[AusNOG] Happy new year / New rules for age-restricted internetand mobile content after the 20th of january 2008

[Mark Newton]

On 04/01/2008, at 11:40 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 04, 2008, Mark Newton wrote:
>
>>> Because if you get clean transit, but unfiltered peering, then you
>>> can't guarantee the traffic destistined to the filtered users is
>>> clean.
>>
>> There's never been any suggestion that filtering would be applied
>> by removing affected prefixes from the routing table.
>
> Who said anything about that?
>
> * if you get transit from an upstream that marks it sa clear, which  
> is what
>  this subthread was about; and
> * you have lots of peering, but;
> * the peering isn't "clean"; then
>  + you have to clean it yourself (pass the peering traffic through a  
> filter
>    first), or
>  + you can't take peering traffic for your "clean" customers.

I think the key point here is that everyone in the industry will
need to "clean" traffic themselves, making clean feeds from upstreams
mostly worthless, and removing acquisition of clean upstream feeds
as an option for small providers.

That means even a small ISP will potentially be up for a large
financial outlay in equipment, software and developer time.

This is something that respondents to the inevitable industry
consultation phase would do well to remember, and draw attention
to when they're dissecting the cost model that underlies the
Government's model.

While we're having this entertaining little diversion, lets be
careful do avoid doing what we geeks do all the time, which is to
exhaustively investigate some kind of technical overview of how
the whole scheme should work as if it's some kind of intellectual
problem that requires a solution.  If the Government wants consulting
to determine the feasibility of this stuff, they need to pay for it.
Don't give them anything for free, not even opinions on how it
could be done.  The rest of the industry isn't going to respect
your expertise and insight if it results in Conroy saying, "Gee,
thanks for that!  I'll be sure to quote you in my next press
release!"

There is, as yet, no technical model from the Government describing
how their stuff is supposed to work in the real world.  There's
no statement from them saying whether they want URL filtering,
flesh tone recognition, diversions to third party filtering service
providers, or a signed stat dec saying we'll all try our very
best to avoid sending porn to customers but make no guarantees.
It is not our job to develop these alternatives for them;  it's
our job to demolish their proposals, not feed them raw materials.

   - mark

--
Mark Newton                               Email:  newton at internode.com.au 
  (W)
Network Engineer                          Email:   
newton at atdot.dotat.org  (H)
Internode Systems Pty Ltd                 Desk:   +61-8-82282999
"Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton"  Mobile: +61-416-202-223