Category Archives: ISP

Spamhaus DROP list

The Spamhaus DROP list (Don’t Route or Peer) is still awaiting it’s BGP feed for network providers. So in the meantime, I’ve knocked up a little PHP script that downloads the DROP list from Spamhaus and spits out either a list of IPtables rules or a Cisco access control list. View Source: http://www.potato-people.com/code/misctools/spamhausdrop.phps Download: http://www.potato-people.com/code/misctools/spamhausdrop.tar.gz

Pet Hate: MTR

MTR, also known as Matt’s Trace Route, is an enahanced traceroute utility which after making the initial run continues to rerun the traceroute and calculate hop-specific packet loss and latencies.

Unfortunately, virtually everytime someone calls me and mentions “packet loss” and “MTR” in the same breath, it’s because they do not understand the output.

Further musings on measuring bandwidth

A few further thoughts on things that people forget to take into account when attempting to measure bandwidth: When measuring bandwidth, attempt to use a site or tool that is close to your ISP. If you’re in the UK and you try to test your connection using a site hosted in the US it’s never [...]

Dealing with DMCA notices in the UK

As I work in a ISP, I (unfortunately) have to deal with the abuse mailbox. And unfortuantely, these means responding to DMCA notices from US companies. How do you deal with a copyright infringement happening on your network, but when the holder is in the US and trying to apply US law? DISCLAIMER: I am [...]