[geeks] consumer internet service

[David Cantrell]

On Mon, Aug 20, 2001 at 11:44:38AM -0400, joshua d boyd wrote:

> Now, an ISP is never going to want to deal with the administration hassle
> of dealing with 20+ email address per each account.

It's pretty common here to have five, ten or twenty addresses per account.
There's no admin hassle, it's all automated and the customer sets them
up through web forms.

>                                                     But, by allowing
> users to run their own mail ports, when the software is in place to make
> it reasonable, users can just have their own mail servers with as many
> emails as they need.This is something that could probably be easily
> added as a feature to the increasing popular internet devices (I'm
> thinking here of not the NIC, but the boxes that have an ethernet switch,
> a wireless base, a PPPoE client, a NAT, a programmable firewall, etc all
> in one box).

The first commercial ISP I used - a small, local business - had their
own proprietary dialler software on customers' machines which did indeed
include a mail server*.  When I dialled in, then as well as setting up
the connection and stuff, it also prodded their mail servers which
promptly forwarded everything that was waiting for me.  I could then
do anything I wanted with that mail, and it was *really* easy to
configure.  Of course, it - in conjunction with the Pegasus Mail MUA
they supplied and had custom-configured - Did The Right Thing with
queueing outbound mail when offline.

Incidentally, I believe this ISP made a fair amount of its money by
sewing up deals with local takeaways so customers could order meals
online through web forms and have them appear on the ISP's monthly bill.
Oh, and you ordered your curry with One Click (TM).  You could also
order a cab online, flowers, a cleaner, book time in a recording studio,
etc.

They also had monthly "get to know the sysadmins" sessions in a local
boozer :-)

>              It's just that the ISP would need to have a system in place
> to quickly detect and deal with open relay abuse (perhaps have a volume
> trigger that spools up a certain amount for manual review).

I take it you mean manual review of whether there's an open relay, not
manual review of the message content!

> Now, I under stand that most ISPs operate on paper thin margins.  And the
> monitoring to prevent abuse could break those margins.  But then, the
> appropriate responce should be to offer extra pricing options for extra
> freedom.

Or to charge for breaking the rules - by for instance running an open
relay.  This is certainly an option if they only accept payment by
credit card.

Don't forget also that much monitoring can be automated.  For example,
you can automate the probe for an open relay.

> But no.  I spend $40 for DSL, or I spend $200 for a dial up 56k that I can
> do anything I want with, and there is nothing in between.

Is there a business tariff DSL you could go for?  The only problem I have
had with getting business service is that they assume payment on account -
that is, invoices payable within 30 days as opposed to billing by a
standing order or by credit card.  So I got my employer to set it all up**,
and later transferred the whole account to me personally***.  When it was
transferred, the business billing came with it.  And eight months later,
the ISP have had no cause to complain****.  I think I've paid late twice,
usually I pay a couple of days before the due date, so I'm probably *much*
better at paying than their 'real' business customers.

* - I'm not sure whether it was SMTP or UUCP.  Thinking about it, I'm
pretty certain it did similar stuff with Usenet, so it probably was
UUCP.
** - they paid for it too; I needed to be able to get at their swervers
from home.
*** - when Oven Digital went bust.
**** - not about me anyway; Oven appear not to have paid their bills
when the account was in their name.

-- 
David Cantrell | david at cantrell.org.uk | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   Educating this luser would be something to frustrate even the
   unflappable Yoda and make him jam a lightsaber up his arse
   while screaming "praise evil, the Dark Side is your friend!".
                              -- Derek Balling, in the Monastery