[35625] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Statements against new.net?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mathias Koerber)
Wed Mar 14 01:45:04 2001
From: "Mathias Koerber" <mathias@koerber.org>
To: "Edward S. Marshall" <esm@logic.net>, <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 12:00:29 +0800
Message-ID: <NEBBLGLDKLMMGKEMEFMFCEBACFAA.mathias@koerber.org>
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> Oh, that's right, Usenet is still usable, with fairly comprehensive
> guidelines on how hierarchy and group maintainers can keep things =
running
> smoothly. Even in the face of different news servers having different
> namespaces. Funny, that.
DO you think so? It *is* acceptable (to some, not everyone) that an =
article posted
in a group may not make it all the way around the world because my =
server's
copy of a NG is different from one with the same name over there.
But I don't think it would be at all acceptable if my email address had =
a different
owner over there. There *is* a difference in a basic naming scheme that =
is the basis
for a large multitude of communication systems and one that is specific =
to one
non-mission critical service.
> What exactly scares you so much about this? The fact that individual
> nameserver operators are realizing that they are the ultimate =
authorities
> over their DNS infrastructure, rather than a political commitee? (Why =
am
> I suddenly reminded of the "Grassroots DNS" effort that someone=20
> put forth a
> few years back?)
I don't know what scares him. What scares me is that a decision made by =
my
brother's ISP back in Germany might impact whether email he sends to me
could go to a different person altogether. And he would not have an easy =
choice
which ISP to chose, because each one might have a different view of the =
DNS and
namespace, thus making it impossible to decide which ISP to use at all.
The fact that services like email perform DNS lookups at every hop along =
the way
(from the initial MX lookups via the reverse lookps, sender-domain =
checks to
fight SPAM etc) would mean that no-one could say whether the =
emailevenhad a chance
reaching me.
And this is only email. Other services will introduce other chances for =
amiguities etc altogether.
The upshot of all this would be that no-one can rely on email and the =
Internet as a medium
for communication (and e-commerce etc) would be finished.
And don't think once this mistake is realized it would be easy (or fast) =
to turn bak the time
to a sane state, as AFAIK there is no complete record of the current =
state and disputes over
what is and is not to be part of the restored Internet would be legion.
Mathias
