the facts are, internic's own servers (f.gtld-server.net etc) were sending back NOERROR/NOANSWER whereas my server was sending back a lame delegation. that means clients would try other servers to gain the right final answer if they got a bad answer from my server, but they would just report a fatal application error ("host not found") if they contacted an internic gtld server. the other fact of note is that the reason my server was lame had to do with some kind of provisioning problem inside internic or its isp. my own mrtg graphs are clean for this period, and internic was the only site i couldn't reach at high bandwidth. f.root-servers.net was lame for two days because it could not fetch COM from NSI. yet NSI, in its statements to reporters and to users, are of the following form. it is REALLY DAMNED HARD to not get pissed off at this kind of BS. *MY* server was not sending fatally bad answers, *THEIRS* were. i've been in touch with wired news and have been queried about this from CNN and i'll be telling the whole story to every reporter who can reach me. i've seen holtzman's comments about "unreliable volunteer servers" in the WSJ in the past and i'm no longer willing to sit by and be slandered when it was NSI's problem all along. (tcpdump doesn't lie.) (a total of five servers were having trouble, of two different kinds, so this was a complex failure situation.) ------- Forwarded Message Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 18:18:45 -0800 (PST) To: Paul A Vixie <paul@vix.com> Subject: Re: FYI F.ROOT-SERVERS.NET In-Reply-To: <199811120201.SAA09783@bb.rc.vix.com> Oops! Sorry to bug you. When I called them their folks told me "That server isn't run by Internic so you'll have to contact them about the fact that they run an unreliable server..." What a bunch of dweebs. Take care,
network solutions (the current internic contractor) was having connectivity problems that made it impossible for us to fetch the zone. all is now well.
Just an FYI, but I don't think your root server is properly configured. Internic thinks it should be authoritative for .com. Maybe they have their SOA wrong?
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