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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Vonage Hits ISP Resistance
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Jamie Norwood wrote: Ah NANOG, where people ask rhetorical questions and get answers...On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:33:49 -0800, Alexei Roudnev <[email protected]> wrote:Heard of a little thing called 'spam'?So what? You can use your car as a weapon; should we prohibit you from car driving?No, but if your car doesn't have seat belts, we don't let you drive it. Basic SMTP lacks safety features that are needed, ergo, retrictions were placed on it. As was mentioned, my point was just that the question posited was flawed. SMTP isn't restricted for competition and money-making reasons, but because to not restrict it can have quite undesired implications. The question was why was one ok, and the other not. The answer is because of spam. It seems a bit simplistic (and misses the point of the original rhetorical question) to say that it's common to block the SMTP port "because of spam." Having been involved in weighing that business decision a few times, it's tended to be more a matter of balancing the direct and indirect effects of being a spam source on an ISP's operations (lots of staff time dealing with spam complaints, bad reputations, ending up on blackhole lists) with the effects of turning off a service some customers find useful. In general, the people who will be upset by an ISP not blocking outbound spam are not the ISP's customers, while those upset about the ISP blocking legitimate outbound SMTP are. But ISPs sometimes decide they can't afford to make the customers who want outbound SMTP happy. That's why the rhetorical question asked earlier made some sense. ISPs aren't going to be blocking VOIP "because of spam," at least not until they start getting bombarded with complaints about their customers using VOIP services for automated telemarketing. But they may block it because they think the benefits of blocking it (reducing traffic, keeping VOIP business to themselves) outweigh the costs of customers getting annoyed. If it's ok to block SMTP for that reason, why not VOIP, or why not the web? I'll note again that these are rhetorical questions. They don't need to be answered. Personally, if the colo provider who hosts my mail server were to block outbound SMTP, the service would become pretty useless to me and I'd have to take my (non-paying) business elsewhere. If my GPRS provider were to block it, I probably wouldn't notice. Likewise, if the colo provider blocked VOIP, I probably wouldn't notice, but if my DSL provider did, it would be a problem. An ISP who blocks VOIP is going to have some customers get upset, just like an ISP that blocks outbound SMTP. They may even lose some business. But will they lose enough business to offset whatever gain they think they're getting? I think I can guess the answer, but actual numbers from those who've tried it would be far more interesting than the speculation we've been seeing here. -Steve
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