind of curious as to what exactly
> happened there.
>

So Bloomberg notes that a number of ISPs were shut down to quell online
protest
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/by-killing-the-internet-zimbabwe-kills-commerce-and-the-lights
but are there no work-arounds available, if implemented?

ASNs decimation in ZW this morning

[C. A. Fillekes]

So @meileaben on twitter this morning notes:

Many #*Zimbabwe*  Internet
routes withdrawn around 9:30 UTC amidst civil unrest in the country.
near-realtime on #*RIPEstat* 
here: https://stat.ripe.net/ZW   #
*OpenNetworkIntelligence*
 #
*ZimbabweShutdown* 

https://twitter.com/meileaben/status/1085118237157851136

wondering if anyone here has additional info on that.  Looing at
stat.ripe.net/ZW now it looks as though one (out of an original 18, current
9) ASN has recovered, but kind of curious as to what exactly happened
there.

Re: Top-quoting Was: (Netflix/GlobalConnect a/s) Scheduled Open Connect Appliance upgrade is starting

[Winston Polhamus]

+1

Sent from my iPhone

> On Jan 14, 2019, at 10:37 PM, Stephen Satchell  wrote:
> 
>> On 1/14/19 7:14 PM, Keith Medcalf wrote:
>> Please experience the wonders of the top-quote.  See your local psychedelic 
>> distributor if you are somehow not "experiencing" anything ...
> 
> I experience a savings in time with non-edited top quoting.  If I don't
> see meaningful new content within the first 20 lines, I ignore it as
> worthless...unless it's a topic I'm following closely.
> 
> And, yes, I use a text-only mail reader.  I don't like HTML mail,
> because it's an attack vector for ne'er-do-wells.  As long as the mail
> reader allows "self-clicking" URLs, just NO.
> 

Re: Top Posting Was: Re: plaintext email?

[Stephen Satchell]

On 1/15/19 8:03 AM, Tom Beecher wrote:
> No disrespect intended to anyone at all, but the pissing and moaning about
> it is a massive waste of time and energy.

But, but, but...most water-cooler conversation is about sports, the
opposite sex, and pissing and moaning about what you don't like.  Sure,
it's a massive waste of time and energy -- but that's what "being
social" is all about.

(Not that I claim to be THAT house-broken.)

Re: Top Posting Was: Re: plaintext email?

[Brian Kantor]

> > Why must there be a hard rule about top posting?

It is my belief that whether to 'top post' or 'bottom post' may
largely depend on the characteristics of the medium.

In USENET, bottom posting was preferred because messages often
arrived out of order, and occasionally did not arrive at all, thus
supplying the context of the reply before the reply itself would
argueably increase the chance that a reply would be fully understood.
Conversations might span days with only a very few contributions
each day, and the context could be helpful.

In modern Internet email, messages rarely are delayed very much,
and rarely are lost in transit.  In that environment, top posting
allows someone who has been following the discussion closely may
continue to follow it without the distraction of having to page
past repeated text which he or she has already read and digested.

But against simply omitting that context, at the bottom, it is there
for those who would like to refresh their memory of previously-discussed
points or for whom the mail did not arrive, or arrived late or out
of order.

Interleaved posting, such as might be used in a question-and-answer
message, has a number of advantages over strict adherence to 'top'
or 'bottom' exclusively.

Conclusion: it pays to be versatile.
- Brian

Re: the e-mail of the future is the e-mail oft the past, was Enough port 26 talk...

[Stephen Satchell]

On 1/15/19 12:19 AM, Bjørn Mork wrote:
> And everyone has a gmail account anyway, so why bother with outside
> email?

Two words:  "search warrants."  I'm a US citizen, and I do NOT like the
idea of power-hungry people being able to paw through my mail.  Having
my own mail server, residing in my home, with medium security in place,
gives me peace of mind.

Even innocent people have things they want to hide from casual spying.
THOSE people don't have a need to know.  Period.

Not to mention that I can obey the rule common in Business 101 regarding
mail.  It goes like this:

QUESTION:  You are a medium-sized company.  How do you set up your mail
room to be efficient, and needing only a small staff?

ANSWER: You take out a number of post office boxes, and have each
department use its post office box to receive mail for that department.
 You task one person to stop at the post office to pick up the contents
of the post office box, properly banded.

In short, you let the postal system sort your mail for you.  They are
very good at it, and can even bring automation (that you can't afford)
to speed up the process.

For me, I have a mail server with several dozen inboxes
(Postfix/Dovecot).  Only a couple of those e-mail addresses have been
exposed to the world via mailing lists and USENET.  Thunderbird does a
nice job of presenting this gaggle of inboxes.  And I keep adding
mailboxes as the need arises.  I can see which inboxes has incoming
mail, and selectively look at each one as time permits.  Yes, I see all
the incoming spam that makes it through the DNSBLs, but I can ignore the
spam-catchers when I have better things to do.

Re: plaintext email?

[Stephen Satchell]

On 1/14/19 9:40 PM, valdis.kletni...@vt.edu wrote:
> I'm not away of any languages or writing systems that work from
> bottom to top, so that's pretty much everybody.

Typography for at least one pictograph-based language allows for, um,
interesting stunts one can pull to spice up gray matter.  Starting in
the middle of the paragraph and spiraling around, for example.  Nothing
which applies to e-mail, but now you know.

Re: plaintext email?

[Tei]

Email for personal use is turning rare. And people need to use *bold*
in text more than not. So most clients are configured to send html by
default, and people have no reasons to change that.

I think LISTSERV software used to require plain text to send commands
like subscribe, but I think they made their parser accept html mails
and still find the commands.

On 2019, nobody cares if you uses plain text or html in emails.

If somebody write a bot that accept commands through email (like a
GETWEB gateway) is very easy to make it accept html and flat it to
text.

-- 
--
ℱin del ℳensaje.

Re: plaintext email?

[Grant Taylor via NANOG]

On 01/14/2019 10:24 PM, b...@theworld.com wrote:

I'd like to go on record as saying that I PREFER top-posting.


To each his / her own preference.


Why dig through what you've already read to see the new comments?


So that the comments are in context (item followed by comment about 
item) of what they are about.


Actually in an ideal world previous included bits would be links which 
could optionally be expanded…


Well formatted text can be expanded and collapsed with proper MUA plugins.

This means that a long inline message can be viewed as one (collapsed) 
line of quoted text followed by multiple lines of reply.  Lather, rinse, 
repeat as necessary.



…via one shared remote copy but lo I wander.


That's a nice idea.  But you start to get into even more complications. 
Many of which are related to security and capability to access central 
shared copy.  Such isn't possible with email accessed via UUCP sneaker 
net, where as quoted text is.  ;-)


You should try some of the internet governance (I know, oxymoron) 
lists where people will inline a megabyte of discussion to add just 
"+1!" or "I agree!" or "congrats!" in the middle or bottom.


Arguably the fact that they have done that is in and of itself an abuse, 
specifically around the quote to new content ratio.


If you use quote collapsing, then it would appear as one line followed 
by the reactionary response with the possibility of one line below.


A couple of analogies:

How well do you think a teacher would respond if a student stapled a 
sheet of paper with their answers to all the questions without numbers 
to the top of the quiz with room to answer the questions in line?


How would you like to receive edits / comments / suggestions to a paper 
that you wrote as one lump at the top or bottom without any reference to 
page / paragraph / sentence / word that the comment is about?


Both of these methods do technically provide the answer to the 
questions.  But they impart much more load on the recipient to identify 
and / or locate the relevant section that they are in response to.


Conversely, if Question and Answer documents are in multiple sets of 
that order, Question followed by Answer, it's quite easy to find 
associated items.


Finally, set the example that you want others to follow.



--
Grant. . . .
unix || die



smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

Top Posting Was: Re: plaintext email?

[James R Cutler]

Why must there be a hard rule about top posting?

If the replied to message(s) comprise a long logical sequence, the OCD among us 
experience cognitive dissonance if the order is “un-natural”. Thus bottom 
posting continues the “natural” sequence and makes life easier for many of us 
who otherwise would have difficulty maintaining context.

If a quoted message is concise, either by origin or by quoting only a salient 
point, top posting is not inappropriate. Context is nearby.

If the quoted message asks a series of questions, interspersed answers provide 
bottom posting on a per question basis which clearly indicates the relation of 
each reply segment to the appropriate segment.  Again, this assists many of us 
in maintaining context.

If the reply is done from a tiny-screen as on an iPhone, context of long 
messages is impossible to maintain and, anyway, top posting is the default.

This whole argument is analogous to rigorously not aligning braces in C code 
because Ritchie did it. Or rigorously aligning braces in C code to make 
comprehending easier.

This reply is deliberately top posted with the reference material as a short 
appendix. It is in plain text so rendering has no browser dependancies and the 
archived version remains readable.

James R. Cutler
james.cut...@consultant.com
GPG keys: hkps://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net


On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 8:39 PM mailto:valdis.kletni...@vt.edu>> wrote:
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

And now you're sitting here wondering what possible relevance that might have
to some line or other - the only context you have at this point is that it's a
reply to something you wrote. Actually, at this point you don't even have that.

So you may have read this entire thing and now you're still wondering what
possible relevance it may have to the thread.

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 00:24:30 -0500, b...@theworld.com 
 said:
> Why dig through what you've already read to see the new comments?

Or you can put the comment after, so everybody who reads text top to bottom has
the context.  I'm not away of any languages or writing systems that work from
bottom to top, so that's pretty much everybody.  And if people trimmed the
quoted material so only the parts being replied to are left, there's not much
digging involved.

Re: the e-mail of the future is the e-mail oft the past, was Enough port 26 talk...

[Bjørn Mork]

Miles Fidelman  writes:

> Ever since the net went commercial, we've been seeing more and more
> walled gardens - driven by folks with an economic advantage to
> segmenting & capturing audiences.  Whenever someone talks about how
> great some new technology is, I'm always reminded to "follow the
> money."  (And ain't it ironic that Microsoft supports calendaring
> protocols, while Google breaks them.)

And this is happening to email too.

It's not IM or online conferencing that will kill email, but
fragmentation into multiple closed email environments. We accept SPF and
DMARC, abusing DNS to deliberately break SMTP. All in the name of spam
protection, Mailing lists barely work anymore and have to resort to
hacks to be able to forward messages to their recipients.  Traditional
forwarding to another account hasn't worked in years. Smaller providers
are regularily blocked causing service disruption to their users.

It's just a matter of time before the big players, well known for their
disregard of open protocols, just shut off SMTP completely. They'll
probably "invent" something much better as an excuse... And the masses
will love them for that, because it finally removed the spam "problem".

And everyone has a gmail account anyway, so why bother with outside
email?



Bjørn