.ORG problems this evening

Thu Sep 18 13:30:38 UTC 2003

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003, Todd Vierling wrote:

  12  dellfweqab.ultradns.net (204.74.103.2)  24.811 ms !H

A nameserver's response to anything but DNS queries is just as
relevant as a web server's response to NTP queries. Why do you insist
that the ability to traceroute to it is an operational requirement?

  Same machine for both tld1 and tld2, seen through XO last night and Verio
  this morning, from source prefix 66.56.64.0/19 (as well as two others, one
  on the US east coast and one in US midwest which I cannot name publicly).

Judging from the bulk of monitoring data available, the problem you
were experiencing possibly had a slightly smaller scope.

You do realize your diagnosis is analagous to the dialup ISP user
calling his helpdesk and claiming "the internet is down," right?

  So as far as my machine's source address is concerned, even if the servers
  are anycast, there are still only two servers which reside on a single point
  of failure.  Anycasting doesn't help me one whit if there are only two
  servers for my named to choose and both of the ones visible from my location
  are down (even though their routes are up) -- this is IMNSHO irresponsible
  for a gTLD operator.

An IP is just a destination. In this case it likely refers to a
cluster of machines. Would you be happier if each machine in the
cluster had its own .org delegation? That could probably be shown to
be a pretty sub-optimal solution.

If you're still confused, have a read here:

http://www.ultradns.com/support/managed_dns_faq.cfm

"Q. I read that your service is supposed to make use of several
servers all over the world, but you only give users two server
addresses to provide to their registrar. How do I make use of all the
other servers?"

If that doesn't clear things up for you, you might want to take a look
at this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0764516779/

HTH, HAND.

matto

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