April 1997 - Test - lists.nanog.org

Network Solutions Dropped as Registrar Of Internet Domains
by Aleph One 27 Apr '97

27 Apr '97

Network Solutions Dropped as Registrar Of Internet Domains By David S. Hilzenrath Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, April 24 1997; Page E01 The Washington Post The National Science Foundation said yesterday it will not renew Network Solutions Inc.'s deal to register Internet domains when the Herndon company's agreement with the government expires next year. But Network Solutions responded by saying it does not plan to relinquish its exclusive hold on the registration of ".com" domains and several other established forms of Internet addresses. The two announcements leave the future of one of the Internet's central resources in confusion and contention. Domain names serve as something of a Zip-code system for the Internet, enabling users to address electronic mail and locate pages on the graphical World Wide Web. Corporations and organizations pay to register their locations. A coalition of organizations has been pushing for competition in the registration of Internet domains, including those ending in .com for commercial users, the most popular form of Internet address. Critics have argued that competition could promote better service and lower prices. As of Dec. 31, Network Solutions had collected $42.6 million in fees from the enterprise, charging $100 to register new addresses ending in .com, .org, .gov, .net and .edu. It also charges annual renewal fees of $50 after two years. Seventy percent of the money is revenue to Network Solutions, a subsidiary of California-based federal government contractor Science Applications International Corp., and the rest is set aside for improvement of the Internet. The NSF inspector general recently estimated that registrations would generate annual fees of about $200 million by mid-1999. National Science Foundation spokeswoman Beth Gaston said it "has not been determined yet" whether the registry Network Solutions operates belongs to the company. The agency put Network Solutions in charge of the registry in 1993, and it has grown to include about 1.2 million domains. Networks Solutions seemed more definite. "It is not our intention to share .com or the others [domains] we register," Network Solutions spokesman Christopher Clough said. "Those would obviously [be] assets that we've developed . . . much as Microsoft wouldn't share DOS," its proprietary software. Network Solutions favors competition, but only in the registration of new types of domains, Clough said. A coalition of groups led by the Internet Society is trying to create a system in which competing registrars could process the same types of domains, including those controlled by Network Solutions. "They've taken the low road and tried to protect their monopoly instead of taking a leadership role in the best interest of the Internet," said Donald Heath, president of the Internet Society. The National Science Foundation's inspector general recently recommended that the federal government maintain oversight of Internet addresses and continue earmarking a portion of registration fees for development of the Internet. But Joseph Bordogna, the agency's acting deputy director, issued a statement yesterday saying the commercialization of the Internet leaves the NSF less reason to stay involved. Bordogna said the NSF "has no plans to renew or re-compete" the agreement with Network Solutions. A group of federal agencies, including the NSF, the Federal Communications Commission and the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, has been discussing what role the government should play. Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company Aleph One / aleph1(a)dfw.net http://underground.org/ KeyID 1024/948FD6B5 Fingerprint EE C9 E8 AA CB AF 09 61 8C 39 EA 47 A8 6A B8 01

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Topics for Tampa
by Susan R. Harris 27 Apr '97

27 Apr '97

Greetings - Here's what we've lined up so far for the June 5-6 NANOG agenda: - Practical Aspects of Wireless Networking - Current Issues in Inter-Provider Multicasting - ARIN Update - Update from CAIDA (Cooperative Association for Data Analysis) and ISMA (Internet Statistics and Measurement Analysis) - Applications of Routing Policy System Language (RPSL) - Network Performance Measurement: Introduction and Panel - Transitive BGP Communities - Handle With Care! - Tips for Using MEDs at the Exchange Points - The Zebra Distributed Routing Software Are there other topics you'd like to hear about? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Susan R. Harris, Ph.D. Merit Network, Inc. srh(a)merit.edu Phone: (313) 936-2100 Fax: (313) 647-3185 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Read this...Re: offtopic for NANOG - do not read
by Carl Oppedahl 27 Apr '97

27 Apr '97

At 04:31 PM 04/26/97 -0400, Vince Wolodkin wrote: >The only >thing NSI has truly done that is awful is their TM dispute policy, and >the IAHC has taken that very thing under its own wing. Unfortunately for the Internet community, NSI has made it clear that it doesn't plan to yield any control over .COM to anyone else, ever: Networks Solutions seemed more definite. "It is not our intention to share .com or the others [domains] we register," Network Solutions spokesman Christopher Clough said. "Those would obviously [be] assets that we've developed . . . much as Microsoft wouldn't share DOS," its proprietary software. Network Solutions favors competition, but only in the registration of new types of domains, Clough said. (Network Solutions Dropped as Registrar Of Internet Domains, By David S. Hilzenrath, April 24 1997; The Washington Post.) Thus, it seems likely that (barring a shift in control over .COM) NSI would continue forever, carrying out its awful policy and putting innocent domain name owners out of business. The only way that innocent domain name owners will have the cloud of NSI's awful domain name policy lifted from their heads is if indeed the control over .COM shifts elsewhere. So far as I can see, the most likely way for that to happen is if IAHC's plans move forward and are put into place.

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Re: NEWDOM: Re: offtopic for NANOG - do not read
by Joseph T. Klein 27 Apr '97

27 Apr '97

Date: Sat, 26 Apr 97 18:50:50 CDT From: "Joseph T. Klein" <jtk(a)titania.net> Subject: Hierarchy To: nanog(a)merit.edu X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Message-ID: <Mail.862102832.7061.jtk(a)monet.titania.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII If you can't stand the ranting on eDNS/NSI/NSF/IAHC delete this message NOW. A simple lessons on hierarchy. See: http://www.isi.edu/div7/iana/assignments.html IANA is the numbering authority and the keeper of: Domain Name Assignments IP Address Assignments General Assignments see: http://www.isi.edu/div7/iana/descript.html MIB Repository MIB Interface Types The Registries administer objects assigned to them by IANA. The InterNIC (NSI) is just a contracted administrator for IANA assigned objects. It is but one registry. Others exist. (RIPE, APNIC and the keepers of the ISO TDLs) InterNIC is paid by NSF but, as with the others, derives its functional power from IANA. When I asked the InterNIC how to appeal they sent back a quote from RFC2050: >Per RFC2050 - >6. Right to Appeal > >If an organization feels that the registry that assigned its address >has not performed its task in the requisite manner, the organization >has the right of appeal to the parent registry. > >In such cases, the assigning registry shall make available all >relevant documentation to the parent registry, and the decision of >the parent registry shall be considered final (barring additional >appeals to the parent registry's parent). If necessary, after >exhausting all other avenues, the appeal may be forwarded to IANA for >a final decision. Each registry must, as part of their policy, >document and specify how to appeal a registry assignment decision. So the InterNIC has expressly stated that they are bound by the rulings of IANA. IANA has agreed to assigning domain objects based on the IAHC report. (effectivly eliminating NSIs control over the gTDLs after a transition) The NSF agrees and will not renew the contract with NSI. Some argue that they can create their own way of running TDLs; they do so without the peer review that legitimate channels provide. Some are would-be tyrants that are attempting to usurp power by assalting us with ranting. Open forums for the establishment of new systems exist and can be explored, tested, and evaluated within the stucture of IANA, IAB, and IETF. These are the legitimate channels for establishing new protocols and procedures. It is NOT legitimate to flood NANOG and other forums for technical interchange with these repeated arguments in favor of non-standard systems. You can lobby Congress to stop what has happened, but the United States government no longer holds all the cards. The MoU that creates CORE (developed by the IAHC) is recognized by the United Nation and was developed with the cooperation of two UN agencies (ITU, WIPO), one US federal agency (FNC), three federally and internationally recognized Internet organizations (ISOC, IAB, IANA) and an independent international organization (ITA). This is within the bounds and scope of UN activities as defined by the UN Charter. The Charter is treaty obligation of the United States and falls under Article IV, Paragraph 2 of the US Constitution. "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." So, I conclude: Some would have you disregard: o NSF, IETF, IAB, ISOC, and IANA o Contract Law o Federal Law o International Law This is both illogical and irrational. The line of thinking being propagated by those who wish to overthrow the legitimate authorities theatens the stability of the Internet and all who make a living from it. -- From: Joseph T. Klein, Titania Corporation http://www.titania.net E-mail: jtk(a)titania.net Sent: 18:50:50 CST/CDT 04/26/97 If the Internet stumbles, it will not be because we lack for technology, vision, or motivation. It will be because we cannot set a direction and march collectively into the future. -- http://info.isoc.org/internet-history/#Future

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Re: Ascend GRF400
by Bradley J. Passwaters 27 Apr '97

27 Apr '97

<Randolph C. Nicklas said:> > I've heard the same story as Tony, from Ascend/Netstar folks. > We run 5 GRF1600s in the vBNS--I have a love/hate relationship > with them, but they are "maturing" ;) Actually the product tree looks a little different. The original Netstar product came in two versions. Both had a 16 slot chassis with an external RMS control unit. The difference was in the later version the RMS was a rack mount unit. This product is now called the GR II. The GRF 400 is a 4 slot unit and all of the control function have been internalized. The GRF 1600 is a 16 slot box with completely internalized control functions. Hope that helps. bjp(a)eng.umd.edu | Disclaimer: Can you be sure I even uunet!eng.umd.edu!istari | exist: Let alone represent anyone Brad Passwaters (Network Ronin) | or anything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here we are. Born to be kings. We're the princes of the universe. Here we belong, fighting to survive in a war with the darkest power. Network Manager's Theme Song (QUEEN)

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RE: NEWDOM: Re: offtopic for NANOG - do not read
by Jim Fleming 27 Apr '97

27 Apr '97

On Saturday, April 26, 1997 8:06 AM, Michael Dillon[SMTP:michael@memra.com] wrote: @ On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, Karl Denninger wrote: @ @ > Anyone trying to take "COM" and point it somewhere else will find that they @ > have created a class-action lawsuit with 1,000,000 plaintiffs -- all the @ > people who you instantly disconnect that have COM domains. @ @ I think most people interpreted Paul's statement as meaning that if IANA @ directed them to continue providing the .COM domain services from a zone @ file that was not issued by NSI, then they would do so. With the emphasis @ on continuing the service, i.e. making sure that all 1,000,000 .COM @ domains continue to operate properly. @ @ > Anyone trying to STEAL NSI's COM zone (to appropriate it as their own) will @ > likely find themselves on the wrong end of a monstrous lawsuit, not to @ > mention potential felony theft charges. @ @ Just how did NSI aquire ownership of this .COM zone when it was all @ built with public money under the authority of the National Science @ Foundation. Since when does the NSF give away free monopoly franchises? @ @ > The Internet isn't your little playground, and it does not belong to Jon @ > Postel, Joyce Reynolds, and Bill Manning. @ > @ > Those are facts. @ @ It is also a fact that the Internet does not belong to NSI or Denninger. @ @ The real question is, which individuals and organizations take their @ positions of "public trust" seriously and which ones are attempting to @ leverage such a position into lining their own pockets? @ @ So far, Postel, Vixie, et al., are the guardians of the public trust @ and all those who are lined up in opposition to them appear to be more @ concerned with lining their own pockets than anything else. @ @ Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting @ Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-250-546-3049 @ http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael(a)memra.com @ @ @ @@@@ http://www.isc.org/about_us.html "Our efforts are funded by Industry. Our initial funding was provided by UUNET Communications Services (UCS), a non-profit corporation with additional contributions by the Digital Equipment Corporation. Our original UCS funding grant has expired and we are assembling a consortium of corporate and other sponsors to fund the 1997 programs (see attached Description of Programs). Our 1997 budget is approximately $700,000." @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ -- Jim Fleming Unir Corporation http://www.Unir.Corp Check out...http://www.Naperville.Mall

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RE: NEWDOM: Re: offtopic for NANOG - do not read
by Jim Fleming 27 Apr '97

27 Apr '97

On Saturday, April 26, 1997 11:49 AM, Carl Oppedahl[SMTP:carl@oppedahl.com] wrote: @ At 01:46 PM 04/26/97 -0500, Karl Denninger wrote: @ <snip> @ @ >I'd like you to point out the major corporations and public universities who @ >will do this. I'd also like you to immediately return that nice root server @ >that NSI has paid for in part or whole, if you really believe this. @ @ NSI has never paid for anything. NSI has doled out money collected by it @ from NSF and from domain name owners. NSF (i.e. the US taxpayers) and the @ COM, NET etc. domain name owners have paid for whatever it is you think NSI @ has paid for. @ Carl, This is not quite true. Paul Vixie has stated on the NANOG list that NSI pays for his equipment. Paul is part of the Internet Software Consortium (ISC) <http://www.ispc.org> an IRS approved 501(c) company that accepts donations so that Paul can write software that supports the domain name system. Their web site says they have a $700,000/year budget. According to the IRS, you can get full-disclosure on all of this. =========== >From IRS Publication 557 Tax-Exempt Status for Your Organization Page 13 Required Disclosures "Certain tax-exempt organizations must make available for public inspection the exemption application and three most recent annual information returns. Penalities generally are provided for failure to comply with these requirements. In addition, there are disclosure requirements for: - Solicitation of nondeductible contributions - Sales of information or services that are available free from the government, and - Transactions or relationships with other organizations. <...> Page 45 - 501(c)(6) - Business Leagues, Etc. "A business league, in general, is an association of persons having some common business interest, the purpose of which is to promote such common interest and not to engage in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit. Trade associations and professional associations are considered to be business leagues." <...> "Dues and assessments used for political and certain legislative activities"...."No deduction is allowed...in connection with any attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof with respect to legislative matters (otherwise known as grassroots lobbying)..." <...> CAUTION: A tax-exempt trade association, labor union, or similar organization is considered to be engaging in grassroots lobbying if it contacts prospective members or calls upon its own members to contact their employees and customers for the purpose of urging such persons to communicate with their elected state or Congressional representatives to support the promotion, defeat, or repeal of legislation that is of direct interest to the organization. Any dues or assessments directly related to such activities are not deductible by the taxpayer, since the individuals being contacted, who are not members of the organization, constitute a segment of the general public. =============== Apparently, the ISC endorses the IAHC according to the ITU's web site. NSI of course does not endorse the IAHC. Paul Vixie also has a for-profit company. It gets a little confusing which activities are which. It is not surprising that people have trouble figuring out which hat these people where from one moment to the next. -- Jim Fleming Unir Corporation http://www.Unir.Corp Check out...http://www.Naperville.Mall

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Re: seeing the trees in the forest of confusion
by Tony Li 26 Apr '97

26 Apr '97

jhawk(a)bbnplanet.com (John Hawkinson) writes: > Every vendor necessarily (and rightly so!) provides all users enough > rope to hang themselves with. I disagree stridently. While it's certainly in the vendors best interests to cater to the whims of their customers, the ethical, responsible and far-sighted vendor also has other responsibilities. In the case of BGP, the most common usage of the product is to interconnect within the wider community. A community that has a diversity of talent and experience. And a community that the vendor would like to retain as customers. Violating the basics of the protocol are not a reasonable, ethical, responsible, or intelligent way of accomodating the customer. And sometimes, just sometimes, when the needs of the customer conflict with the needs of the community, the customer loses. Better that than the entire community. As an example, a certain vendors BGP implementation does not (did not?) support the oft-requested 'sed on the AS path' for precisely this reason. That said, there is also a question of intent. We should be careful not to confuse accidents with incompetence or maliciousness. Vendors make mistakes ;-), some of which can be misconstrued in a rush to place blame. Tony

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Re: seeing the trees in the forest of confusion
by Tony Li 26 Apr '97

26 Apr '97

junkins(a)nwnet.net (Doug Junkins) writes: > These cases seem to point to a problem with BGP route withdrawls that will > continue to increase the time it takes to recover from network problems. > Perhaps the router vendors would like to comment. I'm not a router vendor, but I used to play one on TV. Is that close enough? ;-) Let me comment about BGP, the protocol, as opposed to BGP, the implementation. The protocol dictates that a BGP speaker that receives a withdrawl for a prefix _MUST_ promptly distribute that withdrawl. The reason for this is obvious: a router which has no route to a prefix is blackholing traffic or, if it has selected a different path, is possibly contributing to a forwarding loop. We can argue about the definition of 'promptly', but I hope it's clear that taking hours to withdraw the route is out of the question. Now, please note that a BGP speaker that receives a reachability announcement for a prefix MAY decide to not advertise it for an indefinite period of time, for whatever reason. However, this is subject to some restrictions. If the newly reachable prefix is installed in the routers forwarding table and it chooses not to advertise this fact, the router MUST NOT advertise a shorter overlapping prefix. Again, this would be lying about the forwarding path that packets might take, so there's possibly a forwarding loop. What does this mean for an implementation? In particular, how MUST flap damping work? Flap damping MUST NOT damp out withdrawls. Note that a _history_ of withdrawals may well be data used by subsequent flap damping computations, but the withdrawl itself should propagate. Flap damping SHOULD happen on reachability advertisement. To simplify the implementation, most folks are likely to choose to suppress newly advertised routes for a time. While the path is suppressed, the implementation probably does NOT want to install the path in its forwarding table. That would be painful. Only after the path finishes its suppression period should it be installed and then promptly advertised. If your router's implementation is significantly different than this, you might wanna have a talk with them. Sooner would be better than later. ;-) Please note that I'm not throwing stones or pointing fingers. I have no knowledge of the internals of what happened other than what's appeared on this list. However, the reports are disturbing and there seems to be some considerable confusion about the internals of BGP, so I thought some education was in order. Tony

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7007 Explanation and Apology
by Vincent J. Bono 26 Apr '97

26 Apr '97

Dear All, I would like to sincerely apologize to everyone everwhere who experienced problems yesterday due to the 7007 AS announcements. If anyone cares to know, here is what happened: At 11:30AM, EST, on 25 Apr 1997, our border router, stamped with AS 7007, recieved a full routing view from a downstream ISP (well, a view contacing 23,000 routes anyway). There was no distibute list imposed on the downstream since they also advertise their customer AS's to us (they were also experimenting with sending some routes out through us and some out through the MAE). We did filter out routes from them containing any of our AS numbers but since they got the view from someone at MAE-East none of our internal AS numbers showed up at all. Not having a filter imposed on the inbound side was our error. In an as yet unexplained twist of bits, the 7007 router then began to de-aggregate the 23K route view *and* strip the AS path out of it. I will emphasize that we were running no IGP at the time. Not one. Not OSPF, not RIP, nothing. Our MAE-East border router, AS 6082, then got a feed of these routes, at last count 73,000+, which set off our network monitor system which wacthes for, among other things, route views over 45k lines in size. At 11:45AM we disabled the BGP peering session with AS 1790 that was in place with the 7007 router and immediately contacted Sprint (contrary to popular belief that they called *us* first to let us know about the problem). As we were trying to determine what had happened, we began getting calls from other ISPs saying that we were announcing their routes with specificity as well as best AS path. That really alarmed us since we saw no announcements still going out. When these calls persisted, we rebooted our 7007 router (that was at 12:00PM). When the router came back up, it did begin to announce a full view to AS 1790 again, but this time as a normal BGP advertisement, i.e. with AS paths and aggregated addresses. We then imposed a distibute filter on our downstream and toward 1790, which stopped the announcement and, we thought, solved the problem. Well, the phone *kept* ringing and we then started to see the 7007 paths coming into our other routers over the MAE's. Okay, so panic ensued, and we unlugged *everything* at 12:15PM almost to the second. Then, at 12:25 the Sprint NOC called us to say the they were about to turn down the DS-3 connection to our 7007 router since they were *still* seeing the routes. We of course told them to go ahaead (since the router had no power to it at this point we were *very* confused). It seems that even after we stopped announcing the demon-view at 12:00, 1790 kept propagating the routes. We continued to field calls until about 4:45PM yesterday from ISP's all over the world. According to our conversations with the Sprint NOC at 2:14PM yesterday, they simply could not clear the 7007 routes from their BGP tables, they "just keep appearing again" as one of the techs told us. It also seems that some large, switched-based backbone provider, began distributing the routes to MSN one the west coast which lingered until about 7:00PM EST. We had engineers from the router manufacturer in until about 1:00AM this moring crawling all over the equipment making sure that we hadn't created an incorrect config set. We also now impose full distribute list filters on all peers. All I can say in our defense is that I believe we did debug the problem in the most expedient manner possible, and when it seemed that even after disabling the BGP session, we were still endagering other networks, we did completely disconnect ourselves from the Net. We did *not* perform any of this maliciously, I'm not sure that I could duplicate the event if I tried. Anyone who called and got a harsh voice on the phone, well, I sincerely apologize to them individually, but some in particular should not have tried to impersonate a company other than their own *and* should not have started cursing out the NOC tech who answered. I would also like to take this time to thank AT&T WorldNet, NASA Sciences Institute, and Net Access Corporation who called and did not just ask for an explanation, but offered asisstance. Sincerely, MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS, INCORPORATED Vincent J. Bono Director Network Services

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