[119202] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: What DNS Is Not
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin Oberman)
Mon Nov 9 18:52:19 2009
To: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:24:52 EST."
<CBD05967-3AB5-4B9A-A68C-4C11D3A8F13C@ianai.net>
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:47:13 -0800
From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@merit.edu>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
> Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2009 18:24:52 -0500
>
> On Nov 9, 2009, at 3:00 PM, Paul Vixie wrote:
>
> > i loved the henry ford analogy -- but i think henry ford would have
> > said that
> > the automatic transmission was a huge step forward since he wanted
> > everybody
> > to have a car. i can't think of anything that's happened in the
> > automobile
> > market that henry ford wouldn't've wished he'd thought of.
> >
> > i knew that the "incoherent DNS" market would rise up on its hind
> > legs and
> > say all kinds of things in its defense against the ACM Queue
> > article, and i'm
> > not going to engage with every such speaker.
>
> Paul: I completely agree with you that putting wildcards into the
> roots, GTLDs, CCTLDs, etc. is a Bad Idea and should be squashed.
> Users have little (no?) choice on their TLDs. Stopping those is a
> Good Thing, IMHO.
>
> However, I own a domain (or couple hundred :). I have a wildcard on
> my domain. I point it where I want. I feel not the slightest twinge
> of guilt at this. Do you think this is a Bad Thing, or should this be
> allowed?
>
> Also, why are you upset at OpenDNS. People _intentionally_ select to
> use OpenDNS, which is clear in its terms of service, and even allows
> users to turn off the bits that annoy you. Exactly what is the issue?
>
> And lastly, DNS is not "truth". DNS is the Domain Name System, it is
> what people configure it to be. You yourself have argued things like
> responding with "192.0.2.1" for DNSBLs that are being shut down.
> That is clearly NOT "truth".
I find it mildly amusing that my first contact with Paul was about 25
years ago when he was at DEC and I objected to his use of a wildcard for
dec.com. The situations are not parallel and the Internet was a
very different animal in those days (and DEC was mostly DECnet), but
still I managed to maintain a full set of MX records for all of our
DECnet systems.
That said, I really, really get annoyed by the abuse of the DNS system.
--
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
