Category Archives: Internet Engineering Task Force

Spam and what can be done about it

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 18 June 2005 None comments

At WGIG this week, the ambassador of Syria made the observation that “There is no serious intention to stop this spam by those who are the transporters of the spam, because they benefit. The communication operators lose nothing in spreading this spam.
Developing countries, instead of benefitting from the internet, what they’re getting is spam, and has to pay for that spam.
And quite a lot of money.”

I could not agree more. My server statistics tell me that 70% of the mail we get is spam. Up to now, we have been using a combination of DNS blacklists and SpamAssassin. This works pretty well.
However, managing spam is stealing a lot of CPU resources.

So, since spammers are thiefs stealing bandwidth, CPU, memory, disk space and human time, it is more than legitimate to attack spammers the same way they attack us. This program called Spamcannibal does just that. It will query the DNS blacklists and if the remote server is a known spam operation will close TCP port 25 for that host on your firewall.

One of these days, responsible network operators will have to link their edge routers to these DNS blacklists. By dropping all packets from spammers on port 25, these pirates would have no connectivity. This would make the whole spam business useless. Well of course customers would suddenly notice that their bandwidth consumption would decrease by 20% and might be inclined to ask for a rebate from their ISP. Spammers would not be able to find a hosting company anymore. Operators would lose sales. So, the Syrian ambassador is right. Spam does benefit to network operators.

Ray Pelletier Appointed As IETF Administrative Director

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 1 June 2005 None comments

ISOC has appointed an administrative director for the IETF. This is an excellent step towards a better organization of the standards body. The informal structure of the IETF has been one of its strengths but also its main Achilles’ heel. It’s one thing to be flexible. This should not however lead to disorganization. Hopefully Ray will be a great help to the IETF.

The first visible effect is that the ISOC press release was sent at the same it was posted to the IETF-announce list. A while ago, the election of Brian Carpenter as the chair of the IETF was announced by both the IETF and ISOC, but with a 5 day delay on ISOC side. Apparently, the bug was fixed.

Now of course, the next question is when ISOC is going to synchronise its press releases in various languages. This is necessary if it pretends to be an international organization. Hint, a professional translation bureau can translate a half page PR in half a day in the 6 UN languages.

Microsoft Patent Too Close to IPv6

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 23 March 2005 None comments

According to this article on E-week, Microsoft has patented an auto configuration technology for the IP stacks in Windows machine. This was apparently inspired by the autoconfig feature of IPv6, which is described in RFC 2462 . However, Microsoft failed to mention this prior art in its patent claim.

As usual, should we say, the USPTO did a bad job at researching prior art, although the RFCs are publicly posted on the Internet. 2 minutes of googling would have produced evidence. So, if one needs an additional reason for NOT patenting sofware, we can invoke the fact that patent offices (and this includes the EPO) do a bad job at searching for prior art, even when obvious references exist on the Internet.

If Microsoft has its way to have the USPTO moving to a “first-to-file” system, as opposed to a “first-to-invent” system, no engineer if an IETF meeting will ever want to suggest anything, lest some competitor will walk out of the room to quickly file a patent. This could bring the entire IETF process to a halt. As the article describes it: “The IETF has a rule that states that such engineers sit on working groups solely on the basis of personal interest in the technology, a stance that many find naively ignores the fact that employers exert influence on their engineer employees”. Obviously yes. Whatever you do, you look at who’s signing your paycheck.

Brian Carpenter is the new chair of the IETF

Posted by Patrick Vande Walle on 28 February 2005 None comments

Linux World Australia was the first to mention that Brian Carpenter was elected as the new chair of the IETF, succeeding to Harald Alvestrand.

In the current context of the restructuring of the IETF, this is good news. Brian has been chairing the Internet Society Board of Trustees for several years. As the ISOC BoT will have additional responsibilities regarding the IETF in the next years, it is the right thing to have a man at the IETF who does also understand ISOC.

Update: Here is the official press release and the IETF announcement