[afnog] UCEPROTECT-Network Level 3

[Geert Jan de Groot]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:09:04 +0300 (EAT)  "S. Oduor" wrote:
> Network 196.207.0.0/16 is blacklisted at UCEPROTECT Level 3 and this
> consists of different entities  on different geographical locations
> managing & administering smaller subnets on this range.

As others have pointed out earlier, there is no Internet Police and
anyone can set up block lists for whatever reason. There's no formal
way to stop anyone doing this.

UCEPROTECT's policy seems to be aimed at large consumer ISP's,
who get /16 blocks from their RIRs and hand those out individually
to their consumer-market customers.
This obviously isn't true for Africa.

Blocking out significant blocks of address space, does work.
If you want a demo, unplug your RJ45 and see the amount of spam 
drop to zero. Then, check for possible side effects.

I'm not sure if complaining to UCEPROTECT is productive or useful,
since they clearly choose the pull-the-RJ45 approach.

The power of these lists lies by who believes in them, and I think
this is the approach to take. For those who feel their prefixes is
in one of the blocks affected, try to figure out whom your customers
are talking to and thus whom are affected; they probably do have
an interest in making comms work.

Next, as members of the AfNOG operator community, document why blocking
someone in Kenya, because of misbehaving hosts somewhere else in
Africa (or on another continent!), results in serious colleteral damage
and will likely not resolve the spam problem.
It would probably be good if AfNOG and Afrinic would cooperate on this
for a common statement (for the less-technical-adept, please!)

Explaining what the list does may not be easiest, but is probably
the only way.

Note that their info (in German) refers to a commercial box
doing this, so they have a commercial interest in trying
to showcase that this approach is viable.
Just like there's a market for snake oil, bridges, questionable
chemicals and other junk, there will always be people who
believe in things like this. 
I am sorry that you are caught in the middle of this.

Part of the info is only in German. If you need translation, holler.

Geert Jan