Path: visi.com!winternet.com!iaxs.net!news
From: Dan Maus <almondo@mynet.org>
Newsgroups: winternet.gripes
Subject: Re: Can't send email!
Date: 18 Jul 1996 01:03:30 GMT
Organization: Infinity AccessNET
Lines: 84
Message-ID: <4sk2h2$asg@garfield.iaxs.net>
References: <4s33fv$sr6@blackice.winternet.com> <4s3a8o$80f@blackice.winternet.com> <4s3tua$84t@blackice.winternet.com> <31E5B6B3.570A@olen.com> <donlee-1107962257330001@witsend.winternet.com> <merlyn.837185416@winternet.com> <joelr.3455.000AC4AB@winterne <4s6cag$7il@blackice.winternet.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: tweety.iaxs.net
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.1N (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.4 sun4c)
To: cardinal@winternet.com
X-URL: news:4s6cag$7il@blackice.winternet.com
cardinal@winternet.com (Anne Austin) wrote:
>t.com> <4s5sqe$kkh@blackice.winternet.com>
>Distribution:
>
>Mike Horwath (drechsau@Geeks.ORG) wrote:
>: Joel Rosenberg (joelr@winternet.com) wrote:
>: : And even if it is/was a mailbomb (something I don't have the
>slightest bit of
>: : real information on), so what? ISPs get mailbombed and attacked all the time,
>: : so I understand -- the Internet is an anarchy, after all -- and defending
>: : against that is just part of the sysadmin's job.
>
>: So correct Joel, so correct...
>
>WHY do ISPs get mailbombed, Mikie and Joel? (Not counting the 4 bombers
>who lambasted the new Winternet or so I've been told)
Define mailbomb.
1. "new ISP driver" does a full userbase mailing(~5000pcs), improperly with
2 bogus aliases, from a user machine, (say one describing a fur lined
jacket)
2. fur lined jacket talks to one called frozen water, who says:
"MX, Mail?" oh yeah, talk to the coolest of the cool, he'll take care of
you.
3. fur lined jacked begins wailing messages at coolest of the cool, all of
which are bouncing, load factor on coolest of the cool goes sky high,
cool on stops accepting connections.
4. fur lined jacket say's "well hell, no problem, our buddies onyx and alyssa
will help", begins queing mail on alyssa, and onyx, who happily join in
on the pounding of the coolest of the cool, who is running with a load
factor as high as 60 (bad, very bad).
5. some wizard then whacks the localdomains.db file, or sendmail, causing
"service unavailable" from the cool one(doubly extra very bad).
6. alyssa (running load factor 10 trying to deliver the mail queued from
fur lined jacket) says:
"service unavailable?, Heh no problem, we'll store it on /dev/adios"
If you bomb yourself, do you call it a mailbomb, or an administrative error.
Errors are part of being an ISP, as are attacks...
You are the egg delivery man, carying many very important eggs, all unique,
all very important to the person who gave them to you, and doubly so to
the recipient, who expects them to be instantly delivered.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, of varying types, some big
some small.
Some passages have grease on the floor, some have flapping doors, some have
big data rates, and small pipes, some simply fail to exist.
Your job is to get all of the eggs delivered, with none of them spoiling,
and with busting your ass, and all of the eggs in the process.
If eggs break once in a while, I would say: "shit happens".
If eggs keep breaking, I would say: " excessive broken eggs, need a new
driver".
I admit that I have broken some eggs, not many, and never on purpose.
Mike knows how to carry the eggs better than anyone I know.
Almondo
Infinity AccessNET
http://www.iaxs.net
>what causes people
>to do this to an ISP? Does civilization enter into any of this fiasco
>we've had to endure this past week?
>Drat......this is slow today. Now what is going on? Oh let's blame US
>WEST. Vector, huh, Mike? Good luck to you there. I visited their
>web sight this morning. I'm learning! <g>
>*******************************************************************
>AnnE Austin http://www.winternet.com/~cardinal
>cardinal@winternet.com ftp://ftp.winternet.com/users/cardinal
>***************************************************************
Please note that the content below was last updated on 14 October 1996; the content of this page is being preserved as-is for posterity. The only changes made since that time were (a) to update the page markup to current standards, (b) to update internal links as hosting platforms changed or to point to archive.org when available, and (c) to obscure email addresses located throughout these pages (except for USENET postings). Needless to say, many of the links to external sites are no longer functional after 20+ years.