September 2003 - Test - lists.nanog.org

RE: Not the best solution, but it takes VeriSign out of the loop
by Mike Damm 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

I never said anything in my original posting regarding assistance from the root operators; god knows you guys have a hard enough job already. And frankly blocking non-cooperative servers would hurt the net just as much as what VeriSign's doing. My suggestion was to simply create a viable alternative source of com/net zones that operators could use if they choose to do so. If you don't like what VeriSign is doing with them, don't use VS zones anymore. Hopefully, eventually, IANA will be telling you to switch the roots. Not me. Not likely, but ORG managed to pull off a transition to other ownership. For anyone who's interested, you can "opt-in" to the new zones I'm building here: http://www.symetrix.net/gtld/ -Mike --- Michael Damm, MIS Department, Irwin Research & Development V: 509.457.5080 x298 F: 509.577.0301 E: miked(a)irwinresearch.com -----Original Message----- From: Paul Vixie [mailto:vixie@vix.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2003 9:27 PM To: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: Not the best solution, but it takes VeriSign out of the loop > > Who's up for creating a network of new gTLD servers? > This would require cooperation from the root-servers operators. speaking for f-root, we won't be cooperating with anything like that. we do not edit the zone files we serve. they come from iana, and if you want something different served, you'll have to talk to iana. i cannot speak for the other rootops but i suspect that their answers might be compatible with, if not downright similar to, f-root's. > And a serious effort from ISP/NSP community to block network access to > root-servers that don't cooperate. > > I agree that it's a good idea at this point. I see nothing else as a > serious long-term technical solution. sounds like mob rule to me -- count me out. so, block me first, i guess? -- Paul Vixie

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What *are* they smoking?
by Niels Bakker 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

A wildcard A record in the net TLD. $ host does.really-not-exist.net does.really-not-exist.net has address 64.94.110.11 $ host 64.94.110.11 11.110.94.64.IN-ADDR.ARPA domain name pointer sitefinder-idn.verisign.com It even responds on port 25 (says 550 on every RCPT TO). Gah. -- Niels.

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Re: [Re: Change to .com/.net behavior]
by Joshua Sahala 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

i'm not sure if it could be cached, but i still see verisign pretending to 0wn the net... as is usually suggested on this list, do your talking with your money, pull your zones from verisign, and never do business with them again, file complaints with all relevant state and federal authorities, and let the l33t Kiddi35 and spammers have some fun ;) of course, the dept of greed^Wcommerce will likely give verisign an 'attaboy' for coming up with this stunt while i am sure all of us (excepting the netsol/verisign lurkers) would like to null route everything attached to them, it will do nothing but make us look like the 'bad guys'. this is not the time for knee-jerk reactions...but damn it would be nice to descend upon verisign's corporate hq with clue-by-fours in hand ;) /joshua ; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> jklkwekcie.com ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 25772 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 13, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;jklkwekcie.com. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: jklkwekcie.com. 900 IN A 64.94.110.11 ; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> jklkwekcie.net ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 11930 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 13, ADDITIONAL: 0 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;jklkwekcie.net. IN A ;; ANSWER SECTION: jklkwekcie.com. 900 IN A 64.94.110.11 [cut] "Walk with me through the Universe, And along the way see how all of us are Connected. Feast the eyes of your Soul, On the Love that abounds. In all places at once, seemingly endless, Like your own existence." - Stephen Hawking -

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<OT> Mad DNS Disease
by Martin Hepworth 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

Guys Kinda off topic, but for those that don't userfriendly.org regularly.... http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030917 -- Martin Hepworth Senior Systems Administrator Solid State Logic Ltd +44 (0)1865 842300 ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been swept by MIMEsweeper for the presence of computer viruses. www.mimesweeper.com **********************************************************************

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OT - fiber optic power meter for 1383 nm
by Bill Owens 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

I'm fishing for some experience here - does anyone know of a vendor who sells a fiber optic power meter that works at or near 1383 nm (the so-called water peak)? We have a new install of SMF-28e fiber, and need to qualify it at that point in addition to the standard testing at 1310 and 1550 nm. So far I haven't located anyone with such a device. . . Thanks, Bill. - - - Bill Owens Manager, Network Development NYSERNet, Inc.

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Re: Root Server Operators (Re: What *are* they smoking?)
by Paul Vixie 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

> Something like this can be seen on www.airow.com: > $ dig www.airow.com @a.gtld-servers.net > ... looks good to me, man. ; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> @f.6to4-servers.net www.airow.com a ; (2 servers found) ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch ;; got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; QUERY SECTION: ;; www.airow.com, type = A, class = IN ;; ANSWER SECTION: www.airow.com. 2D IN A 66.82.206.10 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: airow.com. 2D IN NS ns1.rfwwp.com. airow.com. 2D IN NS www.airow.com. ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.rfwwp.com. 2D IN A 208.191.129.185 ;; Total query time: 37 msec ;; FROM: stick.isc.org to SERVER: f.6to4-servers.net 2001:4f8:0:2::14 ;; WHEN: Wed Sep 17 14:31:48 2003 ;; MSG SIZE sent: 31 rcvd: 101 > After delegation-only, they will start to return > 208.191.129.189. Which is probably an improvement, but a change no > less. see above. > So I'm unsure about ISC's approach. me too.

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Re: Root Server Operators (Re: What *are* they smoking?)
by Paul Vixie 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

> > : zone "com" { type delegation-only; }; > > : zone "net" { type delegation-only; }; > > My first reaction to this was: 'yuck'. mine also. > I'm not sure of the side-effects this will introduce. Anyone? if verisign served a subdomain of com or net on the same server they use for com or net, and if they issue "minimal responses" (no ns rrs) then this patch would be a barrier.

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Re: Verisign changes violates RFC2821, and spam implications
by Stewart, William C (Bill), RTSLS 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

Avleen Vig suggests that it's very wrong for Verisign's bad-domain catcher to begin to accept SMTP messages and just reject all recipients with 550s rather than rejecting the whole transaction with a 554. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that - is there some conceivable case for which this system _would_ accept a message, e.g. postmaster(a)real-name-for-that-machine.verisign.com ? On the other hand, it has very interesting implications for spam handling. While there are bad side effects that can be caused by Verisign's claim that any non-existent domain name now exists (since it's harder to reject that mail), the Internet now has one obvious happy destination for spam from harvested addresses. If your spider bait starts leaving around alice(a)bogusdomain-alice.com ... zebra(a)bogusdomain-zebra.com and thousands of similar addresses, the harvesters are going to start catching them and sending them spam, and the less intelligent harvesters aren't going to validate the domains against Verisign's IP address, and any badly administered machines with open smtp relays are certainly not going to be checking for it, so they'll be creating SMTP sessions with Verisign. It's even more fun with dictionary attacks, where the spammer targets aaaaaa(a)bogusdomain.com through zzzzzzzzz(a)bogusdomain.com - A DNS rejection would cause a direct attacker or (more likely) a relay attacker to give up quickly, and a 554 might do that also, while rejecting all 26**8 recipients one at a time is probably just the kind of behaviour that spamware is happy to talk to all day. Now all Verisign needs to add is a teergrube function to generate its responses very slowly after the first couple of them and they'll stay tied up for months, especially since many of them won't notice that bogusdomain1.com through bogusdomain32767.com are all going to the same IP address, since that's not uncommon virtual hosting behaviour. bill.stewart at pobox.com

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Re: News of ISC Developing BIND Patch
by Simon Waters 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 From: Valdis.Kletnieks(a)vt.edu > > To pull a stunt like that at the root, they'd have to get the OTHER 9 > or 10 organizations to buy in, or they'd find themselves outvotes 13 > servers to 2, or whatever the exact numbers are.... - From a purely technical perspective, DNS servers don't run ballots, so it matters not so much how many servers say something, but what they say, how long they claim it to be valid for, as well as how quickly they answer. It is much easier to give a long lived lie, than a short lived truth, in the DNS world. As such any root server operator can potentially hijack a significant amount (majority?) of Internet traffic, at least if no one notices something odd, and figures out what is going on too quickly. This is DNS security 101... A single rogue root server could be very messy to cleanup after if the person in control of the rogue server were skilled in the art (and root server operators are suppose to be so skilled to get the job). Paul is I suspect the best regular NANOG poster to judge the trustworthyness of various root server operators. And I am comforted somewhat by his faith in the Verisign employees tasked with this. However the whole episode does cast Verisign in a bad light, and IANA should presumably review whether the company is a suitable contractor. I for one believe a swift reversal of the Verisign position would earn it a lot of credit, 900 seconds later and it is all forgotten. Simon -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQE/aEtUGFXfHI9FVgYRAjRuAJsG1ZyxvbGaLFJk5ZszS7VF26bppgCfWD/B oya3kkWpGzgMD7dUsVGtVr4= =y111 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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IP telephony
by Christopher Bird 17 Sep '03

17 Sep '03

There has been much buzz of late about using IP telephony solutions in place of the more common analog based solutions. Traditional telephony has very high reliability (many years without loss of dial tone for some companies). From what I have seen in this group about networking, router behaviors, etc. it seems to me that the IP networks that exist aren't yet ready for the prime time of IP telephony. As we move buildings, my company is looking at installing an IP telephony based solution (packet switched) instead of a traditional analog based solution (circuit switched). I am worried that the reliability will likely be lower than I am used to. However the cost savings look quite compelling, so I am torn. The more I read in here about threats and attacks against IP networks and the amount of maintenance we need to have in place to keep our IP networks hanging together, the more I am concerned about the viability of an IP telephony solution. Does anyone here have any thoughts, experiences, etc. about the use of IP telephony in corporate environments? Thanks in advance Chris

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