Should ISPs Be The Little Man's Firewall?

Anonymous Coward writes "In a paper published today, the point is made that ISPs should filter some ports (e.g. 135) for good. I guess given what everyone sees hitting their various firewalls these days, this may make sense. But wasn't the Internet supposed to be 'open' at one point? Or are we to the point where Internet=Web (and maybe AIM). The author of the paper is operating DShield and I guess has some insight into this issue. He made the same points before on various mailing lists."

Comments

Re:Absolutely

[JCMay]

Filter by default - if you need your ports or you want to do your own firewalling then get the "advanced user" account that costs less but requires more responsibility from the user.

Costs less? Are you kidding? They'd price it higher than the ports-closed standard account because it's "Advanced." Kinda like the phone company charging extra for touch tone over pulse, even though it takes more equipment (nowadays) to handle pulse dialing.

ISPs should sue Microsoft

[sunset]

for f***ing up the Internet. It's another case of MS's total disregard for the commons, and their unwillingness to acknowledge the fiduciary responsibility that goes with having a monopoly.

translation: Must ISP's clean up after Microsoft?

[phr1]

Those port blockages (except for maybe 25) are workarounds for ridiculous MSFT security bugs. The proposal is that ISP's install blocks to work around the bugs. Shouldn't MSFT clean up its own mess?

Re:In a word...

[aaaurgh]

"designed with all the intellegence at the ends"

Unfortunately they forgot to factor in the general public, MS, IE and OE.