George and I disagree

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Well, not a lot, but he thinks that the crime here is Foremski “lying” about the presence of a blacklist in Cox’s firewall. I think Foremski was just making a reasonable assertion, with ambiguous wording.

Three months certainly would be a long time to remove Craigslist from a blacklist, if there were a blacklist. Makes you wonder.

The reality (according to Authentium) is that there’s no blacklist, there’s just a bug in how their firewall reacts to a 0-byte ACK. George thinks this bug is half Craigslist’s fault, since Web servers shouldn’t be sending 0-byte ACKs. But he agrees that this is a valid thing to do in the TCP RFC.

The Cox firewall reacts poorly to this valid signal. It basically shuts off Craigslist for that user, thinking the server is perpetually too busy to respond. They have a patch, which is not yet in general release.

And the blogosphere is going nuts over Cox’s alleged scheming.

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