Not only that, but as pointed out in the Article by IDG, "only two people
have contacted them in the past 4 years". surprising ? not really,
considering anyone that is contacting them about the specific issue in
question would need to know IP, how it works, be running a GRE tunnel,
understand what packet overhead will do to an IP transaction in relation to
things such as PMTU Discovery and the Type 3 series of ICMP messages, and
then be able to explain all this to a layman/helpdesk twit who then has to
escalate the issue.

The bank KNOWS it is breaking things for its customers, it KNOWS that it is
breaking the standard way of putting networks together, and essentially
breaking the IP protocol standards which give IP such a resilience,
however, the bank doesn't care, it uses a "head in the sand" attitude
toward the problems and simply calls it "security" - what ? people wont
know you are there because you are rejecting all ICMP ? they wont be able
to ping flood you ? they wont be able to tell what a complete idiot you are ?

I know we simply tell people not to bother complaining, the banks have
quite conveniently used the finger pointing technique to solve this problem
- they blame the ISP's, they blame the version of software you are running
they blame everything they can point their finger at and eventually you go
away.. all except two persistent people over the past 4 years.

Seriously tho, online banking is a farce, it has other gaping security
holes besides the ICMP issue, and if this is any indication as to their
ability to fix problems then people should be warned away.

Nice article however paul :-) you may be interested to note that hotmail
does the exact same thing, this breaks pretty much every aspect of it when
it comes to transparent caching of the web pages (WCCP Packet overhead) and
oh.. sending them e-mail. I ended up having to lower the MTU on my mail
server as all PMTU messages were blocked and they _refused_ to admit that
there was a problem.

Nominate ASB for inclusion on rfc-ignorant.org anyone.. ? :-)

-- 
Steve.
At 22:39 24/07/2002 +1200, Craig Whitmore wrote:
>See::
>
>http://www.idg.net.nz/webhome.nsf/UNID/4AA2988B4A1835C5CC256BFF0014A6A8!
>opendocument
>
>(a more technical expanation from Cisco of the problem
>http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/105/56.html)
>
>Basiclly.. a few banks (and other people ) are completely blocking _all_
>ICMP messages and "making it so a few people can't see their web pages
>properly". Its been a problem for ages for example with the ASB (you can't
>see all their pages properly if you are going thru a GRE tunnel which
>fragments packets)
>
>User Caused problem nope.. Bank Caused problem yes (as their IT people seem
>not to know about how to setup their FW's properly)
>
>(all my own opinion)
>
>Thanks
>Craig
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Steve Martin" <steve@blah.co.nz>
>To: "'Tortise@Paradise'" <tortise@paradise.net.nz>; "'Ivan Groot'"
><i.groot@xtra.co.nz>; "'Andrew'" <ac.macc@ihug.co.nz>; "'ADSL Mailing List'"
><adsl@lists.unixathome.org>
>Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 10:33 PM
>Subject: RE: Online Banking and ADSL problems?
>
>
> > Just for reference I'm running IE6 on Win2kpro and having these
> > problems.  NBNZ frontline helpdesk had no idea and hadn't heard of any
> > problems with other people (or so they said).
> >
> > For now, I'm going to do online banking from work, which seems fine.
> >
> >
> > :)
> > Cheers,
> > Steve
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Tortise@Paradise [mailto:tortise@paradise.net.nz]
> > Sent: Wednesday, 24 July 2002 10:21 pm
> > To: Ivan Groot; Steve Martin; 'Andrew'; 'ADSL Mailing List'
> > Subject: Re: Online Banking and ADSL problems?
> >
> > I had a problem for awhile.   I was running IE 5.5 (I think)  I was
> > advised
> > by NB to upgrade with the SP and all was well following.....
> > Soooo make sure you are running up to date versions of IE....  IE 6 been
> > ok
> > for me though....
> > Do let us know if that's the fix.
> > Happy banking!
> > David Hingston MB ChB MBA
> > ________________________________________________________________________
> > _
> > tortoise@paradise.net.nz
> > http://hingston.yi.org/
> > http://pcmc.yi.org/
> > If you seek a digitally signed response please advise.
> > If you received a warning on reading this e-mail, please go to
> > http://www.baycorpid.com/settings/email.asp?CA=healthcert to update your
> > settings
> >
> > >
> > > I have the same problem...fine looking but cuts out when transacting!
> >
> > > Same thing has been happening to us with National Bank, but I've only
> > > noticed it today ... maybe yesterday?
> > >
> >
> > >
> > > ASB Bank online seems to be fine ....
> > >
> >
> > >
> > > Has anybody experienced similar problems and knows of a fix?
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > > Andrew
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > This message is part of the NZ ADSL mailing list.
> > see http://unixathome.org/adsl/ for archives, FAQ,
> > and various documents.
> > To unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@lists.unixathome.org
> > with "unsubscribe adsl" in the body of the message
> >
> >
>
>--
>This message is part of the NZ ADSL mailing list.
>see http://unixathome.org/adsl/ for archives, FAQ,
>and various documents.
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>with "unsubscribe adsl" in the body of the message
>
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