IIJ "Improves" their service

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: rod van meter <rdv () tera ics keio ac jp>
Date: November 23, 2006 8:17:10 PM EST
To: dave () farber net
Cc: Rod VanMeter <rdv () tera ics keio ac jp>, bob.hinden () nokia com
Subject: IIJ "Improves" their service

Hi Dave,

For IP, if you wish...

IIJ, Internet Initiative Japan, is one of the oldest and most  
respected ISPs in the country. I've never used anyone else. But the  
day before yesterday, they implemented an "improvement" to their  
network that has me looking for another ISP.

With no prior announcement that I saw, they started blocking outbound  
SMTP. This means that, all of a sudden, I can't send email from my  
house, except by using some web-based mail system such as Gmail.

I use three different email accounts that I need outbound SMTP access  
for. I called IIJ's customer service line, and the woman I talked to  
suggested that I get all of the systems I use to open up SMTP on  
another port. Ugh. Like that would solve anything, even if I could  
get them to do it (which is not at all obvious).

I threatened to cancel my service, and she said that any other ISP I  
can find will likely either already have port 25 blocked, or be doing  
so in the near future. It's an anti-spam measure recommended by the  
Japan Email Anti-Abuse Group (JEAG).

I haven't been this angry about some utility in a long time...

Press release at http://www.iij.ad.jp/en/pressrelease/2006/1114.html

I suspect many IPers have run into this same problem with their ISP.   
How have they handled it?  SMTP over port-forwarded SSH?  Some other  
form of VPN to their "home" network?

(This kind of action by ISPs, in my opinion, is just forcing more of  
the Internet's true functionality to be carried over port 80, encoded  
in XML, where it is arguably harder to parse and filter for "bad"  
behavior.  I read a book on SOAP a few years ago that said that RPC  
was open to various forms of abuse and was difficult to get through  
firewalls, therefore doing RPC over SOAP was a big improvement.   
Based on that description, I couldn't see any improvement except a  
change in the formatting from a binary-encoded RPC to a less  
efficient ASCII-encoded RPC, carried over a different port and  
session manager.  (I presume SOAP has some actual benefits, but they  
certainly weren't clear from that book.)

In case it isn't obvious, I'm not a big fan of firewalls (nor of  
NAT); I'm a believer in end-system security (I know, that still  
doesn't stop those who intentionally spam).  I guess that puts a big  
"Old School Curmudgeon" sticker on my forehead.

This will probably earn me some email from those working for ISPs,  
complaining that I'm not the one who has to live with the day-to-day  
management of the networks, and they're right.  My right to complain  
is limited; I got out of system and network management before spam  
ate the entire planet, but I do remember dealing with Robert Morris's  
worm.)

  --Rod


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