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Broadband Crackdown
MrPeach writes: "In a move unsurprising to those of us who have had interactions with their so-called customer support, AT&T Broadband and Excite@Home are indefinitely filtering all incoming traffic on http port 80 for residential customers. They could have cut access to those running compromised servers, but instead chose to deny the ability to run a web server to all subscribers to their service. DSL anyone?" DSL won't save you. Verizon is apparently also blocking port 80 for their DSL customers, in addition to blocking outgoing port 25 and requiring use of Verizon's SMTP servers to send email. Verizon is also cheerfully paying fines for screwing over their competitors - the fines will be much less than the extra profit they can squeeze out once their competition is gone.
I don't really have much sympathy for people running web servers on a broadband connections. If you want to do something serious, you're likely limited by your AUP/TOS. And with the price (free) and availability of basic web hosting, it's hard to buy that many people can't find an acceptable alternative. For more serious stuff, you really should be using a professional hosting service, for your visitors' sakes (upload bandwidth, uptime, etc.). If you want total control of your server, consider co-locating or getting business class bandwidth. And if all else fails, run on port 81.
Yeah, a few people will get slightly inconvenienced or will have to shell out for real hosting, but I won't shed many tears. I think it's worth it if it stems the tide of Code Red, and I think you overestimate the number of people who couldn't be served well by Geocities. Frankly I think there are more people with webservers who have IIS installed unintentially.
We applaud ISP's when they filter out NetBIOS and Windows file sharing; I don't see this as much different.
Actually, isn't this exactly what Verizon ought to do to provide a proper audit trail for email? Actually, shouldn't external MTAs be configured to reject those requests even if Verizon let them through, because Verizon's is not one of the domains they serve?
That is, an MTA in the foo.com domain should handle only requests from IPs in the foo.com domain, and additionally should check the envelope (MAIL FROM) to ensure that the purported originating user is known to it, right? These measures aren't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, yet they do impose obstacles to spammers and spreaders of email viruses.
In a nutshell, what's so bad about being forced to use your ISP's MTA? It seems like Verizon is being a good corporate citizen of the 'net, here.
This has propably been said but iam an Optus@Home customer in Aust and it firmly states (about 6 times) in the user agreement, FAQ, member pages and help sections that you cannot run a server on the web, this is in breach of the AUP and you get immediate disconnection.
So if this is the case then why the story ? why the complaints ?
ignorance is no defense - when you sign up for any service or contract you read the terms and conditions - thus you dont have these problems.
End of story - if its not acceptable and you do it you get thrown off - i cant see anything fairer than that and whingeing about it happening is like ignoring the warning on a chaisaw that says dont cut off your leg and doing just that !!
(of course in the US you could sue the company as stupidity is no exclusion - get the right jury and get lucky)
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
From the looks of my logs its just small residencies that are attacking me , all that needs to be done in my opinion is a release of a counter virus , because lets face the people that are running the machines that are attacking me are not gonna know they are running IIS let alone they are infected with code red 1 or 2.