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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt
On 12:45 AM 10/26/2001 -0700, James Thomason wrote: >(We are of course, ignoring the fact that this is an "attack" not a >"request" or a "probe", or some other form of well intentioned traffic.) I don't like using the term "well intentioned". Spammers repeatedly claim that they have good intentions when they send spam, because *some* people supposedly like getting their unsolicited email. It's not enough to have good intentions, you MUST put yourself in the shoes of the recipient and of those who transit your packets and see how THEY feel about the traffic before you can be said to have "good intentions" about sending it off. And that's what got Digital Island into this mess. They didn't really stop to think about what level of probe qualifies as unintrusive and "good intentioned" from the point of the recipient, only from their end as the entity that desires to send the probe. Because it's good for their needs, they assume the other end will see the "joint benefit" and not be bothered. But they were (obviously) wrong. Now that they know, they need to pull back and redesign their probes from point of view that is more sensitive to the needs and concerns of the recipient. For a start, they shouldn't probe any network that hasn't (yet) requested any content from them. Then, if they probe in response to a content request, the probe should SAY THAT so the recipient understands the mutual benefit. Finally, the procedure for stopping the probes needs to be reconfigured for ease of use for the recipient who wants it stopped NOW, not for the convenience of DI. jc
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