VeriSign Granted a Patent Covering SiteFinder

An anonymous reader writes "Remember VeriSign's SiteFinder? Turns out that a couple of months back VeriSign was granted a patent on resolving unregistered domains. This came about thanks to its acquisition of eNic, operator of the .CC Domain. How long before Verizon, Earthlink, and OpenDNS are hit up for licensing fees?"

Comments

Obligatory Behind-the-times Question

[drinkypoo]

My ISP has recently joined the ranks of retards who return an incorrect result when a domain is not found. I've been looking around but it's unclear who is out there running DNS that I am welcome to use, that is worth using, and that is likely to be at the same IP for a long time. Whose servers should I use?

Many Reasons this is Appalling

[billstewart]

There are so many things wrong with this. The first one is that it doesn't actually work as indicated in Claim 1, because it's operating at the wrong levels of the protocol stacks. DNS maps between names and IP addresses, and is used for many different kinds of Layer 4, 5, and 7 applications, but URLs are a Layer 7 function typically supported by browsers, and the identification of what kind of service the client is interested in is not known at name resolution time, or even what Layer 4 transport protocol or Layer 7 application protocol, and in fact the methods used in the patent have the DNS operator's web server decide what kind of response web page to provide in response to a URL included in a HTTP request, even though the client's DNS request might not have been intended to be used for HTTP. When Verisign implemented their annoying breakage of DNS functionality, they supported HTTP on port 80, and had a stub email server that did a sloppy approach to rejecting connections, and AFAICT didn't provide other services, such as correct rejections on SSL's TCP Port 443 or SSH's TCP port 22. It's not clear that they even did the right thing at Layer 3 - if you were trying to "ping misspellllled-example.com", they not only should have answered the DNS request with a "No Such Domain" error message, but if you sent it a ping, it shouldn't respond (I forget if they responded to pings or not; many systems don't do that for self-defense.)

Another reason this patent shouldn't have been accepted is that wildcard domains were a standard capability, and having a web server try to provide useful information in a 404 page was probably a known capability, or at least obvious to someone skilled in the trade. Responding to a DNS request with the IP address of a web server that isn't the one the customer was looking for might not count as "obvious to someone skilled in the trade" because it's obviously wrong.

on a related net neutrality issue:

[drDugan]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050508R.shtml

'''
The Federal Communications Commission has recently encountered mounting scrutiny in response to its broad deregulatory practices. Public frustration regarding the FCC has peaked at a time of fierce debate on net neutrality.

        In a memo obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post, 30 current and former commission employees complained about the leadership of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

        Staff members observed that "the FCC process appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with Chairman Martin."

        The memo, written to chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell and chairman of the House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Bart Stupak, increases pressure on the FCC chairman, who, in particular, has been accused of a rigidly anti-regulatory, pro-corporate approach. Many critics assert that his approach has contributed to a lack of oversight over network providers.
'''

What's a little deregulation between friends, right?