Hugh McGuie wrote:
> The Sun Microsystems person suggested that if the e-mail cost were
> increased, by charging customers in a way similar to how cell phone
> calls are billed, with people paying for both receiving and sending
> messages, then the conditions that permit a "denial of service" attack
> would be eliminated.
Yuor worry that the marketing droids want to monopolize the net and
not waste it on things like noxious grass roots politics and the like
is one I share. But the Sun guy's remark isjust silly. E-mail is
just one way -- probably not the most effective way -- to mount a DOS
attack. You have to havd the victim machine lots of packets that it
has to deal with and there are lots ofother ways to do that. Charging
$1,000,000 per amil message would have no effect on DOS attack
capability.
More likely to be a problem is that there;s amove afoot to prioritize
packets in the net so the people who want to dump real-time video or
sound to paying customers can pay to boost their packets' priority.
Other users' packets can just wait while, so to speak, the 100-car
trains go by.
- Mike
