Re: The Remailer Crisis

[Johnathan Corgan <jcorgan@scruznet.com>]

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>What are the cheapest "live connections" (24-hour a day connections)
>available? Where I am, about $100 a month, plus whatever the local
>phone company charges for a dedicated line. ISDN is an option, but it
>looks to cost $400-800 to get started, plus a monthly charge (which I
>don't recall, except that I "gulped" when I heard it).

I am currently using ISDN from my home in San Jose.  You're right in 
that the startup costs are the barrier--even a cheap single B channel 
(56K) terminal adapter for use with a serial port will run $300-$400
dollars.  The telco charges are minimal in my area; $25 monthly for
the line itself (115 Kbps async bandwidth).  Connect charges are free 
for non peak usage, and $0.60/hour for peak usage time (0800 to 1700) 
Mon-Fri.

This is the Pacific Bell "Residential" ISDN plan.  For business lines,
it goes up to $50 monthly with $0.60/hour 24 hours a day.

In addition to this would apply any standard long distance charges that
would apply to a particular call.

This is an excellent setup for fast, cheap, INTERMITTENT connection to 
the Internet.  My particular ISP is in Santa Cruz, with POPS in SC, SJ,
and soon Monterey.  An unlimited connect time PPP account runs $75 monthly.
This actually gets me a three bit subnet so that I can put five IP boxes 
and an ISDN router on my ethernet at home.

A remailer in this scenario would need to have their MX record point to
their ISP, and process mail via POP (incoming) and SMTP (outgoing).  
It would be straightforward to implement a timed or demand dial scenario 
(say, every fifteen minutes) to accomplish this.  While not the ideal 
(continuous internet connection with pure SMTP based mail transport), it
would suffice for a moderately loaded remailer, I'd imagine.

Of course, this involves the mail subsystem of your ISP, partially
defeating the purpose of having ubiquitous anonymous remailer "instances"
whose operation is outside the control of an ISP.  Still, it would be
a good start.

==
Johnathan Corgan       "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
jcorgan@scruznet.com                    -Isaac Asimov


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