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I just installed the patched BIND 9.2.x for NodeWorks so it could keep finding dead links for customer sites. Without this kind of technical solution, I would have had to check for redirects to the sitefinder site, and added specific logic to mark the response as invalid since it would otherwise return a valid 200 HTTP response code.

The new feature just needed this bit added to named.conf to get it working:

zone "com" {
type delegation-only;
};
zone "net" {
type delegation-only;
};

When its running, it will put message like this to /var/log/messages so you can see it working!

Sep 17 12:58:15 proxy named[1130]: enforced delegation-only for 'com' (www.asdfsdafs.com)

Its really amazing that the open source community can turn around a patch like this within hours of the initial problem being reported! Not only that, but the implementation is clean and technically elegant.

The new *.com & *.net wildcard resolutions are breaking the way the internet is linked together. I run a link checker service at NodeWorks ... as a result of Verisign's / Network Solution's just implemented changes resolving *.com and *.net for non-existant domains to their web server, web links with host names that would fail before will now succeed, resulting finally in a 200 HTTP success code from sitefinder.verisign.com which is incorrect! How can an invalid address result in a success HTTP error code?

Any attempts to fix this problem externally are just hacks including null routing the IP address for *.com, and resolving sitefinder.verisign.com to 0.0.0.0, as Verisign can easily change both the IP address of sitefinder.verisign.com as well as the IP address for *.com, so this is just an arms race that can't be won.

Therefore the quality of the web will begin to degrade as Verisign is not supporting the internet protocols correctly, and there is no "correct" way to work around this defect they have caused. If they sent back a web error code, that would be "more correct", but still a flawed implementation as a non-existant domain name should not resolve at all.

It is my wish that some governing body like ICANN or IETF can make a ruling banning this disruptive behavior from Verisign.

The first thing that springs to mind is an ASP -> PHP converter that I've heard of, called 'asp2php'.

Perhaps a more 'correct' way of doing things would be to use the ASP-mimicing PERL functions (although I'm aware that this isn't exactly what you were asking for, it's the most 'neat' manner, if you really /have/ to use ASP-based nonsense).

A search through Google is the most obvious place to look, however, which turns up, amongst others, a thread on PHPBuilder, which suggests Apache::ASP, which, AFAICT, uses the abovementioned PERL module (given that it requires the Apache module mod_perl).

HTH.

What about

• Miva/HTMLScript
• ASP or Apache ASP
• TCL
• C#
• ect....

These are all good programing languages. Why not use them? What high perfromance site is using Ruby?

If you've got to use ASP, there are a number of solutions that already work on BSD!

The most complete is a commercial package from Halcyon Software, called Instant ASP. There's a comparison between iASP and Chili!ASP on the site (hard to find just with their links). Since iASP is Java (servlet) based, it also makes a decent package to support migration from ASP to JSP.

There are also at least a couple free ASP tools that work fine on BSD: Apache::ASP (Perl only), and ASP2PHP, which supports a certain amount of automatic conversion from ASP VBscript pages to PHP.

Here are a few technologies to consider (using Perl):

• Apache::ASP
• Embperl
• Mason
• Template::Toolkit

There are many more, but these are the ones I would consider for people who already know ASP. Apache::ASP looks like a very mature and solid product, as does Embperl. I would trust either of those.

Also, is there a business need to convert the existing ASP code to work with the new platform? If so, you might consider looking into ASP2PHP, if you're already considering PHP. The author says that it will convert most of the code to PHP.

Also, I can tell you that there is (sort of) a project in the works right now to build an ASP to Apache::ASP/Perl converter and/or interpreter. To follow this, just keep an eye on the mod_perl mailing list at one of the archive locations. It will probably be called VBScript::Parser. See http://perl.apache.org/#maillists for a list of searchable archives. Most of them are updated weekly.

Also, I've noticed some comments along the lines of "JSP is without a doubt the best/fastest technology out there". Uh... Where is your proof on this? I have a suggestion, go to the mod_perl mailing list and make this statement. See where it gets you. According to them, "It's widely accepted that server side Java solutions such as JServ, JSP and JRUN, are far slower then mod_perl solutions" (http://perl. apache.org/perl_myth.html#Java_does_away_with_the_ need_for).

That being said, I think that JSP is a fine technology, and there is nothing wrong with using it. I'm about to embark on a project myself using JSP. Just don't try to tell people it's the "Holy Grail". That's more than arguable.

• are there any other ASP solutions for Apache? I've yet to find one

Hey, there sure are. Joshua Chamas' Apache::ASP, which runs under mod_perl, is probably the best solution. It runs exactly as IIS' ASP does, using the same constructs. It would probably be worth your while to check out.

The full Apache::ASP home page is at http://www.nodeworks.com/asp/, and there is tons of support for it on the mod_perl mailing list (including the author himself).

darren

Cthulhu for President!

must mean ASP, & other proprietary compoonents...

ASP is by no means a proprietary technology. Take a look at Apache::ASP. It's a perl module, running under Apache/mod_perl, that lets you write ASPs in perl. ASP is actually a very neat solution if you care to look at it. And if you write ASPs in perl (instead of VB), you get to write your scripts in a very nice language, get a much more feature-full technology than CGI, and it's cross-platform too -- those perl ASPs run on Apache with the above module and on NT/IIS with ActiveState PerlScript.