RE: [dvd-discuss] e: portscanning

[Noah silva <nsilva(at)atari-source.com>]

> In the "olden days" of the internet that's exactly what the situation was 
> like. A friend of mine was on BITNET and I was on the arpanet (direct line 
> to USCs switch). BITNET would not support ping, finger or traceroute and 
> blocked them at CUNY. I'll agree that blocking finger, ping, traceroute is 
> pretty silly but other internet services are really up to the person 
> putting the machine on the net.  If somebody wants to block telnet ftp or 
> whatever internet service they choose they can and should.

Of course, but people should block it themselves, not have their ISP force
it upon them.

> Services such 
> as telnet or ftp are a security risk (notice I used the word risk.If the 
> benefits don't outweigh the risk don't allow them). Furthermore, the 
> computer exists for its owner's benefit not others. There is no reason why 
> somebody should expect to get free computing time on somebody else's 
> computer which causes the owner to spend more time getting their work or 
> fun done.Also straightening out the mess that a remote user can make can 
> be rather tedious and time consuming. 

I think a nice thing for these ISPs to do would be to offer a choice for
consumers:
a.) they can block incoming connections, port 80, etc. for people who are
not that computer literate and don't want to run servers.
b.) Anyone can request they have no filtering one.

Some Providers, especially the more expensive ones (like mine tee
hee) won't filter anything.  Others, specifically the phone company DSL
and the cable-modem places think they are god's gift to mankind and
everyone should love whatever they give you.  They want to squeeze more
money from the business accounts, so they differentiate them from the
consumer accounts by crippling the latter ;(

 -- noah silva