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Re: Lazy network operators

  • From: Alex Bligh
  • Date: Wed Apr 14 07:20:22 2004


--On 14 April 2004 12:17 +0300 Petri Helenius <[email protected]> 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