North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Points on your Internet driver's license (was RE: Even you canbe

  • From: Adi Linden
  • Date: Sun Jun 13 12:59:43 2004

> > The reason this isn't economical today is because ISP lack any 
> > responsiblity. It is cheaper for an ISP to buy more bandwidth and pass the 
> > worms and viruses customers PCs spew to the internet than it is to deal 
> > with the problem. Seriously, if I send an ISP reasonable proof that a 
> > broadband customer hits my mailserver with thousands of emails an hour I 
> > should be able to expect an immediate response. Not hours, days or weeks, 
> > minutes and the originating account should be shut down. If this doesn't 
> > happen I should be able to go to the upstream of the ISP, present my 
> > case, and have connectivity to the ISP suspended. 
> 
> Then, start an ISP, charge extra for that kind of maintainence and compete
> in the marketplace. See how it works out. I wish you the best of luck,
> I really do.

Today ISP are not held accountable for the traffic that originates from 
their network. If they were the economics would be different. Support 
costs for wide open broadband connections to the home would sky rocket. I 
am convinced that providing a safe internet connection to the home user 
would be quite viable at this point.

> I can understand your point of you. Personally, I'd love it if internet
> access was a simple, secure, managed commodity. But it isn't. 

Correct. The answer is to make it a simple, secure, managed commodity. Not 
to demand that granny has a degree to send and receive email.

> The ISP has _no_ legal basis in a lot of cases for terminating accounts 
> when "we" (being the people making noise on this list) would hope they 
> would. If they do, they possibly expose themselves legally. Can you 
> imagine the SOHO owner who screams because he's lost revenue because you 
> shut down his internet connection for a worm? Even if you have a "bullet 
> proof AUP" you may still end up having to deal with lawyers and possibly 
> some court time.

Correct. Today there is less hassle and less risk to an ISP if pollution 
by their customers is just ignored and allowed to happen. The penalties 
for polluting are non-existant. 

The internet is a commodity supplied to customers. As such an ISP should 
have an obligation to supply it as clean and secure as possible. As much 
as the customer has an obigation to ensure that internet connected devices 
do not pollute the internet, so does the ISP have an obligation not to 
pass this pollution to customers.

> So, please explain again, why should an ISP get involved right now?

Because it is the right place to start. It is just lacking incentive.

Adi