Could comcast be blocking port 6667 outbound?

[gerald.feldman at hp.com (Jerry Feldman)]

On Thursday 01 September 2005 9:01 pm, John Chambers wrote:
> Of course, trying to get computer people to agree on ?definitions ?is
> just ?asking ?for ?a ?long ?flame ?war. ? I remember years ago on one
> project, where I eventually figured out that one problem we ?had ?was
> that ?the ?unix ?and ?vms crowds used exactly reversed definitions of
> "d[a]emon" and "server".
The, at the same time Alec Chin had his own definitions :-)
The problem in any technical industry is that you are dealing with 
perspectives and communities. 
I worked for a company whose definition of asynchronous was exactly opposite 
the definition of synchronous when dealing with processes. 
I think that Matt Galster posed exactly what is meant by inbound and 
outbound. 

WRT: Comcast (and predecessors). There was a clause in their service 
agreement that prevents you from running a server. Before they (Comcast, 
AT&T BB, MediaOne, Highway1) started blocking ports, some people would run 
IRC servers or IRC bots from their systems. The problem here is that people 
from outside the network would start to use those servers. Same is true for 
open-relay email. At some point, they started to run port scanners to see 
if their customers were running servers, primarily open-relay email and 
IRC. Port 80 blocking was done because of the code red worm. 

On the other hand, blocking an outbound port, such as 6667 (IRC) would 
prevent their customers from using a perfectly legitimate service. You 
might want to block this on a firewall to prevent your kids from using IRC 
or similar services. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gerald.feldman at hp.com>
Linux Expertise Center (PTAC-MA/TX)
Hewlett-Packard Co.
550 King Street LKG2a-X2
Littleton, Ma. 01460
 (978)506-5243