[Gllug] Proxy awareness campaign

[Mike Brodbelt]

Alex Hudson wrote:
> 

> I think
> the case for good proxies is watertight.

The case for mandatory ones, however, leaks like a sieve.

All ISP's should be free to provide proxies. They should also be free to
distribut net software that is set up to use them by default. They
should *not* be free to transparently proxy all their users, and take
advantage of the average user's technical ignorance.

If an ISP offered two dial up accounts at different price points for
proxied and non-proxies, fine. ADSL works like that - you can pay more
for real IP addresses. Quietly proxing everyone without telling them is
disingenous and underhand, however.

I wait for the day when someone sues an ISP under trades descriptions,
on the grounds that a filtered connection is not an "internet"
connection, as all you can connect to is J random ISP's proxy servers.

> I do agree, though, that there are too many poorly setup proxies in
> existence. The inability to use HTTP/1.1, or fall back to 1.0 correctly, is
> inexcusable, proxies which drop connections, or break otherwise, are also
> annoying. I think any campaign should be aimed at these: proxies which don't
> work.

The campaign should simply raise awareness of *all* proxies. Then, the
customer can decide whether they want them or not. If, en masse, they
decide they don't, then they will disappear. Simple.
 
> To argue that all transparent proxies are bad, for example, is not going to
> cut it with network engineers. 

It doesn't need to. I don't give a s**t what my ISP's network engineer
thinks, I want a non-proxied connection. If my ISP proxies me, I'll go
elsewhere. If awareness was high enough, and most people thought that
way, proxies would die, whatever network engineers wanted. If most
people aren't bothered, they won't.

Mike.

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