I still maintain that what sitefinder is trying to do is not really wrong but it's the wrong way to go about it. This is functionality that is strictly for web users. Why should every other protocol that relies on domain name service be subject to this garbage? If they want to partner with someone to include functionality in their browser such that if gethostbyname() returns NX Domain and subsequently redirect to that site, this is fine by me. But I don't want everything else (ssh, ftp, smtp, pop, imap, etc, etc, etc) to have to compensate for the wildcard record. Making everyone else adjust just so that Verisign can earn another penny per share is just wrong. On Tue, Feb 10, 2004 at 04:37:09AM +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
This is an interesting suggestion that I saw on another list. It may or may not be feasible, but it is certainly interesting, I must say.
why? that is, why kill sitefinder? there's been plenty of invective on both sides, and a lot of unprofessional behaviour toward verisign employees at a recent nanog meeting, which tends to bolster verisign's claim that only the outlying whackos are actually opposed to sitefinder.
this is nanog@. if you think sitefinder poses an operational problem then please describe it (dispassionately). if you think there is an operational thing that ought to be done in response to sitefinder, then please describe that (dispassionately). the response you included...
There's an easy way to kill sitefinder stone cold dead. ... It would be trivial to create a bot to start walking through every possible 20 letter domain name - and if ICANN held them to the rules, Verisign would be rather poorer in short order.
...does not describe an operational problem, and gives a financial remedy. -- Paul Vixie
--- Wayne Bouchard web@typo.org Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/