Microsoft spokesperson blames ICANN

Tim Wolfe TimW at InfoGroupNW.com
Thu Jan 25 00:57:47 UTC 2001


Microsoft.com is again responding here.  I had to point this out.  On the
main page (www.microsoft.com) under Today's News (which conveniently makes
no mention of the fact that they've been offline for a day) They have this
headline for a story, "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explains how Microsoft
software provides the business agility that customers need to stay ahead."

Can you say irony?  I bet Steve Ballmer can...

--Tim

=============================================
      Timothy M. Wolfe  CCNA, NSA 
 Sr. Security Engineer  tim at ignw.com
   InfoGroup Northwest  541.485.0957 x108
=============================================


-----Original Message-----
From: woods at weird.com [mailto:woods at weird.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 3:01 PM
To: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: RE: Microsoft spokesperson blames ICANN



[ On Wednesday, January 24, 2001 at 13:09:45 (-0800), Roeland Meyer wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: Microsoft spokesperson blames ICANN
>
> From our efforts, it is not at all surprising that someone, at MSFT,
munged
> the DNS configuration, totally. Even their best guru could have done it,
due
> to the murky nature of the config. I suspect that there are less than 100
> ppl that could even have a clue, in this area, and they don't all have the
> same pieces of clue.

That's absolutely idiotic (of M$, that is !;-).  Even more idiotic than
putting all their nameservers in one basket, so to speak.

I'd bet any high-school kid who had any experience whatsoever at
installing Linux or FreeBSD could no doubt blow a real OS and a native
BIND install onto any sufficiently capable set of four machines in about
an hour or so and provided that someone could cough up at least a
half-baked zone file from somewhere to load on them they'd all be online
and answering to the registered nameserver IP numbers in no time flat.
Certainly in less than what's apparently going to be at least 23 hours
now!

Heck I know a half dozen or more people around the world who would have
put their dislike of M$ away for a short period and loaded a zone file
or two on their own nameservers for M$ if only M$ could have managed to
get the .COM zone updated with new delegations....  What ever happened
in this community to asking the community for help when you're caught
between a rock and a hard place?  (Not that a company the size of M$
should have to ask for a handout -- they no doubt have significant IP
connectivity in as many places around the world as almost anyone else!)

MS has nothing and no-one to blame but their own stupidity and arrogance
in this.  Meanwhile they're so damn big and "important" to so many users
that this outage is having both a direct and an indirect negative impact
on a lot of ISPs around the world!  "Hey!  The Internet must be broken
if I can't get to M$.COM!"

> What's needed is for some(one/group) that has a though understanding of
both
> systems, at the design level, to sort out the bits. This is properly, a
> development project, one that most system admins are unsuited for.
> Unfortunately, it is left at the system admin level, IMHO.

No, what's needed is for M$ to learn that they need to deploy software
that's capable of the task even if it didn't come from a box and doesn't
have their logo branded on it.  Squishing things together that were
never meant to be squished together is only going to cause a big mess.
Err, has already caused a big mess, at least for M$ and those who deal
with them!  ;-)

They'd also do well to learn a bit about network geography and just
exactly how authoritative nameserver visibility from various locations
on this wonderful Internet of ours can directly affect their bottom
line!

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods at acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>



PS: they're still down for the count from this neck of the woods!
Interestingly one of them's completely unreachable from here now...

$ host -C microsoft.com                                             
microsoft.com           NS      DNS4.CP.MSFT.NET
Nameserver DNS4.CP.MSFT.NET not responding
microsoft.com SOA record not found at DNS4.CP.MSFT.NET, try again
microsoft.com           NS      DNS5.CP.MSFT.NET
Nameserver DNS5.CP.MSFT.NET not responding
microsoft.com SOA record not found at DNS5.CP.MSFT.NET, try again
microsoft.com           NS      DNS7.CP.MSFT.NET
Nameserver DNS7.CP.MSFT.NET not responding
microsoft.com SOA record not found at DNS7.CP.MSFT.NET, try again
microsoft.com           NS      DNS6.CP.MSFT.NET
Nameserver DNS6.CP.MSFT.NET not reachable
microsoft.com SOA record not found at DNS6.CP.MSFT.NET, try again




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