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Verisign Plans DNS Changes
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.)'"
God damn it ICANN, you need to take away Verisign's authority over DNS. Every time they change something it's a major pain in the ass for anybody that works in an ISP, web hosting, etc.
STOP FUCKING CHANGING THINGS!
But because these zones are widely used and closely watched, we want to let the Internet community know about the changes in advance.
The last sentence sounds like they want to emphasize that they're announcing this so early so the no one panics when all of a sudden something changes, I guess it's good that they're trying to rebuild trust.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
And then they go and cite an example where there WOULD be an end user impact.
.COM and .ORG domain. I guess we're screwed, guys!" Then the brave tech raises his hand and says "You know, with my Dell laptop and wireless LAN, I can change the way the serial number is incremented from anywhere."
Although unlikeley, there is a potential for collateral damage here. Is there anyone at Verisign willing to post the logic behind making the changes in the fist place? I can't see where there would be a business case when someone would jump up and say "We could make a billion dollars, but only if we change the way we determine DNS serial numbers for the
I've been watching too many Dell commercials lately...
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
No-one cares what format the serial number is in, except those who have written software that relies on the current format (in disobedience of the RFCs...)
A serial number is just a 32-bit number, and is used to see if a domain has been updated. The specs. do not say anywhere that it should be in a specific format.
"Elmo knows where you live!" - The Simpsons
This announcement is important in that Verisign finally seems to recognize that they are part of a larger community, that those DNS records are not just some corporate asset sitting in a couple of computers in the corner.
Changes affect administrators around the globe. As part of a community, they have a responsibility to make their decisions transparent to the community, and to announce changes well-enough in advance that those who are affected have time to prepare.
This is not just a Verisign issue. The need for major Internet organizations to recognize the larger public as important stakeholders within the community is important. Awareness of the larger community should be followed by communication and actions that reflect that awareness, thus signalling a willingness to truly be a part of that community.
Verisign seems to be exhibiting a newfound awareness of community that ICANN seems to have abandoned.
I hope Verisign continues to be a good memeber of the community. Perhaps others can follow their lead.
------- "One of the joys of travel is visiting new towns and meeting new people." -- G. KHAN
The internet infrastructure should be managed and run by the community, and not driven by commerical proliferation of services offered to enhance a companies offerings. This change seems dubious at best, considering Verisigns previous efforts of domain sitting, which, would break applications lets ensure we keep them in their place.
2038 anyone?
Verisign will change the serial number format and "minimum" value in the .com and .net zones
Right, so when I fall on an unresolved address, I can't even return it under warranty because the serial number has changed, and even if they did reimburse me, they changed the value. That's just flipping great...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
From Infoworld: But the company did allow that "processes that rely on the semantics of the .com/.net serial number" could be affected.
For example, companies that have created scripts to monitor domain change on .com and .net will almost certainly need to make changes to account for the serial number change..."The damage won't be catastrophic, but some DNS servers could stop receiving updates,"
And they are planning to do this next Feb 9? Isn't that like too little time for organizations to update their systems?
I don't trust Verisign... the fact that they control such an important database accesed by millions of people around the world really frightens me. They screwed it once, they can do it again.
They should have that power removed from them. It should be on another organization (i.e. a non-profit one) that better serves internet community.
History, I suppose.
The internet infrastructure should be managed and run by the community, and not driven by commerical proliferation of services offered to enhance a companies offerings.
That was what the recent UN conference was about I suppose. But everyone wanted to dismiss that as being useless.
They will be changing their serial number from about 2004020900 to something about 1075680000 which according to the DNS system will be an older serial number because the difference is only 928340900 which is much less than half the range of a 32 bit number. They can make the change that they are planning if they make two changes with at least their cache interval amount of time between the changes. See RFC-1034.
With a TTL of 15 mins you have to generate a new zone 96 times a day to keep the zone visible during a whole day. I wonder if they want to speed up propogation time of new domain with this?
The boxes have to sit on someone's desk. "The community," disorganized and disparate as it is, is remarkably poor at doing anything. You'd have to invent some sort of hierarchy. Maybe have a General Manager of the Internet, and he could have a board of directors under him or something. They would be elected by the nation's population at large, and they'd have the final say on internet issues.
But it's be silly to give EVERYONE an equal vote in their elections, as the great majority of people have no clue how the internet works, and the campaigns for these positions would be totally unable to focus on real issues. They'd have to dumb it down and sugar-coat it so that sixpack joe can digest what they're saying, and at that level of simplicity, who could tell a good candidate from a bad?
Okay, so let's find some way of making sure only highly competent people can vote. We can't give a test, since we'd need someone to create and administer it, and the potential for corruption is too high. The only thing I can think of is selling the votes: that way, every vote is going to represent an informed citizen. After all, who would buy a vote if they don't understand the technology?
So at the point where we've got a CEO, a Board of Managers, and an equity market, we may as well package the whole thing as a corporation and name it VeriSign.
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.
Are there other queryable DNS servers maintained just by verisign for
The time/datestamp should have always been this way; more to the point do you know of any other TLD that at least attempts to be this communicative? They don't do this because ICANN, or anybody, makes them.
.NAME ("oops, we were rooted") or .PRO ("Hi ICANN, I know we said we wouldn't sell SLD name but we're dying here, and we ask a second time can we sell SLD name pleeeeeeeease?") or .biz ("home of more spam since 2000! Yeah baby!!") or any of the cctlds that have (cough) lame servers.
.WS did it 3 years ago.
How bout
Bitch at NSI all you want, they're still the model of a well, if not best run TLD.
And spare me the crap about sitefinder, 22 other tlds did this long before NSI did,
It's reasonable to whine when they do a bad thing (like agree to ICANN oversight, you folks have no idea how close they were to the, um "alternative") but for things that have little or no effect you're reacting to the corporate name not the actual change.
So, put NSI under greater ICANN control? NOT. Frankly we'd be better of if they put ICANN under NSI control.
Hey, is this one of those thigns you can't say because it's hersey?
"Duh. Double duh." - Weemba
Need Mercedes parts ?
It appears that they are gearing up to start providing far more than two updates per day. This could mean that sometime in the future you could register a new domain name and have it up and running within 15-30 minutes.
Seems like a positive change to me.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
It does not matter how many bits your computer has, it matters if the DNS protocol is still in use by then.
If it is, it will break because of this change. The older timestamp format had a much longer lifetime.
Of course there will be major problems in 2038, probably much worse than in 2000. This small issue will not contribute too much.
My serial number format lasts longer than Verisign's, and I still get more than 100 updates a day out of it. In fact it will last until 07:06:36 Tuesday 2 October 2096 while staying in just 9 digits (which it has been since 15:06:40 Saturday 4 September 1982). After that it goes to 10 digits, but still remains a positive signed 32 bit integer until 12:56:28 Wednesday 16 March 2242, and if unsigned 32 bit integer works everywhere else, it will go all the way to 01:53:00 Wednesday 30 May 2514.
Instead of being the count of number of seconds, as Verisign plans to use, mine is 1/4 of that value. Basically, I take the system time() value and divide by 4. By treating that value as an unsigned quantity, I won't have the Y2038 bug, either. That logic will work until 06:28:15 Sunday 7 February 2106 (past the 9 digit limit). And I can do 21600 updates a day (one every 4 seconds).
dig linuxhomepage.com. soa
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Third reason:
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars