Valdis.Kletnieks wrote: > The host may be too stupid to protect itself - read Bugtraq > or other similar > lists for the gory details.
The fact that many hosts are too stupid to protect themselves is not a reason to architecturally require that the border provide security. The marketplace may find an opportunity there, but 'the right thing' is to set the expectation that self defense is the requirement. > In addition, an external border is useful as a > checks-and-balances, for the > same sort of reasons why the person balancing your company's > books shouldn't > be the guy writing the checks, Since I do both, I have a hard time agreeing with this analogy. Also if you start down this path as justification for a filtering router as a security device, there needs to be an external auditor in the picture. Where is that service in the average NAT? > or having Customs inspectors at the border > crossing - what percent of the people on international > flights understand > the rules about carrying live biologicals (both animal and > vegetable) for > any country they may be visiting? This argument has some level of merit, but has the orientation backwards. The border guard is not there to protect the traveler who might be inadvertently (or maliciously) carrying contraband substances across the border. They are there because it is cheaper to have a few educated guards than to continually educate the entire internal population on proper isolation and disposal. Since software doesn't have the same attention variability over time as humans, or the continual churn in education level for each generation, there is reason to believe that eventually self protection could be cheaper than the overhead of a collection of border guards. My question was directed at Noel's assertion that security requires a site border router as the implementation. Just because that may be cheaper than fixing all the current hosts, wouldn't we be better off in the long run if all future hosts protected themselves? Tony