Quoth Greg A. Woods on Mon, Apr 19, 1999:
> I think you're way out of line there. Security and privacy alone *are*
> the reasons such redirects should be done where possible.
Why? What security and privacy do users or ISPs gain if all the
users' mail passes through the ISP's mailserver?
> Not only that
> but these are policy decisions that end providers *must* be *free* to
> make on their own.
Nobody wants to take this freedom from ISPs, but I prefer my mail
not to be redirected. They may _advise_ me to send the mail
through their box, but I don't want them to push me to comply to
their decisions.
> End-user ISPs *must* start taking more responsibility for their users
> (just as most corporations now do with their firewalls).
Sure. If the users spams someone, the AUP must be such that the
ISP can sue the user and pull several millions off his wallet.
> Dial-up
> providers are *not* at the same level in the service heirarchy as IP
> transit providers are and any expectations to the contrary will only
> lead to trouble. If you want direct and unfettered access to the net,
> and you want your packets to flow freely then you must be willing to
> "pay" for that privilege and get yourself something much closer to a
> dedicated connection with all the attendant responsibilities that go
> along with having direct access to the Internet.
What do you mean by paying? I have no money to pay for a
dedicated line. I, personally, don't pay for a dialup line
either, but let's suppose, for the sake of the argument, that I
do. So are you implying that in order to get the priviledge to
connect to any SMTP server in the world I must pay money? Or are
you saying that I just must inform my ISP that I want to do it
and probably sign some form to indicate that I take
responsibility for my actions?
> Diagnostics are not something the general public should be fooling with,
> or should have to worry about. Too many cooks spoil the soup.
No shit. I want the bloody right to ping and traceroute any host
if I suspect that it's down (e.g., I can't connect to some FTP
server in Southern Turkmenia). I don't want to call the poor
Tech Support bobs of my beloved ISP _just_ to make them run
traceroute for me and confirm that yes, indeed, the box is down.
I'm a sysadmin, and I know the price for a user's call. For the
admin or Bob, that is. *I* don't want my users to call me for
any little problem.
And as a user, I want the right to connect to any host telnetting
to any port and debug it if I think it might have a problem. I
want to know why the mail was not delivered, what happened with
the primary MX for the domain (whether the mailer daemon died
there or the route is down), and why the secondary MX barks at
me.
If the user doesn't know enough about the Net, well, he may as
well not do all that and call the Tech Support.
Vadik.
--
Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick
to anger.
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