VeriSign Shutting Down Site Finder

00420 writes "VeriSign, the administrator of the .com and .net domains, made plans to shut down its new Site Finder service Friday, after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers ordered the company to undo controversial changes. Of course they're not taking it down because it affected the internet, they're just doing it to keep good relations with the technical community. (Seems a little late for that doesn't it?)" The shutdown is not complete yet, though: VeriSign hasn't changed their wildcard DNS entry (64.94.110.11).

Comments

Re:Starwars Moment

[NTmatter]

I'm not getting a good feeling about it. Look to the bottom of the article, and you'll see:

"ICANN is using anecdotal and isolated issues to attempt to regulate nonregistry services, but in the interests of further working with the technical community, we will temporarily suspend Site Finder."

Perhaps they'll just rename to "site searcher" and declare that they've shut down the "Site Finder" service.

Re:How Does VeriSign Even Stay In Business?

[op00to]

Where do you think the bulk of your domain registration fees go to?

NANOG Linkage

[The One KEA]

Here is the start of a thread on the NANOG mailinglist:

http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg14917. html

Just goes to show how pissed people really are.....

Email from Verisign

[gfilion]

From: owner-registrars@verisign-grs.com
[mailto:owner-r egistrars@verisign-grs.com]On Behalf Of VeriSign Customer
Service
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 6:08 PM
To: registrars@verisign-grs.com
Subject: [RegistrarsList] VeriSign NDS Response to Suspension of Site

To All Registrars,

I am writing to update you on VeriSigns Site Finder service. On Friday,
October 3rd, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) directed VeriSign, Inc., to temporarily suspend service no later
than 6PM PST, Saturday, October 4. VeriSign requested an extension from
ICANN for 3 additional days for the shut down in order to provide the
technical community time to make any necessary system changes.
Unfortunately, ICANN refused this request. Accordingly, in response to
this demand, VeriSign is temporarily suspending the Site Finder service
as of Saturday, October 4 at 6PM PST.

In suspending the service, VeriSign will remove the wildcard A records
from the .com and .net zones and revert to the former behavior for these
zones which is returning Name Error/RCODE=3 in response to queries for
nonexistent domain names.

VeriSign remains committed to improving the Internet user experience.
We look forward to providing the Site Finder service following this
suspension. Thank you for your business. We greatly value our
relationship with you.

Best Regards,

Chris Sheridan
Manager, Customer Service
VeriSign, Inc.
www.verisign.com

Verisign is breaking their contractural agreement

[krappie]

"If VeriSign does not comply with this demand by 6:00 PM PDT on 4 October 2003, ICANN will be forced to take the steps necessary to enforce VeriSign's contractual obligations."

Heres one violation that I found.

As noted in the Message from Security and Stability Advisory Committee to ICANN Board:

Previously, such queries returned RCODE 3 ("name error"), the negative response defined in the official DNS protocol specification, RFC1035 [4]. VeriSign now returns an IP address for a special server, thereby creating the appearance the requested domain name exists. The special server handles the subsequent requests for application level services, e.g. web, email, etc.

Now take a look at verisign's .com and .net contractural agreement in section C4:

4. Nameserver functional specifications

Nameserver operations for the Registry TLD shall comply with RFC 1034, 1035, and 2182

Of course, Im no lawyer. Any comments on this would be appreciated. It looks pretty clear to me that Verisign isnt meeting their contractural agreements.

I like how Verisign is trying to act like ICANN is acting so rash and irresponsible:

"Without so much as a hearing, ICANN today formally asked us to shut down the Site Finder service."

This is what ICANN is for. This is excellent news! It doesnt matter how many moronic web users are clicking on things when verisign's page comes up or how useful Verisign's market research shows it is. Its important to adhere to standards. Verisign's excuses are hilarious. "Users find it useful. It has nothing to do with the loads of advertising money we get. I swear!".
Its always about money.

Verisign Discards Wildcards...

[MadEyeMoody]

As of about 8:00 PM EST the wildcard A records pointing to 64.94.110.11 appear to be gone. I'm now getting normal NXDOMAIN responses to queries for nonexistent names.

As for the Web site, I suppose they must have taken that down, too. If you try explicitly going to http://64.94.110.11 (sitefinder-idn.verisign.com) you get a keen little page that says

We didn't find: "64.94.110.11"
There is no Web site at this address.

and I'm sure VeriSign wouldn't fib about a thing like that....