Incompetance abounds at the InterNIC

Fri Jan 22 22:01:13 UTC 1999

At 02:37 PM 1/22/1999 -0600, Phil Howard wrote:
>Since many speculators actually do not pay, the claim can stand up very well.

But they do pay. They get money sent to Internic sooner in the case of a
lapsed registration. [or they motivate people to pay before they lapse]
They get people to purchase domains they might not otherwise purchase, or
that they might not otherwise purchase NOW.

The costs of the non-completed registrations is trivial. So speculators
make a net-profit for NSI.

> But if the crunch of templates is blocking _my_ couple of
>templates from getting processed in under a week, then I really do want
>them to apply some temporary fix now to _this_ system so that do have the
>breathing room to put a better system into place.

Except that you (and everyone) get worse service after the proposed
changes. It will take everyone longer to get domains registered. And you
will have less information that you need to work (like on-hold status).
[point gun at foot, pull trigger]

>This war has probably resulted in "registration spam" where the speculator
>submits repeated templates, perhaps once per day, to re-register that domain
>hoping to narrow the window in which it is available to others.

This makes no sense. I don't believe they re-register the same domain the
next day. Once registered, its good for at least 30 days, and the creation
date is on the record.  Re-registering sooner than creation + 30 wouldn't
have any effect unless NSI starts trying to ignore speculator
registrations. Then I could see them trying to register it again the next
day with a different name. But if that is the case, then NSI caused the
flood by their own stupidity.  That cannot be blamed on speculators.

>My registrations are taking many days because the system is flooded.

Because the system is slow/not working.  I really doubt the system is
flooded.  I think the root nameserver updates would fail before the
registration system would fail. I can't tell without being at Internic. But
I don't think this sounds right.

>I could throw together a script in a few minutes that could submit to
InterNIC
>more templates in a few hours than they get in a week.  I could totally flood
>InterNIC.  But it would also be a denial of service, to InterNIC, and to all
>of us, too.

Except it doesn't sound like this is happening.   Such a script would cause
.com to increase by millions in a week. It hasn't. Therefore, I don't think
this is happening.

>The costs to speculators is on par with the costs to spammers.  Computers
make
>it easy to do.

Actually, all you are saying is that the cost of an email message is on par
with the cost of a database transaction.  I'll agree, and won't argue spam
costs, because a bunch of us promised not to. While the comparision to spam
is very obvious in many ways, please don't make spam comparisons. We can
argue this without reference to spam.  Enough said about that.

Computers make it easy for NSI, too.   $35.00 pays for a lot of computer
cycles.  There really can be hundreds of thousands of misses per one good
registration.

>> And if they generate a net-gain for Internic, thats a good thing.
>
>Up front payment probably will do that.  Speculators won't go away.  But at
>least they get to help pay for the systems we have to use.

Not having delayed/canceled payment, immediate registration hurts everyone,
including me.  When I sell a web-host, they want it up today. I suppose if
everyone else has to wait 30 days, it won't be any worse than, say leased
line delays, and if everyone has the same constraint, the playing field is
level, so it shouldn't cost business. [actually, thats not true, since
selling something sooner means more revenue in a year--that's why we have
those marketing/sales folks. They get people to buy things now instead of
next month.  That makes a big difference.]

And you are complaining about delays. Presumably, everyone experiences the
same delays.  Yet, you propose increasing the delays, and then that still
won't stop speculators.  So what is the point? How is the system improved?
It isn't.  

But then, speculators are just a scapegoat. By definition, eliminating the
scapegoat doesn't fix the problem. It just diverts attention from the more
embarrasing, real problem. That's how I conclude they are just a scapegoat.

>Paying up front is not a contortion.  It is annoying to lose some WHOIS
>data (I've already had one customer who hadn't paid their bill and got put
>on hold, but said that whois doesn't say it's on hold).  Maybe if up front
>payments go into place, the whois data can be restored for the most part.

Actually, just last week before the change, I also had a customer call me
and complain their nameservice was broken. A quick check allowed me to tell
them that they hadn't paid for their domain, and estimate for them how long
their outage would be, which allowed them to give their customers a story
about when service would be restored.  Now neither I nor anyone else can do
that.

			***That is a "BAD THING"***

So now we'll have to call NSI, and get to a customer service rep to find
out what's up. Then another call to pay.  Thats a *LOT* more expensive.
This is an improvement?  Whoever at NSI came up with this idea really,
really needs to be walked out the door.

Changing the system so that it doesn't allow "delayed payment/cancelation
and immediate duplicate notification" is a "BAD THING".  If it means we
have to tolerate "free" speculation, then we have to do that.

Are you really willing to go to your customers and say "Well, I don't see
that yyy.com is registered, but it will cost you $50.00, and 30 days to
find out if you can get it."  "You want to try 6 domains and keep the best
one that you get? Thats 300.00 and 30 days" That's insane.

>> I certainly don't want to give up the current system that allows one to
>> register domains with delayed or canceled payment and immediate duplicate
>> notification.
>
>It's certainly convenient to pay later.  But it's not that great of a
>difference to me.

Then why are you complaining that it takes weeks to register a domain?
Clearly, if these so-called anti-speculation changes are made, it will
always takes weeks to register a domain.  You are shooting yourself in the
foot because you are afraid someone might step on your toe.

		--Dean
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
           Plain Aviation, Inc                  dean at av8.com
           LAN/WAN/UNIX/NT/TCPIP          http://www.av8.com
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