[linux_general] RE: [ale] spam

[Marvin Dickens]

On Mon, 2003-05-12 at 22:23, Jason Day wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2003 at 08:37:13PM -0400, Greg wrote:
> I'm well aware of the difference between latency and transfer speed.
> But the difference between 1 bit and 10 GB is most definitely not
> irrelevant.  Bandwidth is not infinite, nor is it free.  Just like
> electricity, it costs money to maintain that infrastructure.  And just
> like water lines, bigger pipes cost more money; but even the biggest
> pipes can only carry so much.  If 100 spammers are each sending 10 MB/s
> of spam over your ISP's network, how much legitimate traffic can go
> through?

I don't know a lot about the administrative side of spam (ie: what you
have to do as an admin or as management to protect your network). But, I
do know a great deal about the cost of the infrastructure. A portion of
our business is the repair of networking equipment. From twelve channel
OC3 and OC12 blades that go into Lucent hubs down to the more common
business land equipment made by Cisco. 

If you think backbone equipment is cheap, check this out: One Lucent DS3
FR/IP blade (PC# 11101A) costs 69K new from Lucent. You get five DS3
channels out of this blade. The hub it goes into, in it's *cheapest*
configuration cost $215K from Lucent. This is enterprise equipment that
*is* the connection into the backbone: Without this type of equipment
there is no on ramp for ISP's onto the Internet. There is no cheap
alternative to this type of equipment.  Cisco equipment can't handle it.
(In fact Cisco does not make a hub that will give you five DS3 channels
on one blade. Even if they did, their NOS is not structured to handle
this type of load). These prices do not include administrative costs or
monthly fees the owner has to pay to connect not to mention all the sh!t
that goes along with it (Like the cost of the location where the
equipment sits or paying someone like me to repair a snuffed blade).

Anybody who thinks this equipment is public property and that they can
send any amount of data (Electrons...) that they want to through it is
not thinking this through. I can promise these corporations (At least
the ones I do work for) do not see this equipment as public property and
further, they have legal departments that back this position up on a
daily basis.


Best

M. Dickens

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