Re: DUL (was Re: RBL report..)

[Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>]

On Mon, Apr 03, 2000 at 12:00:52AM -0400, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 03, 2000 at 12:56:05AM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > That mail direct from dynamic dialups is a problem is recognised
> > throughout the community.  Not only did Paul Vixie, the author of
> > BIND, and other leading lights of the Internet, decide to host,
> > support, etc, the DUL.  Many ISPs prevent you from doing direct SMTP
> > by having their routers block outgoing SMTP or transparently redirect
> > it to their own mailservers.  I think that this is going to become
> > much more common.  Use of the DUL is becoming more common too - for
> > example, Cambridge University no longer accept DUL mail.  Sites that
> > use DUL blocking report that it has very low false-positive rates -
> > some claim even lower than the MAPS RBL.
> 
> You appeal to authority, call for bandwagon jumping, and rely upon
> anecdotal accounts, but have yet to point to an RFC that forbids or
> discourages the establishment of outbound SMTP connections from dialup
> machines, whether they have dynamically assigned IP's or not.

you miss the point entirely. there is no RFC that requires any mail host
to have to accept mail from anywhere or from anyone...those kinds of
decisions are left to local policy, and rightly so.

RFCs describe HOW things should be done and HOW they should not be
done, and some rationale for WHY. they do not, for example, state that
if you run a mail server (or web or ftp or whatever server) that you
must accept connections from anywhere and everywhere, and they do not
ban setting local policy about who is allowed to do what with your
hardware and resources. in short, they are (for the most part) technical
documents rather than policy documents.

> The best way to force people like myself to do what you want is to get
> your personal preferences on the standards track.  If they as widely
> shared as you assert, this shouldn't be an insuperable problem.

if you want to communicate with people who use the DUL, then you know
what you have to do. if you don't want to communicate, then do nothing.

craig

--
craig sanders