[LUGSB] Re: introduction and question

[Erez Zadok]

In message <1119985994.4640.1.camel at localhost.mnl.cs.sunysb.edu>, Vinay Pai writes:
> Ok, you're right.  I switched off the firewall and port scanned my
> router from my lab machine and these are the ports that showed up as
> "filtered"
> 
> 25/tcp    filtered smtp

The SBU campus filters port 25 among others: they don't want people to
deliver mail to any random mail server on campus: rogue SMTP's are spammers
delight.

> 80/tcp    filtered http
[...]

"Funny" story.  OOL didn't filter those 4+ years ago.  In fact they boasted
in their ads that you could run a biz from home.  Then various worms/viruses
hit their network and they realized that many unprotected home PCs were the
culprits.  So they decided to filter.  *BUT* if they filter certain ports
for *security* reasons, then they open themselves to liability (customers
might _expect_ a higher level of security).  Their solution was to say that
the filtering is for businesses -- i.e., they split their service into two
classes of service -- plain home users (filtered), and business users
(unfiltered).

Erez.