Please excuse me, but I would like to turn this traditional spam topic (often in form as well as content) into something operational. Paul Vixie is doing something about spam which is technical, operational, and which can be put into your router, a BGP feed to blackhole spam sites. It is moving from prototype deployment towards production. I can not guess the resources it will take to maintain this effort, not so much maintaining the feeds, but maintaining the list of spam source IPs. So, my suggestions, and realize I have not talked to Paul about this (*) (and i am only talking to actual bgp-speaking net ops here): o check out http://spam.abuse.net/spam/. o get a blackhole feed, maybe from someone downstream to decentralize the load. the agreement is transitive, but you do still have to indemnify Paul, which seems quite reasonable to me. o offer to pass the blackhole feed on to help decentralize the load. but be sure to see the indemnification is maintained. o encourage the largest bgpish folk who will listen to you to do the same. o send a donation to vixie enterprises' voluntary funds to help defray the costs they will surely incur maintaining these data. randy (*) if i talked to paul, that could make him liable for these suggestions. i have stepped on his toes before, and he still seems ambulatory, so what the heck, maybe this time i'll get him.