From: Herr Wendigo <wendigo@gti.net>
Date: Thu, 27 Jun 1996 06:44:12 +0800
To: stewarts@ix.netcom.com (Bill Stewart)
Subject: Re: domain name zapping threat by Internic
In-Reply-To: <199606260644.CAA00869@apollo.gti.net>
Message-ID: <199606261646.MAA25289@apollo.gti.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


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An entity claiming to be Bill Stewart wrote:
: 
: Perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point.  Because the root nameservers
: provide name service for the top level domains, if you want to find 
: schmoe.org, you need to ask a nameserver for .org where it is, and to find
: www.schmoe.org, you need to ask a nameserver for .org where to find a 
: primary or secondary nameserver for schmoe.org - so if the .org folks
: decide to drop you, you become hard to reach, even if you've got
: the primary and secondary name servers working just fine.

The org. folks ARE the InterNIC.  The machines on ROOT-SERVERS.NET are all
fed by the NIC.  My problem with the original statement was the implication
that using your own nameserver as having zone authority was a bad idea.
Not only is it a good idea, it is standard operating procedure.  You're 
absolutely right about being "hard to reach" (a bit understated) if the
NIC drops your record.  Any recursive lookups will fail.


: Now, you can improve your odds a bit by getting popular systems, such as
: aol.com and compuserve.com to act as secondary nameservers for you -
: you may lose connectivity to Europe, but you're in the cache for half
: the Net that way...

Well, if you decide to use AOL as your secondary, you will only be accessible
(by name) outside of aol.com for about 48 hours after the NIC drops your 
records.  After that, only users who use one of aol.com's name servers
will be able to access your domain.  Then, when someone else registers your
domain, AOL will probably drop you like a bad habit (if they don't when the NIC
drops you).  I'm sure that AOL (or Compuserve, etc.) are not too keen on being
the odd man out when the NIC and the rest of the world say XYZ.COM is owned
by your competitor and AOL says it is owned by you.

mark

- -- 
    Mark Rogaski   | Why read when you can just sit and |      Member
  GTI System Admin |         stare at things?           | Programmers Local
  wendigo@gti.net  | Any expressed opinions are my own  |     # 0xfffe
 wendigo@pobox.com | unless they can get me in trouble. |     APL-CPIO


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