Slashdot Mirror

It appears their mail server is run by XO Communication

http://www.democrats.org/page/s/techproblems
http://www.xo.com/forms/Campaign/Care/ContactCustomerCare/ContactCustomerCare.aspx

It appears their mail server is run by XO Communication

http://www.democrats.org/page/s/techproblems
http://www.xo.com/forms/Campaign/Care/ContactCustomerCare/ContactCustomerCare.aspx

I never heard of Carl Icahn till I read today's posting. He's the 49th richest person in the world according to Forbes.His political contributions are to both Republicans and Democrats. (But mostly to Dems.)

Some people would say he's a Wall Street predator the way he bullies companies like TWA. He's got such a big pile of money he can influence companies like Blockbuster. The same guy thinks he's the closest thing a shareholder has to a friend. Even serious analysts admire him.

He's even part of XO Communications and tried to takeover the ailing Marvel Comics. There's a book about it called Comic Wars.

"You learn in this business: It you want a friend, get a dog" - Carl Icahn

One of the sites I created a while back was a mod site for NwN, I had it hosted by a company Called XO Communications since I didn't have a fast connection at my house. After getting a little notice from the NwN community I of course started getting spam - however I also started getting these weird emails from people saying they would sue me for sending them spam. I didn't know what was going on until I got 15 bounced emails from yahoo saying my messages were undeliverable. I hadn't sent the message and I had no idea who the recipients were. I contacted XO and they told me "Yeah this happens occasionally there really isn't anything you can do, but we have proof that it's not from you so don't worry about getting sued."

Well I didn't appreciate that responce so I changed hosts I tried icestorm and I tried globalhost it would be fine for awhile then it would start again - the more traffic I got the more of a pain in the ass it became to explain to people that I was sorry for something I wasn't doing.

In the end I just stopped caring, unless I ever get a fast enough connection at home to host the site myself it looks like this is somethign that will just happen. And as an end-user I have no control over the security of the website since it is my hosting companies responsibility to lock there shit down. And everyone I've tried seems to have the same responce "well its easy to fake where email comes from, sorry your shit out of luck in having people confuse you with ass holes"

Conceptually, the logic states that there should be multiple backbones through multiple geographic areas, such that a failure of one provider could be dealt with by routing traffic through the alternate backbone. Realistically this is difficult and expensive, and the primary reason that there are very few top tier connections running across the united states.

If you look at the map from 1992 (NSF Net | XO OC192 Network), you'll notice that there really are only 2 main paths from east coast to west coast. The southern path is probably at least slightly affected by the incoming hurricaine, and the northern path seems to be overloaded or failing for some other reason.

Precautions? Make sure the hardware is sound and easily replaced, and that alternate routes are available in case of failure. The problem is finding alternate routes that aren't completely congested due to the failure.

Never sign a contract for more than one year on a leased line, or 6 months for colo.

I ran an ISP for about three years, until around mid '99. It's not my main business any more, but I still have a couple of hosting clients for high bandwidth sites. the ISP business is TOUGH. The competition is insane, so the approach most ISPs take these days is to advertise really high prices while offering competitive rates only to those who haggle and know how to shop around.

Here's what I've been spending, year by year on Internet service. I've switched providers several times over the years due to changing needs wrt colo vs leased line, and varying costs. I've now been with Hurricane Electric for over a year. They are outstandanding, but you'll have to haggle to get a good price.

1997-1998 - 3 bonded centrex ISDN lines from Brainstorm, 384Kbps: $750/mo
1999 - shelf and 1Mbps at Above.net plus a ptp T1: $2000 + $450/mo
2000 - shelf and 1.5 Mbps at maxim.net: $700/mo
2001 - ptp t1 to Hurricane: $650 ISP, $350 XO for the line
2002 - shelf at Hurricane and 2MBPS: $650. PTP T1 to my shelf: $350

As you can see, over the years the cost of connectivity has fallen from $1822/mbps to about $500. That's not just per MBPS, I'm talking about a complete package - remote connectivity for 1-2MBPS upstream.

The cost of installing fiber is still outrageous, but the fluctuations in demand have resulted in a surplus of strands in the ground. I've coordinated fiber installations before - trust me it's a BIG deal. Trenching, conduit, permits, dealing with the city and the fscking retarded telcos. It's no fun, it's EXPENSIVE, and it can take upwards of three months just to get 100 yards of fiber in the ground. But now that the fiber is there, ISPs and telcos can start using it as soon as there's demand, just by connecting the needed equipment.

Also don't forget that the same strands can usually be used for OC3, OC12, GigE, etc. So it's not just that there are unused strands in the ground, there is also a ton of equipment that can be upgraded to increase the capacity of the strands we're using.

Bandwidth costs still have a long way to fall!

My spam, usually 30-40 a day is about half over the last week, something's happening and I doubt it's my ISP, as they're probably laidoff everyone but CEO.

I usually receive my email in text, using a package on Windows called The Bat, because it's simple, reliable (I've regularly got 4000+ messages in my Inbox, 99% spam) and was the first I found off Tucows which performed mail handling to my satisfaction (after spending years with pine, before my Evil ISP took away my shell account.)

To the point. I haven't had a chance to download and trial Ximian, but a spam I recieved, twice, in the past couple days, reminded me of features which would be great for an email manager:

the ability to view only in text, not executing any scripts

the ability to execute, in a debugging/diagnostic mode, what javascript is doing

The latter I performed by saving a suspicious spam to a file and then cleaning it up and nutering it sufficiently to I could see what it was attempting to do. As expected, it unpacked some urls and attempted to open windows.

The beauty of this being an Open Source project, is that there's hope that a feature, rather than completely out of the question in Outlook.

The spam javascript can be viewed here.

One very excellent control panel interface is the one offered by XO (formerly ConcentricHost). But it's proprietary, of course. Cobalt Networks (now Sun) has a very nice interface. Also proprietary. There are others.

I'm bothered by the Cliff's comment that I have a hard problem with products that claim to do administration and that the users need "absolutely no Linux experience" since I've seen many products that successfully hide the complexities of the OS quite admirably. Maybe he's only referring to open source products?

Get an easily configurable DNS service as in register.com or easydns.com. This way you can easily flip your domain name to a different ip address. If you register your domain at register.com or easydns.com, they will resolve your name to your IP address for free. Network Solutions will force you to use your DSL ISP for DNS. It could be hard to convince your ISP to resolve your DNS name if you're on a cheap service plan.

Also, easydns provides a backup MX, and they will even store your mail for something like 5 days if your primary MX is down. It's a very good idea if you're your own MX and your DSL connection tends to go down once in a while. Easydns also provides dynamic dns services, but I don't know if it works well if you're your own MX. Concentric web hosting cnchost.com and others usually provide good uptime and a few or unlimited number of POP boxes and even shell access. However, they rarely provide IMAP or SSH. Nick.