Packetizer News

At the most recent meeting of ITU-T SG16, the H.325 experts decided to initiate a series of electronic meetings in order to help progress the work. For those interested in participating in the creation of this exciting new multimedia system, see the meeting notice posted on the h325-design mailing list.

As we reported earlier, a number of spam-fighting organizations decided to block part or all of Amazon's EC2 service. This caused significant disruption to the mailing lists that we operate on Packetizer's mailing list server, including which provides list services for those working on ITU-T related work.

This past month, Spamhaus decided to block all of Amazon, in spite of the fact that we had previously submitted our IP address for removal at Spamhaus. That resulted in about 30 people getting kicked off of various mailing lists. So, if anybody reading this is wondering why you have not received email in a while related to H.323, H.325 or other protocols, Spamhaus might be the reason.

Fortunately, Spamhaus and Amazon quickly reached an agreement on how better coordinate in order to ensure that all of Amazon's EC2 IP addresses are not blocked again. To that end, Amazon now requests all mail servers to be registered with Amazon, which of course we did immediately. Amazon reviewed our request and granted authorization to use the server in order to transmit email.

On or about the same time, unfortunately, Amazon was also listed in MAPS and SORBS, two other spam-fighting organizations. We visited the MAPS web site, provided our IP address, and were almost immediately removed from their list.

SORBS, on the other hand, has been a real problem. The organization absolutely refuses to unblock Amazon EC2 or our individual address. We contacted SORBS and, while they were responsive, their reply was less than satisfactory. One of the more polite statements was:

You are not required to make a donation for delisting as the entry was not generated because of your actions, however the listing will not be removed until your service provider terminates the spammers or makes the required donation.

That is perhaps the closest thing we have ever seen to extortion. Sadly, while we continued to have a friendly dialog, after 20 days our mail server is still blocked by SORBS. It would appear they have absolutely no intention of removing Amazon EC2 and we do not believe that Amazon has any intent to work with them either. We can only suggest that if your company is using SORBS, you consider using an alternative blacklisting service.

The ITU approved a new revised version of ITU-T Recommendation H.323. H.323 is the most widely-deployed ▲IP-based multimedia communication system in the world, used in ▲videoconferencing, telepresence systems, and by service providers for international ▲VoIP calls.

For more details, see the what's new in H.323v7 page.

Spam has been a problem for years and it seems almost impossible to address. Two years ago, Packetizer was receiving thousands of spam messages per day and we were forced to implement various spam blocking technologies, including blacklisting IP addresses. As much as we hated to do that, it became necessary, as it was otherwise impossible to find and read the legitimate email. We also began employing technologies like SPF and are also now using DKIM, digitally signing every message transmitted by our mail server.

It was never our intention to block legitimate mail servers and as issues were brought to our attention, we took immediate steps to resolve the problems. Our servers would provide a response back to senders when they are blocked and we also provided a tool where anyone can query to see if their server is blocked.

In the spring of 2009, our mail server was re-located and is now running inside Amazon's EC2 cloud service. We were assigned a static IP address and have been using that same IP address for all outbound mail since. Initially, we were somewhat disappointed to learn that our server was actually blacklisted on a few Internet blacklists. However, we were quickly able to resolve those issues with the more legitimate blacklisting organizations, such as Spamhaus and Spamcop. Unfortunately, UCE PROTECT was not very willing to cooperate. After a month of negotiating, they finally agreed to remove us from their list.

The reason our server was on their list is because we run mailing lists and some bots subscribe (or attempt to subscribe) to mailing lists using bogus addresses, to which our server politely responds with a welcome message, assuming the message passes the SPF test. (We are presently not enforcing DKIM, but will once this is generally practiced.) Unfortunately, UCE PROTECT treats those messages as spam messages and then places our server on the blacklist.

Packetizer was not listed on UCE PROTECT's blacklist for several months, but it appears we are now listed again. We attempted to contact UCE PROTECT via email and were blocked. So, there appears to be little or nothing we can do: we cannot even discuss the issue.

Unfortunately, many people on the ▲H.323 Announce list and other mailing lists are not receiving messages and, in some cases, are being removed from mailing lists due to message rejections. Please note that this is not our fault and if you find yourself unsubscribed, definitely feel welcome to subscribe again. If your service provider or employer is using UCE PROTECT, you may wish to ask them to stop using the service.

With the increased focus on ▲videoconferencing and ▲VoIP communications, there has also been an increase in the number of questions people have about implementation, configuration, deployment, troubleshooting, etc. Some questions are rather straight-forward, while some really require the expertise of people who have been working in the area for a while.

Packetizer is a community-driven web site that operates a number of different mailing lists and publishes a lot of material in an effort to try to help people build, design, and deploy multimedia communications technologies. On Packetizer, you will find high-level overviews about VoIP, frequently asked implementation questions and details, tutorials, and so forth. However, even with all of the resources already available, there seemed to be something more needed.

After collaborating with a number of people in the community and taking a poll, it was decided that a new discussion forum would be useful. As a result, we created a new site called Packetizer Forums, which is open to everybody to ask questions, provide answers, and to learn. Oh, and having fun never hurts.

We hope you enjoy the added service!