North American Network Operators Group

Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

RE: (Already happening) Operational impact of filtering SMB/NETBIOS traffic?

  • From: Derrick
  • Date: Sun Nov 19 00:09:15 2000

This is something I have already seen happen and the bad side of it.

While working on a VPN project I came across many ISP's (mostly cable and
DSL) who charged
extra per month if you wanted to have VPN access to a remote network. We got
several calls
where New user A has setup the VPN software we gave them and they can't
connect from home.
Number one resolution was to call their ISP and move them to a "business
account" where
the ISP would then change their profile to allow IP Types other than just
tcp and udp.
It is for this reason that I am careful to only choose ISP's who either
don't filter at all
or who expressly detail their filtering policy before I use them. However in
the case of Cable
ISP's you can't always have a choice. So on that level I am against any
filtering since it
seems to have given many ISP's a new revenue stream for something they
shouldn't really be
charging extra for (IMHO).

Derrick

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
Jim Mercer
Sent: Saturday, November 18, 2000 8:49 PM
To: Roeland Meyer
Cc: 'Scott Call'; [email protected]
Subject: Re: Operational impact of filtering SMB/NETBIOS traffic?



On Sat, Nov 18, 2000 at 08:19:12PM -0800, Roeland Meyer wrote:
> You are considering killing off a whole bunch of legitimate use because
> some are too brain-dead to not have unintentional shares on the internet?

well, maybe if there was a global filter on SMB then the brain-dead company
that produces the brain-dead software will wake up and realize that maybe
it shouldn't produce software that by default leaves their users open
to intrusion or viruses.

geez, if the filter was there, are you saying that people who _need_ SMB
shares are too brain-dead to come up with a straight forward way to make
it get around the filter?

--
[ Jim Mercer                 [email protected]              +1 416 410-5633 ]
[          Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood          ]
[  Don't be fooled by cheap Finnish imitations; BSD is the One True Code.  ]