Xtra - Blacklisted by SORBS again!!!!

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somewhat

19 posts

Geek

#63967 16-Mar-2007 16:48

nunz: bcourtney:
CaveRock, Orcon, Maxnet ... ? Great ISPs in general but try to sell the idea of using a little company to a corporate who spend 30k plus a month on telecommunications

I'm pretty sure that Orcon, Caverock and Maxnet have customers paying over 30k per month, Caverock which is in Christchurch (looks to be part of Snap) on a traceroute provide Canterbury Uni with their internet and have their own fibre, and they will be paying a bit for that.

If your customer is paying over 30k then surely they will have an Account Manager that would sort that kind of thing out!

I dont know why with all the information we know about Xtra people would actually still use them!

I would personally go with the ISP with the most upstream Tier 1 suppliers, that is closest to your location (especially with UBS, as we all know about UBS backhaul) there is a good map here http://www.ispmap.co.nz/topmap.html

nunz

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#64267 19-Mar-2007 11:02

somewhat:
nunz: bcourtney:
CaveRock, Orcon, Maxnet ... ? Great ISPs in general but try to sell the idea of using a little company to a corporate who spend 30k plus a month on telecommunications

I'm pretty sure that Orcon, Caverock and Maxnet have customers paying over 30k per month, Caverock which is in Christchurch (looks to be part of Snap) on a traceroute provide Canterbury Uni with their internet and have their own fibre, and they will be paying a bit for that.

If your customer is paying over 30k then surely they will have an Account Manager that would sort that kind of thing out!

I dont know why with all the information we know about Xtra people would actually still use them!

I would personally go with the ISP with the most upstream Tier 1 suppliers, that is closest to your location (especially with UBS, as we all know about UBS backhaul) there is a good map here http://www.ispmap.co.nz/topmap.html

Thanks .. will look into that map ... nice to get some positive and helpful information.

nunz

1421 posts

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Inactive user

#64271 19-Mar-2007 11:21

cokemaster:

You still haven't told us, how you reached the conclusion that Xtra doesn't care about being blacklisted. Its a pain in the behind when you get blacklisted and often you are at the mercy of the blacklist to get your IP/servers removed from it. Of course it is also the choice of the recieving ISP to decline SMTP connections based on a single blacklist.

Your claims that Xtras 'spamming' got them blacklisted are quite interesting... care backing this up with proof that they were spamming or is this one of these trolling claims? It is most likely from some computer that got infected with a viruses/trojan that spams, which happens to use the ISP mail server addresses.

I think I did say how I reached the conclusion that Xtra don't care: I phoned them up to report they were blacklisted and it was affecting some of our customers. The call went up to their advanced team. Their advanced team had known about this for over 48 hours and hadn't fixed it. The normal time to fix is in the 12 - 24 hour range. They were not sure when they would have it fixed as they were 'busy doing an internal investigation into the spam'. IE They cared more about dealing with the internals than getting their systems working again quickly - the most pragmatic approach.

Where the spam came from? Firstly there were a series of Lookout it is coming spams sent out. Where they spam? Yep. Sent to email addresses that don't exist (I know this because my honeypots got one). They also had no sign out links on it, no official telecom or xtra materials with it and were unsolicited. They to me is a three out of three strike rate for spam. I am not even talking about the x meets y crud which has been coming through since then.

Their IT team were also doing an investigation into other spam issues from their internal Intranet.

This was not sent by a virused spam bot. The back trace on it was clear and unambiguous.

cokemaster:

Of course, if you could provide proof of them sending out spam to the SORBs honeypot and SORBs supposely sending a warning back, that must mean you work for Telecom... or for Sorbs. Otherwise it is just guesswork/fud. Yes they are aware of the issue and knowing how quickly SORBs remove entries from blacklists - the ball is in their court.

Just out of interest - mind listing those ticket numbers they woul have assigned you for every call? Surely after 80 hours of calling you must have at least one of those floating aroun.

Nope .. neither and it is not FUD - When Telecom / Xtra give you the information they got caught by the sorbs honeypots, and my honeypot caught some , then it is not fud. And I don't need to work for Telecom or xtra to know these things.

Check out the sorbs site to see they were first black listed in Nov. sorbs also has a process they go through of warning etc. If Xtra didn't reply or sort this stuff out that would have got them black listed.

Also spam was reported by me to the appropriate Xtra email addresses back on 26th / 27th Feb and several other days since. Xtra didn't reply to a single one of those despite them going to the correct places. I am not sure anybody even reposnds to spam reports any more at Xtra.

nunz

1421 posts

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#64272 19-Mar-2007 11:22

somewhat:
nunz: bcourtney:
CaveRock, Orcon, Maxnet ... ? Great ISPs in general but try to sell the idea of using a little company to a corporate who spend 30k plus a month on telecommunications

I'm pretty sure that Orcon, Caverock and Maxnet have customers paying over 30k per month, Caverock which is in Christchurch (looks to be part of Snap) on a traceroute provide Canterbury Uni with their internet and have their own fibre, and they will be paying a bit for that.

If your customer is paying over 30k then surely they will have an Account Manager that would sort that kind of thing out!

I dont know why with all the information we know about Xtra people would actually still use them!

I would personally go with the ISP with the most upstream Tier 1 suppliers, that is closest to your location (especially with UBS, as we all know about UBS backhaul) there is a good map here http://www.ispmap.co.nz/topmap.html

Just for your info - The entry on Digiweb is wrong - They are supplied by both Xtra and Telstra from memory. Fail over capacity in case of problems .

cokemaster

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#64278 19-Mar-2007 11:45

nunz:
cokemaster:

You still haven't told us, how you reached the conclusion that Xtra doesn't care about being blacklisted. Its a pain in the behind when you get blacklisted and often you are at the mercy of the blacklist to get your IP/servers removed from it. Of course it is also the choice of the recieving ISP to decline SMTP connections based on a single blacklist.

Your claims that Xtras 'spamming' got them blacklisted are quite interesting... care backing this up with proof that they were spamming or is this one of these trolling claims? It is most likely from some computer that got infected with a viruses/trojan that spams, which happens to use the ISP mail server addresses.

I think I did say how I reached the conclusion that Xtra don't care: I phoned them up to report they were blacklisted and it was affecting some of our customers. The call went up to their advanced team. Their advanced team had known about this for over 48 hours and hadn't fixed it. The normal time to fix is in the 12 - 24 hour range. They were not sure when they would have it fixed as they were 'busy doing an internal investigation into the spam'. IE They cared more about dealing with the internals than getting their systems working again quickly - the most pragmatic approach.

Where the spam came from? Firstly there were a series of Lookout it is coming spams sent out. Where they spam? Yep. Sent to email addresses that don't exist (I know this because my honeypots got one). They also had no sign out links on it, no official telecom or xtra materials with it and were unsolicited. They to me is a three out of three strike rate for spam. I am not even talking about the x meets y crud which has been coming through since then.

Their IT team were also doing an investigation into other spam issues from their internal Intranet.

This was not sent by a virused spam bot. The back trace on it was clear and unambiguous.

Not one of the brightest things with x meets y :-/

cokemaster:

Just out of interest - mind listing those ticket numbers they woul have assigned you for every call? Surely after 80 hours of calling you must have at least one of those floating aroun.

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Fraktul

836 posts

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#64552 21-Mar-2007 18:03

SORBS are a POS, anyone using them or other blacklists for anything other than weighting are morons.

Honestly this occurs, and is discussed, so often its yawntastic. lets talk about golarge.

/me falls into boredom induced coma

somewhat

19 posts

Geek

#64573 21-Mar-2007 21:34

nunz:
somewhat:
nunz: bcourtney:
CaveRock, Orcon, Maxnet ... ? Great ISPs in general but try to sell the idea of using a little company to a corporate who spend 30k plus a month on telecommunications

I'm pretty sure that Orcon, Caverock and Maxnet have customers paying over 30k per month, Caverock which is in Christchurch (looks to be part of Snap) on a traceroute provide Canterbury Uni with their internet and have their own fibre, and they will be paying a bit for that.

If your customer is paying over 30k then surely they will have an Account Manager that would sort that kind of thing out!

I dont know why with all the information we know about Xtra people would actually still use them!

I would personally go with the ISP with the most upstream Tier 1 suppliers, that is closest to your location (especially with UBS, as we all know about UBS backhaul) there is a good map here http://www.ispmap.co.nz/topmap.html

Just for your info - The entry on Digiweb is wrong - They are supplied by both Xtra and Telstra from memory. Fail over capacity in case of problems .

Not as far as I can see, the last ASN to Digiwebs network is TelstraClear, it does not look like they have their own, networks are only advertised by TelstraClear as well, if they have failover is there its not using BGP, so wont automatically failover. last time I checked the only ISP based in the South Island multiholming was Caverock/Snap

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Fraktul

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#64580 21-Mar-2007 22:08

AS24192

Does not appear to be multihoming.

cokemaster

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#64733 22-Mar-2007 19:45

Looks like the xtras smtp server is removed from the blacklist.

SORBS have some fairly questionable practices, I don't know who would rely on them as a serious option.

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bradstewart

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#64744 22-Mar-2007 20:38

cokemaster: Looks like the xtras smtp server is removed from the blacklist.

SORBS have some fairly questionable practice

By questionable you of course mean the blackmail they practice on those who are unwittingly caught by their stupid system?

cokemaster

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#64752 22-Mar-2007 21:01

http://www.au.sorbs.net/faq/spamdb.shtml

Donate US$50 to a charity or trust approved by, and not connected with, SORBS for each spam received related to the listing. This is referred to as the SORBS 'fine'.
Wait for a period of 1 year for each spam received related to the listing (e.g. if 3 spams were received, wait 3 years).

Its a good thing most NZ internet providers don't use SORBs completely... except for Maxnet it appears.

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skykissme

219 posts

Master Geek

#64808 23-Mar-2007 09:37

Sorry my English isn't good.. I'm a bit confuse.

Put it in plain simple English... are you implying that Xtra pays the "fine"?

To get out of backlist that quickly.

We'll never be too old to learn, and we learn at least one new thing every day.

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