As more and more of the "facts" come to light, please do some research before you accuse an ASN a SpamBone just by looking at spamhaus & Co. lists. They are a budget-fitting dedicated server + colocation service provider with over 1500 servers on the network premise. They've lacked certain planning that was necessary to actively identify and defeat spammers in the initial time. They did institute plans and remedies to resolve spam issues and they've canned many number of spam-hosting customers in the recent months -- that's a fact. Most of their spam-prone customers are from 1-2 years ago, signed up when they've lacked resources to deal with such an abuse, which since then they've been working on correcting their problems. Just how do you clean up your whole 1500-server network to have zero-spammers overnight? Kick out your customer whenever you see ^H^H^H^Hspamreport sent to abuse@ without taking any time to investigate the cause and who committed it? Remember, most of dedicated server providers (i.e. ThePlanet, ServePath, Managed.com, ev1servers, etc), have majority of their customer base being web hosting companies, who also provide end-user services to their own customers. I would be quite pissed if I run a dedicated-server based web hosting company and my provider just shuts off my box after receiving an abuse, without even giving me a week to identify which one of my hundreds of web site hosted clients have committed abuse. Believe me, if Pegasus was active spamming-friendly company, NAC would've kicked them out the door a long time ago. NAC *does* have full time and responsible abuse department. -J On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 06:38:07AM -0500, Doug White wrote:
As more and more of the "facts" come to light, it appears that NAC has brought much of this on themselves, and will need to dedicate the legal resources to counter the claims of Pegasus, in fact their own survival may well depend on it. I have to admit I have little sympathy for them or any provider who hosts spam operations.
Historically, NAC.net has received spam reports by the tens of thousands, and have consistently did not much more than pass out rhetoric. Their contract with pegasus, as well as their publically published Terms of Service were rarely, if at all, enforced, which appears to have come home to bite them.
Pegasus applied for and wants to have direct access via direct allocations, probably for the simple reason of allowing themselves to become a bullet-proof spam host operation. Obviously spamming is very profitable, and they wish to stay on the cash train awhile longer. NAC likewise did nothing to interrupt their own revenue source despite the number of complaints.
Any new carrier that picks them up is going to bring upon themselves a "bucket of hot water" given the history of this operation.
Whle they may not enter into evidence the multiple violations of AUP and TOS they would have to show that they attempted to enforce the contracts, which they simply did not do. I doubt there is a judge anywhere who would not recognize and understand the term "spam" and its effects on the carrier's operations.
Hopefully this whole affair will be a wake-up call to providers who put revenue ahead of sound policy enforcement, assuming they have enforceable policies in effect.
-- James Jun TowardEX Technologies, Inc. Technical Lead Network Design, Consulting, IT Outsourcing james@towardex.com Boston-based Colocation & Bandwidth Services cell: 1(978)-394-2867 web: http://www.towardex.com , noc: www.twdx.net