Oh, and what happens with that address is unreachable, down, DoSed, or whatever... your mail will sit in the queue for some configured amount of time with zero indication of the user's error.
Remedy: 1) blackhole that IP - PERMANENTLY. (blacklist their entire IP assignement(s)) 2) modify bind to return NXDOMAIN for any query containing that IP. 3) make aformenttioned modification a configuration option (list) thus making it easy to adjust when the assh^W^Wthey change the address. 4) add my own choice wildcard entries:-) 5) kill every living thing at Verisign/Network Solutions even remotely involved with this bullshit (as an example to others who have not learned to participate in a civilized society.)
There's a real big difference between me adding *.bar.com and someone adding *.com.. The wildcard record was originally intended to reduce the number of records -- specifically to negate the need for an MX record for every host. And honestly, it's never worked to anyone's satisfaction (e.g. the ability to send email to bob@[censored].bar.com)
spacemeat:/#/usr/lib/sendmail -bt foo@foothefuckinghell.com foo@foothefuckinghell.c om
deliver to foo@foothefuckinghell.com
router = lookuphost, transport = remote_smtp
host foothefuckinghell.com [64.94.110.11] spacemeat:/# telnet 64.94.110.11 25 Trying 64.94.110.11... Connected to 64.94.110.11. Escape character is '^]'. 220 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready QUIT 221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission channel 221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission channel Connection closed by foreign host.
Umm, the fact that email is going to go there for every typo or expired domain opens up a great deal of legal trouble. They really haven't thought this out very well have they?
(Even if it currently bounces everything. It still has to get there to be rejected. And there's nothing that says they aren't keeping it, reading it, or won't do so in the future.)
Because the number of DMCA claims received is very small -- small enough to be handled by one person or as part of the jobs for a small department. "virus" and other abuse reports number in the thousands (and even millions for large ISPs) -- far to many for even a warehouse of monkeys to manage. And then, they'd only do something about those that were explicitly pointed out. Abuse departments don't go hunting for stuff (for previous mentioned reasons.)
1) If you're using dialup, the speed of the internet will not be a bottleneck (slashdot effect not withstanding.)
2) If you're already using compression (stac, predictor, MPPC, etc.), this will make ZERO difference. The cache has to be on the near side of the slowest link -- which is the dialup user's modem. Now, in the instances where the ISP disables software compression -- like, for instance, the "idiots" at Bellsouth.Net who disable CCP to "speed up connection times" [exact words of the Cisco engineer who helped them set things up] (the time it takes to connect and pass traffic is 100% modem training. For us ISDN users, 3 of the 3 seconds it takes to connect are IPCP; I'll accept that as they do tend to return the same IP most of the time) -- it'll help some.
3) A lot of what's moving around the internet isn't measurablly compressable... GIFs, JPGs, mpegs, zip files, etc. (I shall have to perform an analysis.)
If you took place in the survey or are a "member" of any of the supporting orgs, then you can download it. The link provided is not the only one. I went to SANS Surveys to download my copy.
(I am not a paying member of any of those orgs, btw.)
Actually, rural lines are far more stable that urban lines. Trunks get dug up, cut down, or otherwise "broke" in and around cities far more often than out in the sticks. Rural areas don't see the same traffic and growth, so once the cable is in the ground (or on the pole), it tends to stay there for years. My parents phone line was drug up once (ditch clearing which I've not known the DOT to do for over a decade) and cut by a water pipe trenching machine once (bell marked the cable path wrong) over nearly 40 years. My grandmother's phone was knocked out by a power line once (welded the trunk cable clean through) over twice that time. Yet, in the decade I've lived in Raleigh, I've seen more backhoe cuts than pop-up ads.
(In fact, the biggest threat to phone lines in rural areas are the department of transportation cutting new roads or paving previously unpaved roads and idiots with guns shooting the lines/boxes.)
the switches in the COs will need to be replaced
That's already been done in many places. CO switches are modular (and have been for 3 decades) and thus easily upgraded without the cost of building a new CO. As a child, I watched Bellsouth rebuild the Lawndale NC CO (it's two houses down from where an aunt and uncle used to live.) They were replacing the old *rotary* switch with a "modern" Nortel DMS switch. The "touch tone" fee from the people on that switch more than paid for that entire building -- switch, land, and all -- even at 1970's prices.
Telco switches aren't that expensive. Sure, they cost more than most houses. (well, maybe not around here...) But there are plenty on the "used" market (I even saw a Lucent 5ESS on eBay a few months back:-)) Plus, there are some "cheap" class 4/5 switches out there -- where cheap == $250k. Besides, you don't need a class 5 switch in every CO.
That's true if you buy DSL from the telco. That's not true if your DSL is through a 3rd party. And the telco is required by law (I think everywhere) to provide "open access" to the copper to provide the DSL link.
Where I work (telco/isp), there are no DSL lines bridged with POTS lines. It just screws stuff up. (And Bell will intentionally screw it up by accident:-))
The key word there is "*paid*"... all this buildout was paid for long ago. So why do we continue to hand over money clearly line-itemed out for Universal Service? Where's all that money now that we once again have a use for it in building out new services?
It's the same bullshit that bellsouth pulled for decades with touch-tone. Charge people a fee for a service to cover the cost of upgrades to support that service, but then keep charging for it long after they've recouped 10x their costs. Why do you think local number portability has an explicit charge duration? (And don't think I'm not watching that one... bell charges me *one* freakin' month too long and I'll have 'em in federal court.)
The Bells will not want to do anything with the USF moneys they're collecting because they are counting it as profit. And one hell of a profit to boot.
There are lines that carry the PSTN. And then there are lines that carry internet traffic. They are almost never the same line. Voice traffic requires a very specific QoS. Internet traffic is perfectly fine with "it gets there whenever it gets there."
As others have pointed out, within an ATM network, you'll often find CBR (voice) along side VBR (video) and UBR (data). However, ATM is somewhat rare in the data world (the overhead is way too high... ~20% of the available bw is "wasted" in all those 53byte cells -- great for voice, horrible for data.)
(From a transport perspective, a time-slot is a time-slot. As long as frames are arriving in a timely, orderly fashion, then everything works. In the ATM world, that's called Ciruit Emulation Services. Elsewhere it's just plain multiplexing.)
Actually, around here (in HellSouth land), a non-service fee is placed on the bill "on behalf" of E911. It's not a regulated service so I'm required to pay it. (i.e. they won't turn off my phone for not paying it. I suspect someone would bitch if I refused to pay it.) In theory, that money is rolled into the E911 operations budget. But, my money says Bell keeps it. (I've never looked into the E911 operations budget.)
Food is taxed to pay our farmers to not grow crap. (thus controlling the supply and demand for things.) Taxing the internet pays for all those computers that monitor what you're doing.
My internet access is just as reliable as the telephone service. In fact, it's better than the phone service... the SLC system at the CO crashed once for "many hours" -- it took about six hours for everything to be restored and get my ISDN line in service. The Max TNT I dial into has been in service for years (914 days 11:36:23 at the moment and even then, it was reloaded for a software upgrade)
uniform and reasonable rates
Defined by whom? Uniformity is a very unfunny joke. Even within the same LATA, the price for the same phone service can be different. Cross a LATA and the price will certainly be different. Cross a state boundry and there's a very big difference. For example, ISDN service in TN is 23$/month. twenty three freakin' dollars per month. That's less than my POTS line in Raleigh (NC.)
Do you want 911 service that works?
Maybe. I've called 911 once in my entire life (31+ years now.) And then it was to complain about my loud neighbors (still) partying at 3am. (Why the f*** do they not put the police department numbers in the phone book?) I'm charged a "service fee" for 911 access on my ISDN line which is attached to a data-only router. (ISDN is worthless as a "life line" so I really don't understand why they put 911 on the thing.)
There's still a last-mile problem. However, that one pair of wire can carry a lot more than a simple Circuit Switched Voice call. A lot more. The bits still have to have a way to get in and out of the house. The problem really is in the changing market landscape: the copper pair just isn't going to bring in the same revenue today. The Bell's have been fighting the losing battle for decades now -- VoIP is just the latest twist.
bypassed the long distance lines that Bell...
To be accurate, RBOCs are prohibited by law from crossing a LATA boundry without handing the traffic to a long distance provider. Recently, RBOCs have been entering the LD market (usually by acquiring smaller LD providers) making that a little bit of a grey area. Case in point... look at BellSouth.Net; they own and operate all the dial hardware but cannot interconnect them all without using an outside network (UUNet mostly.) I laugh at that all the time.
There are a lot of "taxes" and "fees" on phone bills these days. They really piss me off. Just call it what it is: the f***in' service cost. All those BS "FCC" charges are money put directly in the telcos' pockets. Not one damned penny leaves the telco for the FCC.
Government regulation is the only way they've made it this far. Cable TV networks have had the technical capability to provide voice and network access for decades. However, they've never, historically, been allowed to do so.
VoIP is a Good Thing(tm), but there's a lot of other things that have to occur before it will work as well as the century old PSTN. (Never tried VoIP calls across the country/planet or when people are downloading their pr0n have you.)
The irony is thick indeed... the RBOC's certainly expect everyone to fork over the termination fees, but then refuse to pay them themselves. I've heard of many CLEC's that had to take Bellsouth to court over such crap.
I really don't see how the idiots in office can honestly classify VoIP the same as POTS. The internet is NOT the PSTN -- the internet is broken in various ways ALL THE TIME where the PSTN is required by numerous laws to never fail.
Nope. It's a f***in' lie. Java craplets running inside a web browser tend to work more/less the same on any platform. However, java crapplications are very, very different.
The Copper Mountain DLSAM management application(s) are 100% java (both the server and the clients.) The client works ok on solaris and very well on windows. But it looks like recycled dog poo everywhere else. The server code works (for various definitions) under solaris and linux, but ain't too hot under windows. AND, it is 100% dependant on the supplied VM version (1.3.1)
I have a java application (news "reader" thing) that runs almost anywhere, however, the GUI look/layout is dependant on the OS and VM version. It wasn't until 1.4.2 that the fonts were the same size everywhere -- windows: fine, solaris: fonts are one freakin' pixel high or 10x larger.
Did you not notice / suffer any network degradation during the peak infection period for sqlslammer and msblaster?
No, *I* didn't. Where I work (ISP/telco), there were no major problems anywhere within the network. Measures taken to protect business operations created a small problem briefly (router CPU load up to 80-90%), but that small error (only numbered access-list's are offloaded) was corrected. However, others were not so good -- funny to see monkeys (un)managing Cisco 12000 GSRs to the point of crashing them, repeatedly.
Unless the email-hosting contract specifically grants them the right to read and delete their customer's email(s), then they have commited their own felony. Last time I checked, email was afforded the same privacy and protection as normal post, but one's millage will vary.
(I recall another ISP digging themselves a firey pit by deleting a message from their users inbox's.)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and what happens with that address is unreachable, down, DoSed, or whatever... your mail will sit in the queue for some configured amount of time with zero indication of the user's error.
:-)
Remedy:
1) blackhole that IP - PERMANENTLY. (blacklist their entire IP assignement(s))
2) modify bind to return NXDOMAIN for any query containing that IP.
3) make aformenttioned modification a configuration option (list) thus making it easy to adjust when the assh^W^Wthey change the address.
4) add my own choice wildcard entries
5) kill every living thing at Verisign/Network Solutions even remotely involved with this bullshit (as an example to others who have not learned to participate in a civilized society.)
There's a real big difference between me adding *.bar.com and someone adding *.com.. The wildcard record was originally intended to reduce the number of records -- specifically to negate the need for an MX record for every host. And honestly, it's never worked to anyone's satisfaction (e.g. the ability to send email to bob@[censored].bar.com)
spacemeat:/# /usr/lib/sendmail -bt foo@foothefuckinghell.comc om
foo@foothefuckinghell.
deliver to foo@foothefuckinghell.com
router = lookuphost, transport = remote_smtp
host foothefuckinghell.com [64.94.110.11]
spacemeat:/# telnet 64.94.110.11 25
Trying 64.94.110.11...
Connected to 64.94.110.11.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 ready
QUIT
221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission channel
221 snubby2-wceast Snubby Mail Rejector Daemon v1.3 closing transmission channel
Connection closed by foreign host.
Umm, the fact that email is going to go there for every typo or expired domain opens up a great deal of legal trouble. They really haven't thought this out very well have they?
(Even if it currently bounces everything. It still has to get there to be rejected. And there's nothing that says they aren't keeping it, reading it, or won't do so in the future.)
Oh anonymous hackers will remove the DRM and post away. (If I can display it on my TV, then I re-encode it and off we go...)
Because the number of DMCA claims received is very small -- small enough to be handled by one person or as part of the jobs for a small department. "virus" and other abuse reports number in the thousands (and even millions for large ISPs) -- far to many for even a warehouse of monkeys to manage. And then, they'd only do something about those that were explicitly pointed out. Abuse departments don't go hunting for stuff (for previous mentioned reasons.)
It's also called "fraud". And in other news, I have a bridge forsale...
1) If you're using dialup, the speed of the internet will not be a bottleneck (slashdot effect not withstanding.)
2) If you're already using compression (stac, predictor, MPPC, etc.), this will make ZERO difference. The cache has to be on the near side of the slowest link -- which is the dialup user's modem. Now, in the instances where the ISP disables software compression -- like, for instance, the "idiots" at Bellsouth.Net who disable CCP to "speed up connection times" [exact words of the Cisco engineer who helped them set things up] (the time it takes to connect and pass traffic is 100% modem training. For us ISDN users, 3 of the 3 seconds it takes to connect are IPCP; I'll accept that as they do tend to return the same IP most of the time) -- it'll help some.
3) A lot of what's moving around the internet isn't measurablly compressable... GIFs, JPGs, mpegs, zip files, etc. (I shall have to perform an analysis.)
- ...
- instead let the employer "repay" you by giving you time off...
That's called "comp time" and in NC, it's illegal. (unless someone changed the labor regulations quietly over the last decade.)If you were one of the 10,334 respondants, a copy of the survey is free. It's always been free to participants.
If you took place in the survey or are a "member" of any of the supporting orgs, then you can download it. The link provided is not the only one. I went to SANS Surveys to download my copy.
(I am not a paying member of any of those orgs, btw.)
- Maintaining rural lines can be expensive.
Actually, rural lines are far more stable that urban lines. Trunks get dug up, cut down, or otherwise "broke" in and around cities far more often than out in the sticks. Rural areas don't see the same traffic and growth, so once the cable is in the ground (or on the pole), it tends to stay there for years. My parents phone line was drug up once (ditch clearing which I've not known the DOT to do for over a decade) and cut by a water pipe trenching machine once (bell marked the cable path wrong) over nearly 40 years. My grandmother's phone was knocked out by a power line once (welded the trunk cable clean through) over twice that time. Yet, in the decade I've lived in Raleigh, I've seen more backhoe cuts than pop-up ads.(In fact, the biggest threat to phone lines in rural areas are the department of transportation cutting new roads or paving previously unpaved roads and idiots with guns shooting the lines/boxes.)
- the switches in the COs will need to be replaced
That's already been done in many places. CO switches are modular (and have been for 3 decades) and thus easily upgraded without the cost of building a new CO. As a child, I watched Bellsouth rebuild the Lawndale NC CO (it's two houses down from where an aunt and uncle used to live.) They were replacing the old *rotary* switch with a "modern" Nortel DMS switch. The "touch tone" fee from the people on that switch more than paid for that entire building -- switch, land, and all -- even at 1970's prices.Telco switches aren't that expensive. Sure, they cost more than most houses. (well, maybe not around here...) But there are plenty on the "used" market (I even saw a Lucent 5ESS on eBay a few months back
That's true if you buy DSL from the telco. That's not true if your DSL is through a 3rd party. And the telco is required by law (I think everywhere) to provide "open access" to the copper to provide the DSL link.
:-))
Where I work (telco/isp), there are no DSL lines bridged with POTS lines. It just screws stuff up. (And Bell will intentionally screw it up by accident
The key word there is "*paid*"... all this buildout was paid for long ago. So why do we continue to hand over money clearly line-itemed out for Universal Service? Where's all that money now that we once again have a use for it in building out new services?
It's the same bullshit that bellsouth pulled for decades with touch-tone. Charge people a fee for a service to cover the cost of upgrades to support that service, but then keep charging for it long after they've recouped 10x their costs. Why do you think local number portability has an explicit charge duration? (And don't think I'm not watching that one... bell charges me *one* freakin' month too long and I'll have 'em in federal court.)
The Bells will not want to do anything with the USF moneys they're collecting because they are counting it as profit. And one hell of a profit to boot.
"telco lines"?
There are lines that carry the PSTN. And then there are lines that carry internet traffic. They are almost never the same line. Voice traffic requires a very specific QoS. Internet traffic is perfectly fine with "it gets there whenever it gets there."
As others have pointed out, within an ATM network, you'll often find CBR (voice) along side VBR (video) and UBR (data). However, ATM is somewhat rare in the data world (the overhead is way too high... ~20% of the available bw is "wasted" in all those 53byte cells -- great for voice, horrible for data.)
(From a transport perspective, a time-slot is a time-slot. As long as frames are arriving in a timely, orderly fashion, then everything works. In the ATM world, that's called Ciruit Emulation Services. Elsewhere it's just plain multiplexing.)
Actually, around here (in HellSouth land), a non-service fee is placed on the bill "on behalf" of E911. It's not a regulated service so I'm required to pay it. (i.e. they won't turn off my phone for not paying it. I suspect someone would bitch if I refused to pay it.) In theory, that money is rolled into the E911 operations budget. But, my money says Bell keeps it. (I've never looked into the E911 operations budget.)
Food is taxed to pay our farmers to not grow crap. (thus controlling the supply and demand for things.) Taxing the internet pays for all those computers that monitor what you're doing.
- uniform and reasonable rates
Defined by whom? Uniformity is a very unfunny joke. Even within the same LATA, the price for the same phone service can be different. Cross a LATA and the price will certainly be different. Cross a state boundry and there's a very big difference. For example, ISDN service in TN is 23$/month. twenty three freakin' dollars per month. That's less than my POTS line in Raleigh (NC.)- Do you want 911 service that works?
Maybe. I've called 911 once in my entire life (31+ years now.) And then it was to complain about my loud neighbors (still) partying at 3am. (Why the f*** do they not put the police department numbers in the phone book?) I'm charged a "service fee" for 911 access on my ISDN line which is attached to a data-only router. (ISDN is worthless as a "life line" so I really don't understand why they put 911 on the thing.)reliable internet technology Heh. lol. That's very funny indeed.
- bypassed the long distance lines that Bell
...
To be accurate, RBOCs are prohibited by law from crossing a LATA boundry without handing the traffic to a long distance provider. Recently, RBOCs have been entering the LD market (usually by acquiring smaller LD providers) making that a little bit of a grey area. Case in point... look at BellSouth.Net; they own and operate all the dial hardware but cannot interconnect them all without using an outside network (UUNet mostly.) I laugh at that all the time.There are a lot of "taxes" and "fees" on phone bills these days. They really piss me off. Just call it what it is: the f***in' service cost. All those BS "FCC" charges are money put directly in the telcos' pockets. Not one damned penny leaves the telco for the FCC.
Government regulation is the only way they've made it this far. Cable TV networks have had the technical capability to provide voice and network access for decades. However, they've never, historically, been allowed to do so.
VoIP is a Good Thing(tm), but there's a lot of other things that have to occur before it will work as well as the century old PSTN. (Never tried VoIP calls across the country/planet or when people are downloading their pr0n have you.)
The irony is thick indeed... the RBOC's certainly expect everyone to fork over the termination fees, but then refuse to pay them themselves. I've heard of many CLEC's that had to take Bellsouth to court over such crap.
I really don't see how the idiots in office can honestly classify VoIP the same as POTS. The internet is NOT the PSTN -- the internet is broken in various ways ALL THE TIME where the PSTN is required by numerous laws to never fail.
- Isn't that an urban legend?
Nope. It's a f***in' lie. Java craplets running inside a web browser tend to work more/less the same on any platform. However, java crapplications are very, very different.The Copper Mountain DLSAM management application(s) are 100% java (both the server and the clients.) The client works ok on solaris and very well on windows. But it looks like recycled dog poo everywhere else. The server code works (for various definitions) under solaris and linux, but ain't too hot under windows. AND, it is 100% dependant on the supplied VM version (1.3.1)
I have a java application (news "reader" thing) that runs almost anywhere, however, the GUI look/layout is dependant on the OS and VM version. It wasn't until 1.4.2 that the fonts were the same size everywhere -- windows: fine, solaris: fonts are one freakin' pixel high or 10x larger.
The same wayyou capitalize '.'
If you still live with your parents, then it isn't your garage.
- Did you not notice / suffer any network degradation during the peak infection period for sqlslammer and msblaster?
No, *I* didn't. Where I work (ISP/telco), there were no major problems anywhere within the network. Measures taken to protect business operations created a small problem briefly (router CPU load up to 80-90%), but that small error (only numbered access-list's are offloaded) was corrected. However, others were not so good -- funny to see monkeys (un)managing Cisco 12000 GSRs to the point of crashing them, repeatedly.[root:pts/5{9}]gir:/usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test3/[1:1 3pm]: find . -type f -name \*.\[chS\] | \
xargs wc -l | grep total | awk '{sum+=$1} END {print sum}'
5525443
That doesn't count any scripts or other "non-code" type things that are there.
Unless the email-hosting contract specifically grants them the right to read and delete their customer's email(s), then they have commited their own felony. Last time I checked, email was afforded the same privacy and protection as normal post, but one's millage will vary.
(I recall another ISP digging themselves a firey pit by deleting a message from their users inbox's.)