On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Martin Millnert <millnert@gmail.com> wrote: Hi, I think you're echoing a common misconception here:
If I have a partner/customer/supplier/$foo in [common carrier/public carrier] network X, and there is no D/DoS or other form of abuse
ISPs are not like traditional telephone carriers. ISPs are not common carriers. They are not common carriers legally, and they are not _like_ common carriers operationally. They are empowered to provide whatever types of service and service levels to their subscriber that their properly agreed upon terms of service provides for.... Most end users of an ISP don't even get a SLA, let alone a promise that any IP address will be reachable. Also, thanks to peering spats and other various phenomena, it's actually an impossible promise for an ISP to make. Due to the nature of the internet ISPs _often_ make decisions that result in discrimination of traffic based on its type, its source, destination, payload contents, etc. Blackholing spammer IP addresses is a common example; and ISPs could not do that if they were common carriers.
ongoing, and the operator of X willfully denies our communication, the operator of X should have pretty darn good reasons for doing so (on
In your opinion the operator should have a "pretty darn good reason" for doing so. But in reality, the internet service subscriber's subscription agreement will state what's a "pretty darn good reason"; generally, the agreement states that any reason at all, or no reason, solely at the operator's discretion, is good enough.
Operators should take great care to not break communication, including tampering with internet architectures such as DNS, and it must be possible to hold those who do responsible for their actions.
It occurs that an ISP deploying a custom DNS service that implements their own policies of munging redirects or producing "false" answers is not "tampering" with anyone else's server. -- -JH