Michael, IMHO, there are two seperate issues here. - better tools would be nice. Although I think tracking packets would be too CPU intensive for today's routers I do think having such a feature would be a good thing. The RAM/ROM to hold the extra microcode is cheap, and if it can be turned off/on at will I see no harm in having it. When someone will have time to add the code is a seperate issue. - why can't my [NSP | TelCo | GME (Godlike Monolithic Entity)] provide me with data on who is spamming my net. I think that is a seperate issue. The TELCOs have an advantage here in that it is MUCH harder to fake caller ID than to fake ICMP headers. I would be willing to bet that if someone who really knew their way around the SS7 network decided to make your life difficult Ma Bell would have a hell of a hard time tracking them down. Most of the TELCO switchmen I have dealt with could not trace a phone call with any reliability. At this point it requires a fair amounf of time, from a fair amount of talented people to track this stuff down. In all the cases I dealt with, people from many service providers were very cooperative if the denial of service attack was in progress. After the fact people seemed to expend effort to the extent they felt they could help. Which for most people is 0 (after the fact it is pretty hard to say who denied what to whom with any certainy) This is the way it is, but not the way it must always be. Feel free to talk to the router vendor of choice and explain to them that this functionality is important to you. In the mean time, I hope you will excuse me while I go off and cope with my own problems. I honestly wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, G'night Larry Plato
On Tue, 9 Jul 1996, Nevin Williams wrote:
Why not? Don't telcos do this? Or if your answer is that telcos only do it for the police and not for each other, then my question would be why can't we form an Internet equivalent, maybe affiliated with something like CERT, that can make these requests and with whom NSP's would cooperate.
What sort of incentive or penalty do you think would enable this cooperation?
Screwed up networks give the whole industry a bad name. It is in everyones economic best interests to make the network operate fast and reliably.
Michael Dillon ISP & Internet Consulting Memra Software Inc. Fax: +1-604-546-3049 http://www.memra.com E-mail: michael@memra.com