Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 01:14:53 -0500 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: ARG!!! 450 Client host rejected: cannot find your hostnam Message-ID: <15048.6365.713373.341764@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <006101c0bb30$724199a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> References: <15047.54164.84349.606429@guru.mired.org> <006101c0bb30$724199a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> types: > Now, when I was growing up my daddy told me that if you are paying > someone money for something that's offered by ten other people, and > you don't like what your getting, that your a damn fool to keep > paying your money instead of voting with your feet and going > elsewhere. > But I guess that what your supposed to do today is that if your getting > service from an ISP that's mismanaged, that your supposed to keep paying > them and sue their asses to make them do what you want them to do, instead > of paying their competition that's better managed. I'd gladly change services, if I could find someone that's better. Since I can't, I use what's available, and work around the crap as much as I can. I wouldn't sue a business to make them do what I want - unless they had promised to do that, and failed to perform. Even then, I'd prefer getting my money back to forcing them to keep their word. I can't understand why anyone would want to do business with someone that you have to force to keep their word. > >choice is between $5/month for dynamic DNS services, or a couple of > >hundred a month for collocation services, guess which I'm going to > >pick? > This is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Colocation is where your taking up > rack space at the ISP, the dynamic DNS schemes are where your webserver is > at the end of a circuit that comes from an ISP. Typically that circuit is > a dynamic circuit, perhaps dialup, more likely PPP-mode DSL. That's true - but to get a server that's managed the way I want it managed, *those* are the two choices I've got. I don't need much bandwidth. I do need recent versions of Apache, Postgres, and Python - as well as those things configured to my specifications. Even offering to install a modern database server - meaning one with transaction support - gratis was turned down. > >I did make sure I'm not in violation of my TOS. I also think I > >convinced them to fix their monthly open relay tests to bounce to > >them, not me. > If they allow commercial Internet serving on an account marked > residential then no wonder that your having trouble. We don't. > But, we do permit non-commercial Internet serving on residential > accounts, as you might expect less than 1% of our residential users > take advantage of this to run web and mailservers and the like, so > it's not worth the trouble to charge for it in most cases. In any > case all our DSL stuff is static out-of-the-box except for the > ppp-mode DSL, and if someone wanted a static on that it would be no > problem to do it. Some people need this anyway for access reasons > into corporate firewalls and such. They don't permit anything that looks like resale of bandwidth. I'm not doing anything that looks like resale of bandwidth. If your TOS won't let me run a web server for my business over my link - I'm not even doing e-commerce on it - then you're not providing a solution I can use. My favorite response to my "I need a static address" query was Metricom's (though I understand they're going under as well). They loaned me another wireless modem to hang off my server, and I connected through that. > The problem is that by and large the userbase today is ignorant. > They don't know good Internet service from piss-poor Internet > service. I think I do. That's one of the reasons I run my own SMTP servers, instead of using my ISPs. With a good ISP, I list them as my secondary MX, and they spool the mail for me if I'm down for some reason. Good ISPs don't mind my running an SMTP server - they don't have a reason for me to add to their mail server load any more than I have a reason to delay the delivery of my mail by going through another server. Of course, your statement is true for the majority of the user base - that's why they run Windows. Unfortunately ISPs aren't like OSs. I can grab and use whatever OS I want, but I'm restricted to ISPs selling services in my area. > Take the RoadRunner thing. There's ISPs that are very shortly going > to be plugging into Time Warner's cable network - and they are going > to be offering damn good quality Internet service, not this > filtered-up-the-wazoo, proxied-up -the-wazoo, > rotating-musical-chairs-mailservers drek that TimeWarners ISP is > offering. Yet, you have people like the previous coorespondent who > are going to be doing what you do and finding some open relay > mailserver to spool through, and they are going to keep PAYING for > the drek service!!!! I didn't go find some open relay. I asked my ISPs if they had a solution to a problem I had as a PAYING customer, and one of them - the most competent of the bunch, if you ask me - replied with a host name for an open relay. They understand that there are problems for which an open relay is a perfectly valid solution, so they run one. They do go to great lengths to keep it hidden. > Now, how long do you think that those 3rd party ISP's that are going > to be offering better Internet service are going to be in business > if everybody out there has yours and the prior correspondent's > attitude? Not long, I tell you. They will plug in to Time Warner's > cable network, and the users that need better service won't make the > switch, then they will disconnect and then all of you will have no > more choice and nothing to prompt Time Warner to clean up it's act. Depends on what they do to make themselves found. Time-Warner, of course, has *no* incentive to help users find those ISPs, and probably won't even refer people to them when those people ask for services TW doesn't provide. I obviously can't spend a couple of hours every day looking for a better ISP. I do do that whenever I get pissed at mine, or have to deal with the problems at hand - which amounts to about once a quarter. > >>From what Ted said, he's one of the ISPs that tries to accomodate > >green(*) users. That he suffers because other ISPs are less > >professional and create a market for dynamic DNS services is a shame, > >but no more so than that green users suffer because of spam-prevention > >measures. Those things are part of life on the internet these days. > No - they are not "part of life" they are being created on the Internet > because of users NOT going and switching service providers when they are > being handed a raft of crap. You can't switch to what doesn't exist - you can only work around the lack of it. As long as there are areas where you can't buy the kind of service you want, there's going to continue to be a need for workarounds, and they are going to continue to be part of life. Just like spam filters bouncing perfectly legitimate email are going to be part of life until there are no more spammers. > All I have to say about this is, if you are a user with a poor ISP, > then QUIT MAKING EXCUSES FOR THEM and get out there and find a > better one! And if there's no better ISP's in your area then by God > start one!! Internet service is a business like any other and > responds like any other business to competitive pressures. But if > you - as a user - refuse to avail yourself of better service when > it's available, then those competitive pressures cease to exist. I remember what living in a high-density internet area was like. I could choose broadband internet services from a range that started at one dynamic IP for one MAC for $40/month, up to a class C subnet with secondary dns and other goodies for $200 a month or so. I shopped around then, and it was usually the services beyond IP connectivity that sold me, more than price. Giving me all the IP addresses I needed so I didn't have to do NAT, providing secondary MX and DNS services - those are good things, and I'm willing to pay for them. Here, I don't have those choices. Until three months ago, I had one (count-em: one, uno, ein, 1) choice for broadband access: cable modems. Neither ISDN nor DSL were available. The cost of a leased line this far from the POP was comparable to colocation. DSL showed up last quarter; when I checked on it, I had two DSL choices. Neither one offered a static IP, so why switch? Personally, I'd like to live on the land my great grandparents homesteaded, but the choices for broadband there are even worse than they are here. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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