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Verisign Plans DNS Changes

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the end-user-impact dept.

NetWizard writes "According to a recent NANOG post and an InfoWorld story, 'Verisign will change the serial number format and "minimum" value in the .com and .net zones' SOA records on or shortly after 9 February 2004'. They seemed to have learned their lesson, from the post: 'There should be no end-user impact resulting from these changes (though it's conceivable that some people have processes that rely on the semantics of the .com/.net serial number.) But because these zones are widely used and closely watched, we want to let the Internet community know about the changes in advance.)'"

3 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"There should be no end-user impact" by resiak · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not someone at Verisign, but I am willing to suggest possible logic in this change.

    The previous format, YYYYMMDDNN (where NN is an arbitrary sequence number), conforms to no standard but its own. The UNIX timestamp format is recognised by any date/time manipulation tool worth using, as well as being a standard (de facto or otherwise, I don't know). While switching format now is a PITA for those who have already written tools that work with it, it will make future development fractionally easier, as well as allowing more accuracy than could practically be used.

    Then again, they could just leave things alone.

  2. Re:Stop Changing DNS by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Informative
    Yes, but software engineers have a knack for taking shortcuts where you least expect them. Kinda like MS and their broken implementation of standards. Even if you do code your html/etc properly, that doesn't guarantee it'll come out right. So the point being, just because you weren't supposed to, doesn't mean you didn't.

    The above isn't meant as an excuse, just an explanation as to why this will undoubtly break someone's something. Then you get back to the old 'change is good' but not if it causes trouble, then 'change is bad'[tm]. At some point we're going to have to make big changes to the infrastructure and things will break regardless of compatability. we might as well get used to it (though as always, having a decent explanation wouldn't be a bad thing[tm])

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  3. ISO 8601 specifies YYYYMMDD by mec · · Score: 5, Informative

    I got your international standard right here.

    YYYY-MM-DD and YYYYMMDD are both standards-compliant.

    Seriously, if you've never heard of this standard, read up. Whenever I need to stick a date or a time on something in text form, I just do it the ISO 8601 way.