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by dusted 1506 days ago
The Internet is broken too, we've been slowly lulled into a scenario where there are first-class and second-class and even third class netizens, and the third class, I'd not even consider as having an Internet connection.

First class netizens are publicly routable nodes with statically allocated IP addresses. These have real, honest Internet connections, they get to participate in the global community of humans and their beloved machined.

The second class is like the first but the service provider has imposed restrictions on their ability to communicate freely with other machines, such as blocking any packets they may send on specific protocols and ports, notably, TCP port 25, meaning these people cannot send their own email.

The third class is like the second, but they do not have statically allocated IP addresses, they therefore cannot reliably and consistently participate in the global community and must jump some amount of hoops to even participate in a limited way.

There is a hidden fourth class too, these cannot be considered as having a connection to the Internet, they cannot participate, only passively consume existing services, their machines are not connected to the internet, but another network, and their service-provider will just barely allow them to make requests to services on the real Internet, but it will not route any new connections to them, they are cut off and isolated, the silent majority. And this is where the brokenness of the Internet truly shines. This mode of connection should be illegal, and hiding yourself in this way should be an active choice on the part of the individual, not imposed by their "service provider".

2 comments

> TCP port 25, meaning these people cannot send their own email

They cannot run a mail server, you mean. For sending mails, you have port 587 plus authentication, which also solves the reputation issue with dynamic pools.

The reputation issues with dynamic pools likely stem from malware-infected user machines sending spam.

No, I mean sending the mail, outgoing, running a mailserver and receiving mail is generally not a problem.

Let's say your email server is running on blueflow.person How do I send you an email on port 587 + authenticaion ? I'd need an account on your server to do that.. That's just silly! We can't expect everyone to have accounts on every mailserver, just to send email to eachother, that'd be like the postman having to have keys to every postbox to deliver letters!

Port 25 is where your email server expects to receive emails from other mailservers (like mine).

I agree with your analysis (thanks for sharing), but just for nitpicking, i believe it's fine if an ISP blocks port 25 by default to help combat unintended spam, as long as you have the option to unblock it.