[CLUE-Tech] Re: [CLUE-Talk] OpenSouce Friendly ISP

[Jeffery Cann]

On Sunday 27 January 2002 06:22 pm, Collins Richey wrote:
> I must be blind to some of the problems.  Yes, I was out of service for a
> few days during the cutover to @attbi, but since then I've had nary a
> problem, nor do I care whether they support linux (or others) or not,
> since I'm sitting on a router (NetGear) that I only needed to touch to get
> the correct domain name for the @attbi service.  The email servers have
> been much more reliable than @home (they would take the server down on a
> whim).

I have to agree that my @attbi service has been better than @home.  Mind you, 
I am lucky enough to live in a neighboorhood (SW Aurora) that was the first 
one to get broadband -- two years ago.  It screamed then because I was 
literally the only one on my block...

Over those two years, I watched my prime time (evenings) bandwidth piddle 
out, more and more.  Much of it is because of the shared pipe technology of 
broadband.  I can live with this aspect of it.

What bothers me is folks who:
+ Install Windoze 2000 with IIS enabled and constantly re-infect the network 
with the code red and nmidia worms.
+ "Innocently" run high-traffic websites.
+ Spam me constantly.
+ Run network 'quake' servers.
+ Think they are hackers, but are clueless script kiddies.

Sure, CLUEbies run web sites from their Linux boxes.  I have no problem with 
this because I know the CLUEbies are honest folks who are not sucking my 
bandwidth.   They are probably not running high traffic pr0n sites and they 
have so few hits few would notice whether their servers are on or off (from a 
bandwidth usage viewpoint).

However, there are a lot of other folks who are selfish bastards -- think of 
mass-marketing, spammer types.  These guys were eating my bandwith.

So, you are an ISP.  99% of your clients are in the CLUEbie category -- 
basically honest folks.  However, the remaining 1% are eating more than their 
share of bandwidth.  What would you do?  Try to selectively limit the 
bastards?  We all know that this would be a futile game of whack-a-mole.  So, 
they say 'no servers on your @attbi.com network'. and they limit traffic at 
the router level.  Honestly, I see their point and I have seen much more 
consistency in my connection since AT&T took over.

Jeff