Re: Bogus nic.fr behavior

[Måns Nilsson <mansaxel@nic-se.se>]

Subject: Bogus nic.fr behavior Date: Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 12:09:12AM -0000 Quoting D. J. Bernstein (djb@cr.yp.to):
> Servers (as opposed to caches) should not have root information unless
> they are root servers. Caches will never ask for the information; and
> there's a cost to copying the information and worrying about keeping it
> up to date. These are not new observations.
> 
> Unfortunately, the .fr administrators won't delegate to servers that
> don't have the current root NS records and corresponding A records.
> 
> This is not an isolated example. They also insist on TCP service even if
> you don't have any big records, and 1.0.0.127.in-addr.arpa PTR records,
> and various other server behaviors that are not relevant to DNS service.
>
> Where does this disease come from? Even if the .fr administrators are
> confused about how DNS works, why do they care what other servers do?

TCP and UDP are mandatory, regardless of query size. Some of us care
about standards compliance.

Real-life experience has shown that being (perhaps) excessively picky
about the status of servers is one of the few methods we have as ccTLD
operators, if we want to be proactive about the quality of DNS service
on the Internet at large. I am personally responsible for implementing
similar checks for the SE ccTLD. We feel that this adds considerable to
the end-user experience when operators are *forced* to actually provide
the service they charge for. A frightening amount of DNS servers appointed
for second-level domains are in an abysmal state of malconfiguration. Who
loses? The clueless end user, who has outsourced this, just because
s/he does not know. They are being treated quite roughly by "web hotel"
operators striving to maximise profit.

Ensuring that things work in a compliant fashion is a Good Thing. 
Also, we do not need any more open relays on the Internet. 

While your comments about the need for a '.' hint file on a auth server
(as opposed to a cache server) do contain some relevance it is far
more likely that a generally mis-managed server would fail there (and
in localhost reverse) than a server that is correctly managed. Also,
most people still fail to understand the difference between name serving
and caching resolver. They will run one single name server (on NT, no
less!) on their office LAN, and use it for master and resolving. Before
we can teach them about the difference we must make sure that they can
resolve names at all, or they will fail to resolve the clue-inducing
URL's we send them.

Real World operations do introduce a number of grays in addition to the
black and white of the Ideal World.

-- 
Måns Nilsson			DNS Technichian
+46 709 174 840			NIC-SE
+46 8 545 85 707		MN1334-RIPE

Will the third world war keep "Bosom Buddies" off the air?