[145986] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Outgoing SMTP Servers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brian Johnson)
Fri Oct 28 12:41:52 2011
From: Brian Johnson <bjohnson@drtel.com>
To: "Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu" <Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu>, William Herrin
<bill@herrin.us>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:37:10 +0000
In-Reply-To: <62968.1319816515@turing-police.cc.vt.edu>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>, Pete Carah <pete@altadena.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Comments in-line
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu [mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu]
>Sent: Friday, October 28, 2011 10:42 AM
>To: William Herrin
>Cc: nanog@nanog.org; Pete Carah
>Subject: Re: Outgoing SMTP Servers
>
>On Thu, 27 Oct 2011 23:44:16 EDT, William Herrin said:
>
>> For our purpose, describing the Internet as a commons fundamentally
>> misunderstands its nature.
>
>You *do* realize that for all your nice "Thei Internet Is Not A Commons"
>ranting, the basic problem is that some people (we'll call them spammers)
>*do*
>think that (a) it's a commons (or at least the exact ownership of a given
>chunk is irrelevant), and (b) they're allowed to graze their sheep upon it=
.
So we should treat the Internet with respect to bad actors differently than=
others. STRIKE 1!
>
>> The Internet is not jointly owned. You do not own a one seven
>> billionth share of the network in my basement and I do not a own one
>> seven billionth of yours. Rather, the Internet is a cooperative effort
>> of the sole owners of its distinct individual pieces.
>
>That's correct, as far as it goes. However, what *is* a commons is the *v=
alue*
>of the cooperative effort - see Metcalf's Law. You turn off or disconnect=
your
>share of the Internet, my share of the *value* of the Internet drops sligh=
tly.
>
So bad actors destroying the value created by a cooperative of good actors =
is not bad? STRIKE 2!
>> Nor is the data transiting these networks a commons. The air over my
>> land is a commons. I don't control it. If I pollute it or if I don't,
>> it promptly travels over someone else's land.
>
>If you choose to pollute the air heavily, the value of the air drops for
>everybody.
>If you choose to pollute the Net heavily, the value of the Net drops for
>everybody.
>
STRIKE 3! Oops got ahead of myself.
I'm attempting to prevent the pollution but I may capture a little good wat=
er (almost nothing) along the way. To say that this is a way of "bad acting=
" and causes a loss of value to the Internet as a whole is pure folly.
>> The point is, at every step with the Internet there is always a
>> specific owner whose property is either being used with his permission
>> or abused against his wishes. At no point is it a commons.
>
>Try working the same example but using a stream flowing across your
>property
>instead, that feeds into the reservior the municipal water supply draws fr=
om.
>Yes, you own your section of the stream, and the guy next door owns his
>section, and so on. So the stream is not a commons - but the quality of t=
he
>water in it *is*. (Yes, weak analogy, the downstream people have no say in=
it.
>Pretend for the sake of argument that everybody involved lives next to a
>stream
>that feeds the reservior that everybody drinks from - that's actually a pr=
etty
>good match to the Internet topology).
Actually if there were 4 strikes... STRIKE 4!
Since I only transit destination packets, this analogy does not apply in an=
y significant way. In fact this would only apply to transit providers filte=
ring between peers or other transit connections. In my experience this is u=
sed at the customer connection to the transit or peering connection to prot=
ect the Internet from the clueless or compromised.
- Brian
BTW... what a great game last night! :)
