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ICANN, National Registrars Still Feuding
Damalloch writes: "The BBC website has this story about the EU's concern over ICANN's refusal to make guarantees about root server stability. Domain name registrars such as Nominet are threatening to withhold payment of ICAAN's fees unless something is done to reassure them. So far ICAAN has remained stubborn because of the huge lawsuit potential if a root server were to go down but with the possibility of having their income reduced, they might just be convinced to do something."
They'd need ISPs who run DNS servers for their clients to point to their root servers. This is somewhat nontrivial.
It would (go to another root) - but if these systems are already running close to capacity, then that may be enough to cause the next server to choke, crash, and the next server will fall even faster.
It's a scenario much like the AT&T switch fiasco, where a seldom exercised chunk of code took out one server. Once one server was down, the others took more load, which, coupled with the fact part of the problem was a live switch receiving a "I'm back!" message while under heavy load, caused more switches to go. Cascade failure all the way.
After reading the article, I'm actually rather surprised myself. These systems must chew a ton of bandwidth, but it seems ICANN doesn't pay for it? Not to mention that all but three are in the US - isn't that going to oversaturate the cross-oceanic links?
I think I'm definately with the registrar organizations - ICANN should be having contracts in place to require certain things, rather than a wink and a nod and a handshake.
A faulty version of software was released. And yes the fault was buried waaay down in a giant case or if/elseif statement. Normally no big deal, right? Just roll back. But they had things set up so that any machine connected to another would poll it for the version of software it had. If what it connected to had a newer version, it would download that and then hand it off to all its fellows. So by the time the bad code triggered and they realized they had a problem it had already spread virus-like across the whole network. Going back to the older version one one machine was futile because as soon as it booted up it would connect to other machines and download the flawed software.
They had to eventually take their old version, give it a new, higher number, and then compile and release that. So that that 'feature' once again became a feature and not a bug. Many lessons to be learned.
First? It is already several years too late for China to somehow be first. Alternate roots have been around for a long time. I use one, you can too.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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If I read this correctly, the reason why the EU local registries don't have their own root servers, and hence control over service levels is a historical issue.
Excerpting from the Internet Software Consortium's page, linked above - and please allow me to state that such a reference is anecdotal rather than given fact,
The "one in Europe" btw was NOT Nominet or another registrar, it was a guy working for LINX, the London INternet eXchange.
There's good reason for this, as late as the early 1990s, Europe was still thinking that X.500 was the way forward, and a large amount of resources from universities, telcos and local standards agencies was devoted to "interoperability" testing of X.500 directory services. What really happened was the standards lagged the implementations so badly that vendors and implementors went ahead and did their own thing, creating, as anyone who has dealt with X.500, a nightmare for inter -vendor interoperability. That created the space in which the InterNet and DNS / BIND could flourish. FWIW, LDAP is a (nor precisely, so please don't flame me, too large a subject for absolute accuracy here) derivative of X.400, itself a cut down form of X.500. Novell's eDirectory, which runs some of the largest sites (CNN.com, AOL messenger services) is itself a souped up LDAP implementation.
You can find a brief overview of X.500 and what the "authorities" in Europe were up to as late as 1990 and beyond in this history of X.500
I'm British born myself, but this all seems to me to be Euro - Whining. Particularly the UK's Nominet making an issue of this is absolutely BS. Nominet has, IMO, very sharp practises. If you "buy" a domain in the UK (domain.co.uk) via an ISP, Nominet maintains a "tag" linking your domain to the "provding" ISP, until another ISP takes it over. Domains _never_ go back into circulation when they expire. Nominet refuses, on the whole, unless you threaten or cajoule them with considerable effort, to "release" your domain because it states it will not get involved in contractual disputes between you and your ISP. Most UK ISPs make contracts which lock you in to your services and charge a considerable and hefty severance fee, usually buried in the small print. You _can_ get a "Neutral Tag" applied to a UK domain, if you pay GBP £80 for two years, which fee goes back to the ISPs who are members of Nominet, which is a for profit company, limited by guarantee, a rare form of UK company which offers very lax statutory reporting. Even though you _can_ do all this, I've had several clients now who've complained to Nominet, e.g. when their ISP is TU and no longer provides service, and Nominet tells them anyway that they can only deal with an ISP who is a member of Nominet. Obviously that's BS. But you can't register a domain in the UK for
Sorry for that rant against Nominet, but it's Crocodile Tears time again and minus several million points for the Brits, as per usual.
Please follow the links above, investigate yourself . . .