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NSI Backlogged (as Usual)
James Green
sent in the URL to a news.com story that talks about how
NSI is Backlogged
handling orders of domain names. Big shock. Someday this
might be decentralized. Someday we might have new TLDs. Someday
this whole DNS growing pain thing will stop. Really. Bah
who am I kidding. This is the DMV of the 90s.
There is no technical reason that the Internet needs NSI. All they do is maintain a database of names and ip numbers. This is something anyone can do.
It must be possible to set up an alternative nameserver that does not interfere with access to the real nameservers. If the server saw a request for www.slashdot.alt then it would do a lookup in it's local database. If the name doesn't end with "alt", it would simply ask the real nameservers.
A problem would arise if NSI decided they needed to use "alt" as one of the real top level domains. It could be something else though. Something that NSI would be unlikely to ever use. I'll leave the possible alternative tld/tlds as an exercise for the reader. Another problem would arise though if, as another poster mentioned, NSI decided to allow any top level domain.
Any thoughts on a free, alternative nameserver? We have free alternative OS. Now it is time to build our own alternative namespace. I get dibbs on www.spacebar.whatever-our-new-tld-is
Oh sure we would have to convince everyone in the world to change their DNS settings but that's nothing compared to getting them to switch their whole operating system.
World Domination is a real pain in the butt. I love it!
January 1, 1999 the ISP that provides my company with a dedicated connection to the net changed the location of the DNS servers. I never recieved word that this was going to happen, becuase, I assume, my contact info was out of date.
It has been almost two weeks now since I requested the first update. I have submitted info 3 different times via fax. The first time I didn't get the correct on the fax. After five days of waiting, I called regarding why it hadn't changed. I spoke with a guy named Da-----. He said that I needed a tracking number. (They must need a tracking number to go to the bathroom there).
I went through the procedures to get a tracking number. It took almost 24 hours get the tracking number because the old account that I had been using is still able to receive e-mail. I can't get access to it, but BA still has not removed it. (I can get to our old web hosting site that I cancelled about 4 months ago as well).
I resubmitted the paperwork Tuesday or Wednesday. I included a copy of my driver's license (with the SSN marked out) and put the request change on my company's letterhead.
Friday there sitll had not been any change. So I called them again. (By the way I could never get through on 703-742-4777 but was able to on the 4884 number). I spoke to S---- this time. He said that he would update my contact info for that day and that by 7:00 that evening the update would go in and that by Saturday (yesterday), I could make the changes to the domain. He gave me a different number and I faxed the info to him.
So yesterday I check to see if the information has been updated. Surprise, surprise the changes still have not gone through.
I will take some of the liability for this problem, since I didn't update my contact info. I am upset with our ISP because they didn't inform us a head of time. I don't think they're so big that they couldn't have picked up a phone and called. It's one of the reason I didn't go with BA for a dedicated connection.
They changed their servers over Dec 21. Jan 1 or the night before they made the switch to the new DNS. After I contacted them, it took them a day or two to realize that our DNS info at Internic wasn't correct. (One time during Thanksgiving, a tech deleted our DNS info because he/she didn't think that they were hosting us got the l in our name mixed up with a 1.) After a day they put our info back on one of the servers. Tuesday (Jan 12) of this week our info disappeared again. It seems that the IP numbers for the old DNS servers are now on their back bone.
Until Internic updates the info. we're pretty much dead in the water as e-mail goes. The company can still surf the Internet, but in the four months that we've had an Internet connection they've come to rely on e-mail. Needless to say, I get multiple inquiries a day as to when the e-mail will be working.
J L H
Feeling foolish and angry.
Cool! I changed my dns setting in
/etc/resolv.conf to 199.166.24.1 and
can access anything. Now what alternative
site names are out there?
I am not surprised. This week I got a paper advertisement from NSI inviting me to register a *.com address. I wonder how many small businesses are now flooding NSI with paper orders.
Uhhh... I suppose that's the "Department of Motor Vehicles" ... notorious in the USA for being slow and inefficient.
:o)
Just another one of those dang ethnocentric acronyms
Jono
I have a friend who registred a new domain a few weeks back. It was all set up within 24 hours. When I do updates to the domains I control, they happen the same day (well, at the 7pm root update.) So what is being backloged?
-Philip
I've seen it proposed for Open Certificate Signers, but perhaps an "Open Domain Registry" can be done....
Theoretically, it would be possible to do it for TLDs, but perhaps a first step would be to create the TLD ".gnu" (or some other bastion of the Open Source movement), and once the registry is setup and distributed, to petition NSI to add either an entry for GNU in the 8 root servers, or to add a new root server...
The organization of it would need to be completely open - free, and distributed.
just a thought...
Pretty easy to do from a technical standpoint...
--Andy
asharp@hobbes.clarity.ca
I've been having similar problems to those mentioned above.
Our ISP was recently purchased by another one and the new company changed our IP addresses without giving notice. I called Internic, followed their procedures, and they said they would update my IP address that day. This was 10 days ago.
I finally made our new ISP restore our old IP addresses for a few days so I could at least change my contact information to a valid email address. I submitted a change through the regular forms more than a week ago and nothing has been done yet.
This sucks. At least my secondary DNS hasn't changed, so I can still get mail. But some systems take hours to route it if the primary DNS is unavailable.
Time to break the monopoly.
Has everyone forgotton that Alternic have been providing alternate TLD's for almost a year now.... ...shame nobody uses their system.
We just redelegated two .au (Australian names through INA) and attempted one .com domain.
Congratulations to INA. Obviously NIS are on a different scale traffic wise but the quality of the documentation, procedures and CGI scripts at INA left NIS looking tired and old fashioned. Best of all the INA forms actually worked.
Ok,
.fu
So, we've got an OSS bind project under way
There are various web based OSS DNS management tools.
Lots of OSS DNS diagnoistic tools are available.
When is someone going to put togeter an OSS NIC in a box? Sould be pretty simple, Apache, SSL, PGP, Qmail, bind and bingo, even antartica can get their top level doamin running.
I can see the configuration scripts right now :
Please enter the name of your TLD:
Please enter the name of your NIC organization: blahNIC
Please enter the IP addresses of your root level servers: 127.0.0.1, 192.168.0.1, 10.0.0.1.
Please type your secure authentication root cache update pass string: world domination is inevitable resistance is wasted energy
Remember, if there were an OSS NIC project, the guberment could actually pass on the NIC responsibilities to someone who could handle them (like that's ever going to actually happen). Perhaps Kasperoff should have focused his efforts here.
... as in "www dot bofh dot dot" - very radio friendly ;-)
I've been trying to get drzyzgula.org moved off of granitecanyon.com (which was for the most part great when it was up but I find as I depend more on it I want to get commercial-level service) and on to my ISP's (eskimo.com) DNS servers for a week. My ISP has sent in the request twice and all we've gotten back is the autoreply. I sent it in again yesterday and have heard nothing. One week, three submissions, one automatic reply, no ACK requests: (*@? @#$ (@ $@( @#$ (*@Y!@$ @# $@. At least my old DNS servers are still working, so I can get email. They *used to* have a system where you could enter the tracking number of your request in a web form and look up the status of the request. I notice that that system is gone gone gone, and no wonder. BAH!
NSI usually bounces back confirmation messages within the hour.. When I registered crashdot.org the other day, it took about 5 hours and finally sent the confirmation at midnight. WTG, N$I..
customers? Why, who ever could have seen something
like that happening?
Personally, I still believe that big monopolies
are the best thing for the computer industry. I
mean, look at what a terrific company MS is (not
that they're a monopoly, mind you!). You never see
them taking advantage of their monopoly status to
push half-assed and buggy products or excuse lousy
support and sky-high licensing fees. For example,
the cost of Windows hasn't gone up all that much,
and look what you get in return!
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
We don't.
--
Worse than a delay, their sendmail config is broken, one of the anti-spam-relay filters is
_ __
... Relaying denied
bouncing mail sent to hostmaster@internic.net!!!
Holy Horse Manure! Worst monopoly ever, at least
there are alternatives to RedmondCrapWare!
__________________CLIP_________________________
The original message was received at Sat, 16 Jan 1999 08:01:42 -0500 (EST)
from biprrs0.lb.internic.net [192.168.120.38]
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
hostmaster@mail-hub-mgt.mgt.internic.net
(expanded from: )
----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mail-hub-mgt.mgt.internic.net.:
>>> RCPT To:
... Relaying denied
550 hostmaster@mail-hub-mgt.mgt.internic.net... User unknown
[ Part 2: "Delivery Status" ]
Reporting-MTA: dns; opsmail.internic.net
Received-From-MTA: DNS; biprrs0.lb.internic.net
Arrival-Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 08:01:42 -0500 (EST)
Final-Recipient: RFC822;
X-Actual-Recipient: RFC822; hostmaster@mail-hub-mgt.mgt.internic.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: DNS; mail-hub-mgt.mgt.internic.net
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550
Last-Attempt-Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 08:01:51 -0500 (EST)
Skyshadow,
Just because "big monopolies are the best thing for the computer industry," does not mean that MS should be allowed to operate without government regulation. The reason for this is that the federal governement is a monopoly that itself needs to be regulated. The feds certainly do push half-assed and buggy legislation, excuse lousy support and sky-high tax and license fees.
We need to open up competition in the government market.
the 90's are over..
US$0.02++
Yes, I sent in a change-request for a host record to them a couple of days ago. After about one day I get a message back from MAILER-DAEMON saying that their Perl-script dumped. Way to go. Then I receive a message telling me that they had sent a request to my second-level domain administrator asking for verification (thats me too), but I sure as hell hasn't received any such request for verification. Damn them. I want my host record(s) changed!
Once again, everyone falls into the same trap when discussing TLD and DNS in general. The actual problem is NOT lack of domain name space, and the proposed solutions of splitting NSI into competing orgs, plus adding new TLDs is wrongheaded.
DNS is a specific solution to a specific problem. The problem it is designed to solve (and it does it very well), is allowing humans (who cannot reliably remember random number strings longer than 7 digits (on average (ever wonder why US telephone #s are 7 digits?))) an easy way to identify machines rather than relying on IP addresses.
DNS is NOT intended to be used as domains are these days - that is, DNS is being used to identify some larger organization. THIS IS WRONG.
The real problem is not a lack of TLDs; no, the problem really is: how do I find what I want? The old-school answer is name-branding, thus the attachment to specific names in DNS. Instead, what the real answer should be is a new layer sitting on top of DNS, so that the majority of humankind doesn't have to type http://ww.foo.com at a web browser's location. Instead, they say "McDonald's Irish Emporium, San Jose, CA" and they get to that web site, not the one with the big yellow arches. Yahoo, and the portal sites are a good step in that direction, but there still needs to be more work here. Call it a global database that maps concepts to DNS names, so that (like IP addresses), Web surfing shouldn't require one to know a DNS name.
NSI sucks. But a great deal of energy that is directed at the DNS "problem" should be focused on the real solution. Where are the visionaries when you need them? Everyone seems to be focusing on near-term problems, with no thought put to the long-term architecture.
I really miss Jon Postel.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Huh? What happened to the article about the Pentium III/Katmai?
It was up and drawing a healthy stream of contents, now it's nowhere to be found.
What gives?
I feel one of the biggest reasons for Internic's backlog is their inconsistancy in registering domain names.
Most people assume that if a name is showing up in their database On-Hold, that it can't be registered...well, in a 'round about way it can if one emails Internic a Registration Template a day or so before or day of that it's going to expire...chances are that when the name becomes available, that person will beat out all others. In fact I've seen domain names go off hold and the very next day see they're registered to someone else the day BEFORE the name went off hold...how can that be!!!??? Unless they accept templates that are sent before names go off hold. That's most likely why Internic is getting spammed with zillions of registration templates...everyone is trying to beat out everyone else by mailing zillions of templates. The cat is out of the bag...
Here's another secret...use Worldnic to register...you read that right...costs a little more, but it's a damn good way to beat others who've submitted registration templates via email that have yet to be processed. Worldnic compares against their *real-time* database, not Whois like most third-party registers do.
Internic has got to become more consistant in how they process new names or the load problem will only continue to get worse as more and more domain speculators fight it out...1999 is going to be a blood bath since many names are expected to expire that were registered in 1997...the fun has only begun...the speculators are ready, but is Internic?
Ron Bennett
It's backlogged...I've done many updates over the last two years and lately they've taken days...in fact the last update I did took over a week to be completed. I've never seen Internic this slow.
Technically adding TLDs (at least up to a point) is little problem, but will it really help matters...consider what's happening now with the global-like ccTLDs...people already are confused and most just stick with the familiar .COM when unsure.
Fact is that no matter how many new gTLDs they add, some gTLDs will continued to be more favored and thus valuable than the others.
So basically I feel the current approach of carefully adding gTLDs is the way to go to prevent total chaos and confusion.
The thing with NSI is that they are idiots when it comes to domain name registration. Their site is huge, and its hard to even find a sign up page sometimes.
NSI got the contract from the governemnt to regulate domain names very early on. In fact, domains were free for a long time.
But now, the Internet is taking off, e-commerce is on everone's lips. People are sapping up domain names like no other, and NSI is underpowered to contend. I understand that popular thought says that it takes 3 days. More like two weeks.
NSI also lacks in domain security. Stealing domain names is easy to any hacker, and its happened to me before. NSI is like this huge door waiting to be cracked.
However, there is some sort of salvation, their contract is nearly up. I actually heard from someone that their contract was renewed, but if the gov. has any brain cells up there, they wouldn't do it.
-Michael J. Lu
"The little secret that haunts Corporate America...a techonology that won't go away."
USENET for those who don't know, is the newsgroup system. Registering a newsgroup is a hell of a lot easier than doing a domain name registration, although the time until appearance varies.
The way to register a newsgroup involves writing a certain message in a certain format to alt.control, where news server and news server admins pick up the messages to add them to their servers feeds. There is no federal agency controlling these items, and all there is is just programs that pick it up.
The one snag in this is that the time before a certain newsgroup appears on the server varies. It can take anywhere from one day to a week, just because the servers have to process all the control messages. However, they are all picked up eventually.
Using this for doamain name registration poses a nother problem. In essence, the government wouldn't be making a cent off it. You do the math.
-Michael J. Lu
"The little secret that haunts Corporate America...a techonology that won't go away."