[wellylug] cable modem email issues

[Jamie Baddeley]

On Sat, 2005-03-19 at 14:56 +1300, Jamie Dobbs wrote:
> Jamie Baddeley wrote:
> 
> >Well that's odd. I guess things must be spotty, as I've definitely seen
> >this in the past. I had a customer with exactly the same problems. I
> >tcptracerouted on port 25 from the US to the host in question, and
> >things definitely stopped at TCL international border in NZ. It must not
> >have been my imagination, as they're still paying us for the solution.
> >
> >I've doubled checked, and that seems to be the case.
> >
> >Network 203.96.154.0/24 is not filtered, but Network 203.79.97.0/24 is.
> >
> Looks like yet another reason to stay the hell away from TelstraClear 
> and their idiotic ideas of "customer service" and "technology".

You may very well think that, but I couldn't possibly comment :-)

> If I pay for an Internet connection I expect to be able to run any and 
> all services on it that I want to (obviously within the terms and 
> conditions of supply). If the provider is blocking certain ports tat are 
> stopping me from having what is rightfully mine I would take my custom 
> away from them.I know for certain that when I was on cable many years 
> ago you could run what ever you wanted and they blocked nothing, my 
> guess now is that they are trying to say its a purely residential 
> service so they won't allow you to run any servers?

Aye, treat censorship as damage and route around it.

Having said that, I can sort of appreciate the rationale. Idea being is
that they want to reduce the impact of spam and open relays and zombies
and shit like that. And I guess the answer would be "use our smtp". So
as a spam reduction strategy I can understand it. But what I can't
understand is the seemingly inconsistent implementation. If you're going
to do that, surely it'd be a all or nothing situation?

Spam reduction aside, blocking ports is going in the opposite direction
of a free (as in speech) and open internet that I'd prefer. But hey,
then there are people who run this thing called Windows that on average
get compromised every 60 seconds or less on the open/free Internet - and
we can't kill them so what's an ISP to do? ;-)

> When are people going to realise that TelstraClear are worse than 
> Telecom for ruining things, look at Paradise.net - it used to be a top 
> notch ISP with excellent service and customer support, now it's nothing 
> but a bunch of cowboys (IMHO).

I think cowboys is a bit strong. Probably more like clued up dudes
trying to make things happen inside the washing machine and getting a
good shot of disillusionment while they're at it. Personally I have a
lot of respect for the techs at Paradise/Netlink/Saturn etc etc, but I
suspect that they're slowly having the life bled out of them, like most
people who've been in a big company that's grown rapidly by acquistion
and "go forward strategies for synergy!!".

:-)

jamie