Re: blocking dialups

[John Berthels <]

On Thu, 15 Oct 1998, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:

> John Berthels said:
> > Would it be a big trial for ISPs to maintain and allocate a pool of
> > 'trusted dial up' IPs (which get direct access) but redirect all other
> > dialups port 25 traffic to a local SMTP server (which then provides
> > throttling, etc).
> 
> For some ISPs, yes. Anything requiring a per-user switch to be set, and
> only set after human intervention, is far too labour intensive.

Fair comment. However I was envisaging that new customers default into the
'untrusted' IP space and anyone with 'special needs' can get the 'trusted'
bit set via the usual support mechanism. [I don't know how extensive the
need for unredirected access is...thats the difficult part - and that
would determine how labour intensive the solution would be.]

The 'old customers' can be left as is - they aren't the problem so you can
set the 'trusted' bit for your entire current userbase. [If the account
has existed for a while, its less likely to be a 'get the free CD and
start spamming' account.]

> That's ignoring the fact that people who have had the same IP address for 5
> years see no reason to change it just because someone else wants their ISP
> to be fascist.

True. They aren't the problem. [I'm no fan of network fascism either, but
an open network doesn't marry well with 'free account, try before you buy,
little or no sanction if you misbehave' mentality which marketing
requires. Thats what I see (possibly incorrectly) as the problem.]

regards,

jb

-- 
John Berthels
Email: j.berthels@localhost
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