Comcast looking for competent SysAdmins?

[Andrew Mathews]

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Collins Richey wrote:
<snip>
| Not being an email ISP myself, I would love to hear more (exact details)
| about how this works.  How do Comcast ip's become a source of spam?  How
| would a Comcast sysadmin go about rectifying the situation?

They would start by regaining control over their network. First place
would be locking their mail servers down to only relay mail from their
own netblocks, and using smtpauth to validate the user. They should
restrict any smtp connections from their netblocks to only their own
servers. This would eliminate someone at blah.dsl.comcast.net from being
able to use someone else's smtp server. Actively monitoring the systems
on their network for abusive usage, intentional or not, and shutting
down the ip and account of those who intentionally are in a timely
manner. If J. Blow has an open relay, proxy server, or anything else
that's getting them blacklisted, contact the customer and help them fix
it, rather than ignoring the problem and making a few abusive users'
problems every subscriber's problem. If they provide business class
service to people who want to run their own servers, fine. I'd want that
as a customer. But I'd also make sure that DNS records point to the
proper authority for the domain, so if the customer puts a broken system
out in the public domain, that it's that domain that suffers, not
comcast. There should be a lot of continual interaction between comcast
and the dnsbl providers to make sure that they're considered "clean" and
proactive when anything they're authoritative for is reported.

| I've been an ATT/COMCAST subscriber for about 5 years now, and they
| certainly provide a reliable broadband offering.  Until about 6 months
| ago, I never heard about these complaints.  I've never noticed anything
| other than very occasional spam on any of the mail groups that I
| subscribe to, but one group that I subscribed to as ATT now blocks any
| traffic from me on COMCAST.

They seem to have gone down the tubes in the last year. Maybe the
spammers are paying them more than the customers. I don't think anyone
blames the legitimate end user for anything (other than not raising hell
for their inaction) rather the blame lies with the decision makers, the
administrators (who may or may not be to blame) and the 2 percenters who
are causing the other 98% their headaches.

| COMCAST may be an arsehole ISP, but it would be nice to know what that
| really means instead of just slinging names.  I find it rough that I
| would need to pay for an additional ISP just to play email, since
| COMCAST provides what I consider to be an excellent service.
|

I don't know anyone who I'd consider deserving of being dumped on, but
unfortunately they're so close to the ones who do that they're going to
get splattered on. Regardless of the analogy, the housecleaning will
have to come from within, by customers complaining about the fact that
they're being shortchanged in what they're paying for. Tell them to fix
their stuff so the PAYING customers can actually get the service they
deserve. In the end, everyone will win if they do what's right. If they
have a TOS, (Terms of Service) doesn't the customer have inversely, an
SLA (Service Level Agreement) that they're accountable for?
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Andrew Mathews
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~  8:03pm  up 19 days, 18:17, 12 users,  load average: 1.16, 1.14, 1.09
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There are no great men, buster.  There are only men.
		-- Elaine Stewart, "The Bad and the Beautiful"
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