On 2/20/06, Edward W. Ray <spamjail@mmicman.com> wrote:
ISPs should not police users, just like auto manufacturers should not police drivers. That is what driver's licenses are for.
So the state polices the drivers.. Should the state police the internet as well? And how would that be implemented? The ISP will take the brunt of the operational interference anyways as the "police" have no other way of stopping those drivers. And when Joe Drivers gets busted and banned, he'll make up a new identity to use at ISP B. I tend to agree with Gadi that we, the ISPs, need to do at least some blocking. I don't see it happening anytime soon though. There's still way too many ops out there who take something like this as a challenge to their ablility to operate a network when in fact, it's the users who are the problem. I'd rather open up everything and allow a user 100% unfiltered access, but most users don't know what to do with that and don't take proper precautions. So, for residential users I think that a reasonable filter should be applied. Block stuff like Netbios. Implement spoofing filters. Do whatever you can to "protect" the users without impacting their ability to use the internet. For commercial users, offer simple protection, or make sure they know that they will be help responsible for virus activity sourcing from them. Shut down those ports if they become active. I also like the idea of putting infected users in a quarantine. Alert them via an automated process. Give them access to updates, but prevent them from infecting others. I think this is a more than reasonable expectation from end-users. In fact, I'd be more inclined to use an ISP that has safe-guards like this in place. It might even be worth it to put together a best practices guide that lays out the "minimum" requirements for something like this. (It may even exist.. If so, I'd be interested in reading it if someone would be kind enough to provide a link)
Ed Ray
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