[plug] ADSL problems

[Craig Ringer]

> If you goto your account online @ toolbox iiNet, you will find a new feature
> called "iiNet NetStatus Subscription Service".
> This emails to your designated email addy status of iiNet network, Dialup,
> ADSL Staff etc.

Cool... I knew there was a faults mailing list, but never seemed to be 
able to find out where to subscribe. Not that it does much good when my 
DSL goes down or their servers get mailbombed.

> Recently the DSL network has had some major problems (Telstra side), but
> this mornings prob, one off iiNet's routers had a config problem, yesterday
> some nice little ^$&^$ descided to DoS the iiNet mail network, which caused
> some major head-aches, this was not iiNet's fault and their upstream
> provider blocked the source.

The DoS, while not iiNet's fault, shows a problem with their mail 
servers - they just don't have the capacity to deal with mailbombing 
etc. This /will/ happen to an ISP, and while I'd love to string up the 
little turds responsible by their little toes (or somewhere even less 
comfortable) and leave them there, it won't stop the problem. If iiNet's 
servers get attacked, then even after the attack is blocked it can take 
DAYS to get back to normal function.

For that reason, I gave up on their mailservers entirely in favour of 
locally hosted mail. They were mailhosting for our domain, so all it 
took was switching the MX. Its made life /so/ much easier... now if only 
mx1 and mx2.iinet.net.au (which we use as backup MXes) would support 
ETRN so I could force delivery after DSL outages....

Craig