Journal of Internet Disasters

Sun Nov 15 15:20:30 UTC 1998

Sure, we have a responsibility to mitigate problems from up the pipe.

But We as an industry and consumers need to start demanding - via writing
to the congress people (They will read letters, not email- and they will 
listen if enough people contact them), complaints to the FCC and other
involved groups - high standards of quality from the InterNic and other
organizations that the Internet depend on.  We are essentially captive to
their screwups, NO MATTER HOW WELL we prepare.

Even the FAA recognizes no matter how good a flight crew, if they get
incorrect information from the Tower, any problems that occur are the
Tower's fault!

-Deb

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Deborah  A. Smith                   das at digex.net

                   Because I can
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On Sat, 14 Nov 1998, Michael Dillon wrote:

> On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, Marc Slemko wrote:
> 
> > What you are discussing is a problem, but not "the" problem and not a
> > problem that causes a significant impact over the short term.
> 
> What I'm getting at is that on a network you cannot simply point the
> finger at the bad guys, NSI and say that since they screwed up everything
> is their fault. Everyone who interacts with NSI's servers also has a
> responsibility to arrange their operations so that an NSI problem cannot
> cause cascading failures. Especially so since NSI is known to regularly
> screw up like this.
> 
> That means that the other root nameserver operators have a responsibility
> to limit the damage that NSI can do to them. You will also note that some
> ISPs attempt to mitigate the damage by running their own root zones which
> allows them to fix things without waiting for the NSI bureaucracy to get
> around to fixing their servers. 
> 
> > It is important to keep that clear in messages; NSI has already spread
> > enough lies, so any confusion about the issue isn't wise.
> 
> Nevertheless, there are other lessons to be learned from the incident
> besides the fact that NSI's internal operations are a mess.
> 
> > The big issue that needs to be addressed is why the heck it took NSI over
> > two hours after they were notified to fix it, 
> 
> Precisely! Part of NSI's problem is that they simply do not have the
> skilled professionals available to build a proper robust architecture.
> This is evident not only in their nameserver operations but also in the
> domain name registry as well. But NSI also suffers from the bureaucratic
> disease that does not give front-line people the authority and the
> responsibility to fix things fast.
> 
> > The organization that controls the root nameservers should have one of the
> > best operations departments, not one of the worst.
> 
> The solution to this problem is to take this operational responsibility
> away from NSI. And then to run it totally transparently so that if a
> problem like this occurred there would be no veil of secrecy. IN such an
> important infrastructure operation, every detail of the event logs
> complete with names and dates and times and the content of internal email
> messages should all be open to the public. This would be a very positive
> outcome of the new ICANN and would, in fact, be a resurrection of the way
> things used to be done on the net where everyone shared their data openly
> and jointly figured out how to do things better.
> 
> --
> Michael Dillon                 -               E-mail: michael at memra.com
> Check the website for my Internet World articles -  http://www.memra.com        
> 
> 