[69541] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Lazy network operators
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alex Bligh)
Wed Apr 14 07:17:04 2004
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 12:14:37 +0100
From: Alex Bligh <alex@alex.org.uk>
Reply-To: Alex Bligh <alex@alex.org.uk>
To: Petri Helenius <pete@he.iki.fi>,
Miquel van Smoorenburg <miquels@cistron.nl>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu, Alex Bligh <alex@alex.org.uk>
In-Reply-To: <407D01BB.90708@he.iki.fi>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
--On 14 April 2004 12:17 +0300 Petri Helenius <pete@he.iki.fi> wrote:
> How many MUAs default to port 587? How many even know about 587 and give
> it as an option other than fill-in-the-blank?
So until they do, treat unauthenticated port 25 connections skeptically,
and authenticated port 587 connections not skeptically.
Skeptically might defined as: do not allow connections from outside
known IP's and reply "550: Denied - please see http://myisp.net/relay.html"
which explains how to fix your mail client.
<metaargument>
Not to pick on you in particular:
This argument (at least on NANOG) seems to be characterized by the following
1. A suggests X, where X is a member of S, being a set of largely well known
solutions.
2. B1 ... Bn, where n>>1 says X is without value as X does not solve
the entire problem, each using a different definition of "problem".
3. C1 ... Cn, where n>>1 says X violates a "fundamental principle of
the internet" (in general without quoting chapter & verse as to
its definition, or noting that for its entire history, fundamental
principles, such as they exist, have often been in conflict, for
instance "end-to-end connectivity", and "taking responsibility for
ones own network" in the context of (for instance) packets sourced
from 127.0.0.1 etc.)
4. D1 .. Dn, where n>>1 says X will put an enormous burden on some
network operators and/or inconvenience users (normally without
reference to the burden/inconvenience from the problem itself,
albeit asymmetrically distributed, and normally without reference
to the extent or otherwise that similar problems have been
solved in a pragmatic manner before - viz route filtering, bogon
filtering etc.)
5. E1 .. En, where n>>1 insert irrelevant and ill-argued invective
thus obscuring any new points in 1..4 above.
6. Goto 1.
It may be that NANOG (mailing list) is a particularly unproductive place
to discuss tackling the spam problem, but I don't know of anywhere less
bad.
In my view, we have to recognize:
A. The problem is complex, else it would have been solved by now. There
is unlikely to be a single silver-bullet solution. Any solution will
be a composite of multiple different solutions, none of which alone
(possibly together) will be perfect.
B. Solutions need to be proportionate to what they achieve - where they
challenge "fundamental principles" we need to evaluate that in the
context of why those fundamental principles exist in the first place.
C. Many solutions require hard work by network engineers. That is the
value add. The problem is asymmetric which means that at least some
part of the solution must have some normative component (see, for
example, route filtering) as far as network operators are concerned.
D. There also needs to be a normative component as far as users are
concerned. Much of the behaviour we seek to change is not reliably
distinguishable from acceptable behaviour at a technical level; whilst
we may be able to improve that with better technology or simply
different default settings, technology alone is not going to produce
a solution in the absence of (say) AUPs and/or legislation.
<metaargument>
Alex
