Connectivity as a Utility – Where are my Clean Pipes?

Network connectivity and bandwidth has been with us for years. So long so that it is largely treated as a utility. This utility grants me a certain level of satisfaction for the commodity provided.

Many telecommunications providers want to charge you for having clean pipes, deploying a suite of DDoS services that you have to buy to enhance your security posture.   Protection of last mile bandwidth is very key to network availability as well as confidentiality and integrity. If I am subscribing for a full T1, shouldn’t I get the full T1 as part of the price and not just a segment of the T1? Why do I have to pay for the spam, probes, scans, and malicious activity that my telecommunications service provider should prevent at 3 miles out versus my having to subscribe to another service to attain clean pipes at my doorstep? We stop on average for our organization nearly 600 million malicious emails per year at our doorstep averaging 2.8 gigabytes of garbage per day. You add it up and we are looking at nearly a terabyte of malicious email we have to stop. Now add in probes and scans against HTTP and HTTPS sites and the number continues to skyrocket. 

  Wouldn’t we be much safer on multiple levels (spam, probes, scans, hacks) buying time to repair poorly written code for internet facing applications if telecom providers provided clean pipes? With Bruce Schneier at BT, wouldn’t you think he would be pushing his new keepers for such?

Connectivity to me is not much different than phone service. I can add my number to a ‘do not call’ list and unwanted traffic is reduced to next to nothing. When will the telecom providers move to the future and do the same?

I want to get what I am paying for.