[10090] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: On ISPs Not Filtering Viruses
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (plambert@sprintmail.com)
Sun Jan 13 20:59:28 2002
Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 10:38:23 -0800
From: plambert@sprintmail.com
In-reply-to: <200201072146.NAA05117@toad.com>
To: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, cryptography@wasabisystems.com
Cc: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Message-id: <a05100302b8638c3fe73a@[192.168.1.101]>
MIME-version: 1.0
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At 1:46 PM -0800 1/7/02, John Gilmore wrote:
>I thought ISPs were supposed to be bit-pipes. End-to-end unrestricted
>connectivity is the basic feature of the Internet. This feature is
>what made the Internet superior to every preceding network. If my ISP
>was filtering my mail or my packets, I'd complain.
Bit pipes yes ... but some ISPs are trying to add "value added
services". The average home user has trouble running firewalls and
virus checking sofware and would likely pay to have someone else
handle these services at the ISP.
The reason it is not commonly available is that firewalls and
particularly virus filtering requires lots of computing resources.
This translates into a need for a whole new class of network device
that provides "network edge services". For example:
http://www.cosinecom.com/library/b_ipsdp.html
I suspect that we will see in the next few years a proliferation of
add on services to our base internet connectivity. This will be akin
to paying for caller id or call forwarding on our phone services. If
you don't need it, you won't subscribe, users that do need these
services will have the option to buy them from their ISP.
Now having hardware in ISPs that have the ability to scan all traffic
at full Gigabit data rates could be abused in the future ... but
that's a different thread of discussion.
Paul
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