Mailing List Archive

Hi Barry,

> Go ahead, tell me again how this is nothing but a spam whine

For a friend, sure.

Barry, it's nothing but a spam whine.

:-)

But more seriously.

> three days, thousands and thousands of messages, all being bounced back,
> non-stop, and Sprint refuses to lift a finger or acknowledge that this is
> an operational problem.

Well, it's not really an Ops problem. Ops folk worry about packets and
stuff like that, not social and legal issues such as this. Within
organizations such as Sprint, they're usually not empowered to take the
kinds of actions you want.

And you seem to have the attack effectively repelled for the moment. So a
more cautious but longer lasting approach might be worth considering. E.g.
Sprint management might need some constructive help to get an anti-spam
policy into their customer contracts. If the Sprint customer community can
make Sprint Product Marketing think that [potential] customers will see
this as a benefit, then they could do the things which would make Ops folk
able to take more immediate actions than passing the buck upstairs.

Some of Sprint's competitors have gone this path, which may make it easier
to get Sprint managament to see it as a good thing. But it may take
sophisticated math to calculate the effort to get an organization with as
many lawyers as Sprint has to make legal changes.

> Sprint should not be allowed to operate on the internet, they're
> destroying it, they're completely irresponsible.

This seems a bit extreme, and probably does not help get your point across.

I've been involved in some spam issues, and life is often less clear than
one might like. It's not like there is good legislative or case law on
this stuff, and companies large enough to have lawyers tend to worry about
such problems. John Curran wrote a nice summary of this and the related
due process issues last month.

Until the provider community management perceives spam as needing to be
abolished, the legal and procedural framework will not be in place for us
lowly ops folk to nuke the <bleep>ers the minute they appear on the scope.

Provider community management perceptions are driven by customer demand.
So it would be very helpful for the user community to make clear to big
provider management that they don't want to receive spam.

randy
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On Sat, 4 Jan 1997, Barry Shein wrote:
> 3PM EST and that mailbombing from a Sprint customer continues
> full-blast, well into its third full day, and Sprint continues to
> refuse to do anything about it.

This is not a sprint problem. If you don't like sprint filter some of
their space from our network.

> Go ahead, tell me again how this is nothing but a spam whine -- three
> days, thousands and thousands of messages, all being bounced back,
> non-stop, and Sprint refuses to lift a finger or acknowledge that this
> is an operational problem.

Nope

> Sprint should not be allowed to operate on the internet, they're
> destroying it, they're completely irresponsible.

Give me a break, I have problems with sprint, but they are not destroying
the internet.

Nathan Stratton CEO, NetRail, Inc. Tracking the future today!
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Phone (703)524-4800 NetRail, Inc.
Fax (703)534-5033 2007 N. 15 St. Suite 5
Email sales@netrail.net Arlington, Va. 22201
WWW http://www.netrail.net/
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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about
itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Matthew 6:34


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On Sat, 4 Jan 1997, Randy Bush wrote:

> Well, it's not really an Ops problem. Ops folk worry about packets and
> stuff like that, not social and legal issues such as this. Within
> organizations such as Sprint, they're usually not empowered to take the
> kinds of actions you want.

I hate to continue this argument (perhaps we should all move it
over to isp-admin-list@aol.com, which is a good place for real admin types
to discuss these types of issues), but I have to disagree -- just as with
a standard pingflood, the intent is irrelevant, the flood must be stopped.
A very good case could be made that isp-inter.net is slowly packetflooding
world.std.com on port 25.

--
J.D. Falk, System Administrator <lart@cais.net>
CAIS Internet <noc@cais.net>
McLean, Virginia, USA 1-888-CAIS-NOC

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