Re: att.net email issues?

[kai () pac-rim net]

Now that the noise level (SQLSlammer) is down:

It looks like AT&T put the finger back into the dike on this for now:
You don't really want your customer service call center get flooded by
two issues at once:

http://www.internet-magazine.com/news/view.asp?id=3110


On 1/24/2003 at 7:16 PM, sean () donelan com wrote:

> In the good old days, when network engineers used VT100 terminals and 300
> baud (not bps) acoustic modems, ftp.uu.net enforced the requirement for
> "valid" reverse and forward DNS entries for anonymous FTP access.

It was the single most important source for files on the Internet, along
with maybe SIMTEL-20 : you couldn't get around it, no matter how hard you
tried.

Fast forward 10 years: would you even dare to put "HostnameLookups yes"
into your Apache config? Not if you don't feel like having well-populated
DNS caches useful to you for some other purpose, you don't. A purely
operational configuration choice.

> Doesn't anyone else find it funny when people scream that ISPs should
> block ports and shoot people with misconfigured systems; yet when
> an ISP actually does enforce even a modest requirement; people start
> screaming how unfair or stupid that ISP is for doing that.

We sure all hate tracerouting through APNIC space, and seeing up to 12
routers in a row without reverse DNS - to the point where one could
believe that noone in Korea ever heard of the in-addr.arpa zone :

Apart from AT&T having the "left hand/right hand" (hypocritic) problem
with being service providers to spammers on one hand, and aching under
the receiving load of it on the other: Good intentions, but failed to
even do a basic Google search to see how other people fared with this,
let alone running a test and labelling incoming mails rather than
blocking them.

Now to toss a bit more oil into the fire: "unknown.level3.net" ,
anyone ? And remember: it's not neglience, it's Level3's secret
"handshake", telling you that the block in question should be
filtered by you at any cost :)