At 05:28 PM 11/14/2002, Patrick W. Gilmore most definitely
admitted:
-- On Thursday, November 14, 2002 8:52 PM
+0100
-- hostmaster <hostmaster@nso.org> supposedly wrote:
This all strikes me as incorrect. The function
of the domain name system
is primarily to translate an IP number into a domain name, vice versa.
If
a user wishes to browse to
<http://64.236.16.20>
he/she will arrive also
at
<www.cnn.com>.
The domain name is propagated and subsequently
refreshed throughout the World. A browser request and reply may take
each
time hundreds of different routes through the Internet from
end-to-end.
If Spain would want to deploy blocking of the domain CNN.com (or in
fact
any other domain) it would have to factually block individual IP's at
the
telco 'in and out of Spain routes' to accomplish that. This, by the
way
is currently e.g. done in the Peoples Republic of China, be it not
really
successful :) It is also so easy to set up secondary dns's anywhere
else
on the globe with a ptr to some other IP no., that a dns block sec
would
never be a successful action. Blocking a /24 in Spain may be
effective,
but if the Spanish site would be hosted elsewhere, or would have a
mirror
hosted elsewhere, the elsewhere legislation would be the regulations
the
telco's are confronted with, and looking at.
Suppose they just make it a law that each ISP has to block
"domain.com" in their caching name servers?
Who is
'they', Patrick ? Suppose Spain introduces that law. Fine, but that
doesn't mean that other countries have to (or will ever) abide by that.
Certainly in the U.S. you won't find that many who would support even the
idea.
Sure, the user could telnet somewhere and find
the IP address themselves, but it would stop 99.99% of the lusers out
there.
Thousands of non-Spanish dns servers (not under the
Spanish restriction) would have cached the propagated terror.com url from
Akamai. Any Spanish user really wanting to see terror.com will get
it. To make it a more permanent experience the Spanish conquistador
should install his own winooz 95 dns service (I believe it's free), and
peg it to a secondary dns outside his beautiful country.
Bert Fortrie