What are your thoughts on.....

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 03:19:24 GMT, Bob Noel
wrote:

In article , Roger Halstead
wrote:

I find it surprising that a dial-up would even bother trying to be
their own server except for strictly educational means. For that
matter, why would a cable user bother to do so when they can use the
provider and it's so much simpler.

some reasons:

because the provider has proven to be unreliable.

If the provider has proven unreliable it is highly unlikely their dial
up service used as a server is going to be more so.


because it is really to change email addresses.

I can change e-mail addresses on my ISPs server in a matter of
seconds. I log in, go to the proper URL, create and or delete
addresses. It doesn't take much longer than that.


because I'm a geek.

That's legit.



I can think of no reason not to block mail from dynamic IP hosts.

that doesn't mean there are any valid reasons to block all
email from dynamic IP hosts.

The reason for blocking dynamic IPs is they keep changing. Some one
spamming, logs out, and back in. Instant new address. When you have
hundreds of thousands of users, let alone just a few thousand it takes
a whole staff to keep users in line. Sure they can be traced using
the logs (if the ISP keeps good longs), but a dynamic IP would make
them easily traceable.

Let one of those dynamic IPs get infected with a trojan and become a
slave server and it's instant mayhem.



Yet, I do know of one person who insists on using his own server and
mail server on cable. Never have figured out why.

see above.

Nah, it's gotta be more than that. His server is less reliable, he
moved to cable and although he claims it's static, the IP changes
every time he reboots. He has to feed all his machines through one on
a different NIC so he can get away with using a server on the cable.

Yes, the cable is cheaper and faster than DSL. OTOH, I use web
hosting, I pay about $40 a month more than he does, I don't have to
service the equipment, I don't have to keep backups, I don't have to
do the many things the ISP does to deal with the whole wide world, and
my server is legal. Still I have firewalls, virus checkers, spam
bots, and the like.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

In article , Roger Halstead wrote:
because I'm a geek.

That's legit.

It's also legit for private networks to not accept mail from dynamic IP
ranges. For every geek who runs a legitimate mail server on a dynamic
range, there are probably a thousand more machines spewing trojans and
spam. The reality of the situation is if the geek wants to run a mail
server, they need to do it on a static IP range using a provider who
doesn't harbour spammers.

I run a small email/webhosting service. It's only got a dozen
users. In the last 24 hours, Exim rejected 676 emails for containing
either Microsoft executables or being in the SBL-XBL, and SpamAssassin
flagged 1660 emails as being spam. For a dozen users! Whilst the risk of
false positives is highly undesirable, it's the lesser evil of having to
collectively go through the 2336 spam message haystack by hand to find the
few 'ham' needles - every day! You should have seen the rejectlog when
Swen was at its height. If that server had been on my home DSL
connection, it would have been saturated by Swen alone. My own personal
mailbox of Swen alone would have tied up my DSL connection for a long
time had I not been able to filter it at the server.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

In article , Roger Halstead
wrote:

some reasons:

because the provider has proven to be unreliable.

If the provider has proven unreliable it is highly unlikely their dial
up service used as a server is going to be more so.

it turns out that my ISP was able to provide the connectivity
but didn't know much about keeping email (and usenet) servers
up and running.

because it is really to change email addresses.

I can change e-mail addresses on my ISPs server in a matter of
seconds. I log in, go to the proper URL, create and or delete
addresses. It doesn't take much longer than that.

When I first starting running my tiny email server, my ISP
didn't allow email name changes, never mind have multiple
email accounts.


[snip]
Yet, I do know of one person who insists on using his own server and
mail server on cable. Never have figured out why.

see above.

Nah, it's gotta be more than that.

it really is as simple as that in my case. My use of
of a home email server is classic geek.


His server is less reliable, he
moved to cable and although he claims it's static, the IP changes
every time he reboots.

My ISP's DHCP attempts to give out the same IP. My "dynamic IP"
changes only when the ISP needs to move folks to a new subnet
(or the DHCP burps bigtime). In the past 6 or 7 years, I might
have had 6 or 7 IP changes (and almost that many hostname changes,
highway1 to roadrunner to mediaone to attbi...)


He has to feed all his machines through one on
a different NIC so he can get away with using a server on the cable.

Yes, the cable is cheaper and faster than DSL. OTOH, I use web
hosting, I pay about $40 a month more than he does, I don't have to
service the equipment, I don't have to keep backups, I don't have to
do the many things the ISP does to deal with the whole wide world, and
my server is legal. Still I have firewalls, virus checkers, spam
bots, and the like.

--
Bob Noel

Roger Halstead wrote:

Yes, the cable is cheaper and faster than DSL.

Comcast cable is $70/month here. Verizon DSL is $40. I haven't noticed any
difference in speed, but then I'm not uploading much. Supposedly that's where
cable is greatly superior to ADSL.

George Patterson
Battle, n; A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would
not yield to the tongue.

In article , G.R. Patterson III wrote:
Yes, the cable is cheaper and faster than DSL.

Comcast cable is $70/month here. Verizon DSL is $40. I haven't noticed any
difference in speed, but then I'm not uploading much. Supposedly that's where
cable is greatly superior to ADSL.

I think it mainly depends on the provider as to which is superior. ADSL
(at least the flavour we have here) is IIRC, if you're within a suitable
distance limit of the phone exchange, is capable of up to 8Mbit/sec down
and at least 1Mbit/sec up. Of course, the telco only provides us with a
fraction of that!

Cable is also asymmetric, and I think the bandwidth you get depends
again on the provider.

However, once you get to the DSLAM or cable head-end, you've got
contention to worry about - a certain number of users will share a
certain amount of bandwidth. For here, if you pay extra for a business
account, you get backhaul shared with fewer users.

Then there's RADSL (rate adaptive ADSL), which is probably what they are
really using. I think in the DMT (discrete multi tone) linecode scheme,
the download part of your ADSL link uses the lower frequencies, and the
upload part uses the higher frequencies (the copper loop to the phone
exchange IIRC has about 1.1MHz or so of usable bandwidth, but don't
quote me on that!) The higher frequencies attenuate more than the lower
ones - so if you're a long way from the phone exchange, RADSL will tend
to lower your download speed if there's lots of signal degradation,
since that's what'll start to go first.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

On Sat, 20 Mar 2004 13:10:18 GMT, Bob Noel
wrote:

In article , Roger Halstead
wrote:

snip

My ISP's DHCP attempts to give out the same IP. My "dynamic IP"
changes only when the ISP needs to move folks to a new subnet
(or the DHCP burps bigtime). In the past 6 or 7 years, I might
have had 6 or 7 IP changes (and almost that many hostname changes,
highway1 to roadrunner to mediaone to attbi...)



Thing is, a reverse look up will show a valid IP so you are still for
all effective purposes using a static IP.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Bob Noel wrote:
Roger Halstead:

I can think of no reason not to block mail from dynamic IP hosts.

that doesn't mean there are any valid reasons to block all
email from dynamic IP hosts.

Virii and spam come to mind... Pick any one, much less both...