[122404] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: History of 4.2.2.2. What's the story?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Orthoefer)
Sun Feb 14 09:16:47 2010
From: John Orthoefer <jco@direwolf.com>
In-Reply-To: <20100214091630.GA13678@tummy.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:16:13 -0500
To: Sean Reifschneider <jafo@tummy.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Since I'm watching B5 again on DVD....=20
I was there at the dawning of the age of 4.2.2.1 :) =20
We did it, and we I mean Brett McCoy and my self. But most of the =
credit/blame goes to Brett... I helped him, but at the time I was =
mostly working on getting out Mail relays working right. This was about =
12 years ago, about 1998, I left Geunitity in 2000, and am back at =
BBN/Raytheon now. I remember we did most of the work after we moved out =
of Cambridge and into Burlington.
Genuity/GTEI/Planet/BBN owned 4/8. Brett went looking for an IP that =
was simple to remember, I think 4.4.4.4 was in use by neteng already. =
But it was picked to be easy to remember, I think jhawk had put a hold =
on the 4.2.2.0/24 block, we got/grabbed 3 address 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, and =
4.2.2.3 so people had 3 address to go to. At the time people had =
issues with just using a single resolver. We also had issues with both =
users and registers since clearly they aren't geographically diverse, =
trying to explain routing tricks to people KNOW all IPs come in and are =
routed as Class A/B/C blocks is hard.
NIC.Near.Net which was our primary DNS server for years before I =
transferred to planet from BBN. It wasn't even in 4/8, I think it was =
128.89 (BBN Corp space), but I'm not sure. BBN didn't start to use 4/8 =
till the Planet build out, and NIC.near.net predates that by at least 10 =
years.
I still have the power cord from NIC.near.net in my basement. That =
machine grew organically with every service known to mankind running on =
it, and special one-off things for customers on it. It took us =
literally YEARS to get that machine turned off, when we finally got it =
off I took the power cord so no one would help us by turning it back on, =
I gave the cord to Chris Yetman, who was the director of operations and =
told him if a customer screams he has the power to turn it back on. A =
year or so later, he gave the cord back to me. =20
Yes we set up 4.2.2.1 as a public resolver. We figured trying to =
filter it was larger headache than just making it public.
It was always pretty robust due to the BIND code, thanks to ISC, and the =
fact it was always IPV4 AnyCast. =20
I don't know about now, but originally it was IPV4 AnyCast. Each server =
advertised a routes for 4.2.2.1, .2, and .3 at different costs and the =
routers would listen to the routes. Originally the start up code was, =
basically:
advertise route to 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, and 4.2.2.3
run bind in foreground mode
drop route to 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, and 4.2.2.3
then we had a Tivoli process that tried to restart bind, but rate =
limited the restarts. But that way if the bind died the routes would =
drop.
johno
On Feb 14, 2010, at 4:16 AM, Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> I've wondered about this for years, but only this evening did I start
> searching for details. And I really couldn't find any.
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> Can anyone point me at distant history about how 4.2.2.2 came to be, =
in my
> estimation, the most famous DNS server on the planet?
>=20
> I know that it was originally at BBN, what I'm looking for is things =
like:
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> How the IP was picked. (I'd guess it was one of the early DNS =
servers,
> and the people behind it realized that if there was one IP =
address
> that really needed to be easy to remember, it was the DNS =
server,
> for obvious reasons).
> Was it always meant to be a public resolver?
> How it continued to remain an open resolver, even in the face of
> amplifier attacks using DNS resolvers. Perhaps it has had
> rate-limiting on it for a long time.
> There's a lot of conjecture about it using anycast, anyone know =
anything
> about it's current configuration?
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> So, if anyone has any stories about 4.2.2.2, I'd love to hear them.
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> Thanks,
> Sean
> --=20
> Microsoft treats objects like women, man...
> -- Kevin Fenzi, paraphrasing the Dude, 1998
> Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo@tummy.com>
> tummy.com, ltd. - Linux Consulting since 1995: Ask me about High =
Availability
>=20
>=20
