Re: Blocking port 25 outbound

[John Kristoff <jtk () NORTHWESTERN EDU>]

I'm not intending to pick on the originator of this exact comment, which
is why I do not include the usual header in line.

> Not a peep from the rest of the campus community.

I've been hearing this sort of "justification" for filters and other
kinds of restrictions or limitations of service for some time now.
In earlier days when perhaps before most institutions and networks
began to implement network responses to some problem the "little"
or "no complaints!" from the user community argument may have been
a valid measure of success or not.  I posit this is really not true
any longer, if it ever was for anything more than basic connectivity.

My impression is that users, and students in particular, have now
been exposed to such filters, restrictions or in general, middle
boxes that attempt to "shape" their behavior for so long and so
pervasively in many networks they use, their behavior has become
just that, shaped.

As an illustration, a colleague at another large institution shared
their story of turning off their packet shaper to see what would
happen.  Perhaps things are different now, but after a few months
of it being offline, nothing had really changed in their usage.
Perhaps due in large part to application behavior, but interesting
nonetheless, demand was satisfied elsewhere, in this case over
unrestricted R&E links such as Abilene.

John