Who writes VIRUS programs ?
Who makes a profit from it ?

Any chance it could be those who sell the ANTI VIRUS software ?
Just a thought!!

73 Al Lowe N0IMW

Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service providers.

=====================================

Who writes VIRUS programs ?
Who makes a profit from it ?

Any chance it could be those who sell the ANTI VIRUS software ?
Just a thought!!

73 Al Lowe N0IMW

Nope, absolutely incorrect. I work at an ISP, and with very few
exceptions, we get the same money regardless of the traffic. It is
therefore in our best interest to minimize traffic. This is a cutthroat
business, and no one can raise prices without losing customers.

tom
K0TAR

Reg Edwards wrote:

Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service providers.

=====================================

Hello,

So if you work at an ISP, why do people never block spammers? It's always
the same companies people sign up to. You have the technology to block the
users completely and/or take action after doing a trace. It can be done
here in the UK.

"Tom Ring" wrote in message
...
Nope, absolutely incorrect. I work at an ISP, and with very few
exceptions, we get the same money regardless of the traffic. It is
therefore in our best interest to minimize traffic. This is a cutthroat
business, and no one can raise prices without losing customers.

tom
K0TAR

Reg Edwards wrote:

Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service
providers.

=====================================

If you could see our ACLs and how our mail servers are set up you would
realize just how much we, and most ISPs, work at blocking spammers. The
problem is that 1) spammers have ISPs that are dedicated to spamming and
2) windows machines are easy to hijack to spam with.

Those windows boxes are virtually impossible to block because they pop
up seemingly at random, then disappear. To stop 90% of the spam in the
world would actually be fairly easy in my opinion, just refuse
connections from Windows NT. Unfortunately that would stop a lot of
legitimate email; also it's easy to spoof that the box _isn't_ windows,
so we are back to square one again.

tom
K0TAR

AM200 wrote:

Hello,

So if you work at an ISP, why do people never block spammers? It's always
the same companies people sign up to. You have the technology to block the
users completely and/or take action after doing a trace. It can be done
here in the UK.

"Tom Ring" wrote in message
...

Nope, absolutely incorrect. I work at an ISP, and with very few
exceptions, we get the same money regardless of the traffic. It is
therefore in our best interest to minimize traffic. This is a cutthroat
business, and no one can raise prices without losing customers.

tom
K0TAR

Reg Edwards wrote:


Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service

providers.

=====================================

"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...
Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service
providers.

Uhm no... If a normal customer is using more bandwidth (receiving and
sending more email, committing virus controlled DDoS attacks, etc) Internet
service providers LOSE MONEY. They pay by the byte, you don't. Most
customers pay a flat fee for internet access. This is true of most Cable,
DSL, ISDN, and Dial-up setups... they are priced based on an expectation of
'normal' usage, and the ISP loses money in 'extreme' usage cases. Why I ( a
'power user') get nasty emails from ISP's and have to switch often.... this
one is good about that though.

Close, but not quite.

An ISP will buy pipes, such as a DS3 that does 45Mbps, for a flat rate
per month. Theoretically the upstream provider doesn't care if 1 bps or
45 Mbps are passing through that pipe; from a billing perspective, they
get the same money. But they have to play the statistical game on how
much upstream pipe that they need to handle all the 45Mbps pipes they
sold to ISPs like you. And eventually you get to the backbone
providers, who have really really big pipes, and very expensive routers.

This "power user" thing is something I've never heard anyone in the
business speak of, so I have no idea why you would get bumped. If you
are not breaking the TOS agreement, ISPs don't care a rat's rear end how
much traffic you generate. You buy a pipe from the ISP and you have
every right to fill it if you can. The only exception to that would be
that you have a maximum number of hours or bytes per month. They won't
kick you if you exceed it, they just charge you an additional amount
that you agreed to in your contract with them. Some ISPs may do it a
bit differently, but that's fairly normal in the industry.

tom
K0TAR

Tyas_MT wrote:

"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...

Anything which increases traffic volume benefits Internet service

providers.

Uhm no... If a normal customer is using more bandwidth (receiving and
sending more email, committing virus controlled DDoS attacks, etc) Internet
service providers LOSE MONEY. They pay by the byte, you don't. Most
customers pay a flat fee for internet access. This is true of most Cable,
DSL, ISDN, and Dial-up setups... they are priced based on an expectation of
'normal' usage, and the ISP loses money in 'extreme' usage cases. Why I ( a
'power user') get nasty emails from ISP's and have to switch often.... this
one is good about that though.

And I forgot to mention that almost all our customers are of the
unlimited type, so we don't don't monitor their traffic rate, or amount.

tom
K0TAR

Tom Ring wrote:

Close, but not quite.

An ISP will buy pipes, such as a DS3 that does 45Mbps, for a flat rate
per month. Theoretically the upstream provider doesn't care if 1 bps or
45 Mbps are passing through that pipe; from a billing perspective, they
get the same money. But they have to play the statistical game on how
much upstream pipe that they need to handle all the 45Mbps pipes they
sold to ISPs like you. And eventually you get to the backbone
providers, who have really really big pipes, and very expensive routers.

This "power user" thing is something I've never heard anyone in the
business speak of, so I have no idea why you would get bumped. If you
are not breaking the TOS agreement, ISPs don't care a rat's rear end how
much traffic you generate. You buy a pipe from the ISP and you have
every right to fill it if you can. The only exception to that would be
that you have a maximum number of hours or bytes per month. They won't
kick you if you exceed it, they just charge you an additional amount
that you agreed to in your contract with them. Some ISPs may do it a
bit differently, but that's fairly normal in the industry.

tom
K0TAR

Tom Ring wrote:
And I forgot to mention that almost all our customers are of the
unlimited type, so we don't don't monitor their traffic rate, or amount.

Are you offering dial-up service only, or cable modem/DSL services?

Where I live, cable modem users get well over a megabit per second of
bandwidth, and someone filling that connection 24 hours a day is going to
make a noticeable mark in the ISP's overall bandwidth usage.

Hi Tom

I'm not real adept at understanding much of the lingo, but you might
be able to answer a question for me.

I use standard 56k dialup. I assume that when I'm online I'm tying up
one of the ISP's modems. Therefore I never stay online longer than
necessary to get my work done. Although I know plenty of folks that
leave their computers on and connected all the time.

My late wife, after she had her major heart attack and could not leave
the house worked out an agreement with her employer to do her work at
home. This required staying on-line at least 8 hours a day connected
to her employer.
At first the ISP said 'no problem' you have an unlimited account.
But then they later came back and told us we needed a different
service, it was still dial-up, but in effect we owned our own modems
located in the ISP's racks.
After a couple of more heart attacks, she had to quit work completely.
I began using the sevice she was using for my regular dialup to
retrieve e-mail, read the newsgroups, surf the web, etc. About 3
hours a day.
I received a nasty note from the ISP saying I could not use that
service in place of normal dialup, it was set up strictly for my wifes
connection to her employer.
I switched back to my original dial-up unlimited account, but still
had to pay for the contract on the other dial-up account until it
expired.
Once it expired, I left that ISP and have been with my current one
ever since.

But lets get into a deeper question here.
I moved to a different state but am still using the ISP I have used
for years.
I assume that my home ISP has a joint account with many ISPs around
the country. I'm a ham radio operator and I can travel the country
and use repeaters as a guest, because I AM a member of a repeater
club.
But how does this work as far as ISP's go?
Should I change to a local ISP or is it OK to continue using one of
the POP presences. How does the ISP I'm calling make any money from
me?

TTUL
Gary