On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 11:41:37 +0700, "Dr. Jeffrey Race" said:

The identities of chronically mal-administered systems are well know.

There are some practical implementation problems at the margin but for (I am guessing) 95% of the cases, it is trivially easy.

So we're left with the conclusion that the fact there's a problem at all indicates that there's a massive failure at the ISP level. It's either failure of will, or failure of clue - though I suspect the former. What *real* incentive is there for an ISP to take action? I mean, we all *know* that support is usually a money sink, and nobody wants to turn off a paying customer and then have to spend the time talking them through fixing the problem. So if you're finding that your T-3 is finally full, and it's all spam and P2P file sharing, you have to ask which costs more, actually dealing with the problem users (and possibly scaring them off to a competitor), or just biting the bullet and getting an OC3. Other than the fear of a forklift upgrade of infrastructure, the only other thing that currently works to motivate most ISPs is public derision on NANOG, blacklisting, and anything else that is the equivalent of a swat across the nose with a rolled up newspaper and a stern "Bad Puppy. You pooped on the carpet, no doggie treat for you".