Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 00:11:27 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net>, "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Lockdown of FreeBSD machine directly on Net Message-ID: <002e01c168f6$21ae5040$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <001101c168f0$3b6fb1a0$6600000a@ach.domain>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Andrew C. Hornback [mailto:achornback@worldnet.att.net] >Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 11:29 PM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt; FreeBSD Questions >Subject: RE: Lockdown of FreeBSD machine directly on Net > > > > Good policy... as long as your e-mail system doesn't get all >coked up... > If that were to ever happen we would be out of business - people pay us for that. It's never happened in the entire ISP's existence as far as I know (I wasn't there for all of the ISP's existence though) We aren't MSN. (I assume you are aware of their most recent fun and games) We have a saying "we don't build networks that go down" Actually, it's not that hard to do with a bit of experience and a decent platform like FreeBSD. > >> If you >> don't take >> the time to track things you spend time running from firedrill to >> firedrill >> and >> you cannot even begin to explain to the CEO or president why so >> much of the >> company IT time is burned up on bullshit requests. > > Expecially when management is the group that makes such requests. > Indeed, I'd be surprised if it was any other group! ;-) > > *grins* Back when I first landed that hellacious ISP job, I >wanted to set >up an internal mail server for just employees so we could keep track of tech >support stuff, etc. There was nothing like that in existance up until that >point, and I figured it would be something good to have in training new >employees, etc. I made the proposal to management, and got the biggest >"Deer caught in headlights" look that I've ever seen... > That was brought up once and I shot it down. If our mail system isn't secure/good enough for us to use internally then it's not good enough for our customers to use. Funny thing is that there's a sister company that we share office space with - they use MS Exchange as their mailserver for their internal mail. During the time that I've been here that system has had a number of times that it cracked up bad, losing all mail, etc. They offered us use of it for our internal mail once... > I still maintain that some people just weren't cut out to >own/operate an >ISP. > What always amazes me is the number of people in our town that are still staggering along with these small ISP's that have been losing money for years. Don't their S.O.'s get tired of supporting them?! > Obligatory FreeBSD content: while I was there, it was an all >Microsoft shop >(running NT 4.0), with the exception of a single FreeBSD machine used as a >proxy server. The FreeBSD box was the only one that I don't recall >rebooting except to move it. > ISP's that are based on Windows are a joke. We bought exactly one once, and we will never do it again. It was the most unbelievable mess I've ever seen, their billing system was so far gone that at least 1/2 of the users were getting free service, and once we started billing them they all quit. That was right before NetZero went bankrupt and Juno bought them I think most of them went off to there. I wonder how they like the current 2 hour a week limit. :-) Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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