On Mon, 23 Jul 2007, Joe Greco wrote:
I think there's a bit of a difference, in that when you're using every commercial WiFi hotspot and hotel login system, that they redirect everything. Would you truly consider that to be the same thing as one of those services redirecting "www.cnn.com" to their own ad-filled news page?
Let's get "real." That's not what those ISPs are doing in this case.
I never said it was, but if you don't want to compare the situations using reasonable comparisons (redirecting one thing is different than redirecting all), then I have no interest in debating with you, and you "win" for some sucky definition of "win."
They aren't pretending to be the real IRC server (the redirected IRC server indicates its not the real one). The ISP isn't send ad-fill messages. The irc.foonet.com server clearly sends several cleaning commands used by several well-known, and very old, Bots. I might have given the server a different name, but its obviously not trying to impersonate the real irc server.
So how do you connect to the real IRC server, then? Remember that most end users are not nslookup-wielding shell commandos who can figure out whois and look up the IP. And what happens when the ISP redirects by IP instead, if we're going to play that game?
Do you prefer ISPs to break everything, including the users VOIP service (can't call 9-1-1), e-mail service (can't contact the help desk), web service (can't look for help)? Or should the ISP only disrupt the minimum number of services needed to clean the Bot?
All right, here we go. Please explain the nature of the bot on my freshly installed (last night) FreeBSD 6.2R box. # ls -ld /; date; uname -r; uname -s drwxr-xr-x 28 root wheel 512 Jul 22 23:04 / Mon Jul 23 10:56:57 CDT 2007 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD # echo "nameserver 68.4.16.30" > /etc/resolv.conf # host irc.vel.net irc.vel.net has address 70.168.71.144 Hint: there is no bot. My traffic is being redirected regardless. Were I a Cox customer (and I'm not), I'd be rather ticked off. Interfering with services in order to clean a bot would be a much more plausible excuse if there was a bot. There is no bot. So, to reiterate your own point:
Or should the ISP only disrupt the minimum number of services needed to clean the Bot?
Yes, exactly. And that's obviously not what Cox is doing. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.