Re: Advisory — D-root is changing its IPv4 address on the 3rd of January.

Sun Dec 16 02:26:14 UTC 2012

Nick,

On Dec 15, 2012, at 4:45 PM, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:
> On 15/12/2012 23:07, David Conrad wrote:
>> The handwringing over this issue is a bit over the top.
> It's a question of what's procedurally sensible. Sensible things would
> include longer notice of the impending change to the root zone,

Given reality and the way root priming works, 3 weeks notice and 6 months of continued service seems sensible to me.

> more widespread notice of what's happening

I gather recursive server implementations provide a warning message telling folks that the IP address has changed. That seems like a more useful notification methodology than sending email to a few (or even many) mailing lists.

> and generally not poking around with
> really important bits of the Internet at times which are well known for
> having configuration freezes and/or when many people are going to be on
> holidays.  

It simply doesn't matter if folks refuse to make a change during the holidays. The worst case scenario is they'll get a warning message in their recursive server log files. Presumably, the folks who look at those log files will be able to understand what it means. They have 6 months after the change occurs to update their root hints.  Even if they don't, this particular change will only affect people 1/13th of the time their name servers reprime and will do so in a way that is wildly unlikely to even be noticed.

> This change wasn't planned over a coffee last thursday morning.  It's
> obviously been on the cards for several years, so asking for more carefully
> structured notice in a procedurally sensible sort of way isn't an
> unreasonable thing to expect as part of the migration plan.

You seem to be a bit confused about roles and prerogatives here.

The UMD folks are making a change to _their_ infrastructure. They have sent out a notice in advance of that change to folks who might be interested. They were under absolutely no obligation to do so. There is no contractual or service level agreement between UMD and _anyone_ that requires them to do _anything_ with regards to root service. The fact that they gave 3 weeks notice that they were changing the IP addresses of their server shows they are nice folks. Neither you nor anyone else that uses "D" has any right to dictate how UMD operates their infrastructure, how much notice to give when making changes to that infrastructure, who gets notified, etc. 

Welcome to the wonderful wacky world of volunteer root service!

With that said, I would argue it should be the responsibility of the maintainers of the root hints to notify software vendors, recursive operators, etc. of a change since the maintainer of the root hints file has vetted/implemented the change.  It is also more likely that the world has at least heard of the maintainers of the root hints than some random person posting unsigned messages from a University (no offense Jason :-)).

Regards,
-drc