From WiReD:
"The U.S. Commerce Department has ordered companies that administer internet addresses to stop allowing customers to register .us domain names anonymously using proxy services." "The move does not affect owners of .com and .net domains. But it means website owners with .us domains will no longer be able to shield their name and contact information from public eyes." http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,66787,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1 - ferg
What's the state of the art for automated network configuration and management? What systems and tools are available, either freely or commercially? Where are these issues being considered and discussed? I'm not simply talking about network status monitoring systems like HP OpenView, or device configuration monitoring systems like RANCID, although those are certainly useful. Instead, I'm talking about systems that will start from a description of how a network ought to be configured, and then interact with the various devices on that network to make it so; something like cfengine for network devices. Over the last 15 years or so, much of the research in the system administration field has focused on automation. It's now well accepted that a well-run operation doesn't manage 10,000 servers individually, but rather uses tools like cfengine to manage definitions of those servers and then create instances of those servers as needed. In the networking world, though, most of us seem to be still manually configuring (and reconfiguring) every device. Luke A. Kanies does a good job of explaining the logic behind this approach in an article he wrote a few years ago at http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2001/12/20/sysadmin.html The key benefits that he sees from automation are: 1) Reducing the amount of time a given task requires. 2) Reducing the opportunity for error in a given task. 3) Reducing turnaround time for a given task. 4) Enhancing and perpetuating configuration consistency across multiple systems. 5) Providing a limited kind of process documentation. I concur with him about all of those. I think these benefits (particularly the 4th one, consistency) are critical if your goal is to offer a reliable service (increasing MTBF and decreasing MTTR). So, like I asked at the top, where are we on this? -Brent -- Brent Chapman <Brent@GreatCircle.COM> Great Circle Associates, Inc. http://www.greatcircle.com/ +1 650 962 0841
Oki all, For those of you in the Lower-48, plus Alaska and Hawai'i, I sent this to my local ISP association. You can ignore it, ridicule it, or adapt it to your state and pretend to have written it. I don't mind either way. If you do want to try it chez vous, and you want my help (or hinderence, depending on perspective) drop me a line. Eric ------- Forwarded Message Message-Id: <200503041805.j24I5kxZ015316@nic-naa.net> To: maineisp@lbs.midcoast.com Date: Fri, 04 Mar 2005 13:05:46 -0500 From: Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine <brunner@nic-naa.net> X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at midcoast.com Subject: [Maineisp] DoC opens .us to spam, forward from WiReD/NANOG, and some commentary X-BeenThere: maineisp@lbs.midcoast.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Maine ISP Association <maineisp.lbs.midcoast.com> List-Unsubscribe: <http://lbs.midcoast.com/mailman/listinfo/maineisp>, <mailto:maineisp-request@lbs.midcoast.com?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://lbs.midcoast.com/pipermail/maineisp> List-Post: <mailto:maineisp@lbs.midcoast.com> List-Help: <mailto:maineisp-request@lbs.midcoast.com?subject=help> List-Subscribe: <http://lbs.midcoast.com/mailman/listinfo/maineisp>, <mailto:maineisp-request@lbs.midcoast.com?subject=subscribe> Sender: maineisp-bounces@lbs.midcoast.com Errors-To: maineisp-bounces@lbs.midcoast.com X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new at midcoast.com Folks, By way of background, this is part of the "whois foodfight" in the policy area of ICANN and the DNS. The working assumption is that every domain is either of interest to an intellectual property owner (infringement) or to a law enforcement officer (pedi-porn), and vastly lower down the rational food chain that every domain is used in some form of UCE scheme (spam). These are all deeply problematic assumptions, but that hasn't made any impression on the actors at ICANN, or the less than best-and-brightest at the DOC/NTIA which owns .us. I wrote the proposal for NeuStar to operate .us in 2001, which the DOC/NTIA selected, so I'm modestly clueful on the operational and policy issues. What this means here in Maine is that no one can now register domain names of the form: "michal-heath-is-a-big-fat-idiot.me.us" or "the-monopoly-ilec-blows-chunks.me.us" or "workarounds-for-nannyware-pending-constituional-challenge.me.us" without providing the semblence of a personal (or corporate) identifier, consisting of a personal (or corporate) name, and contact information, as well as an email address which is not that of a 3rd-party proxy such as attornies and registered agents, which will be accessible to anyone who wants to "look behind the veil", without restriction. I can't fix the retardation at ICANN or the DOC/NTIA, but I can ask you all to think about whether you want the Maine Legis to remain silent on the sanity of assuming that every domain name registrant is infringing on a trademark, or a publishing pedophile, or otherwise engaging in some conduct that necessitates the registrant providing an address for legal service, their identity, and expose a mail address (your product) to the address harvesters for resale to spam-based marketing operations (your problem). If you haven't passed out already from my boring prose, and you'll do me the kindness of reading another paragraph, where this is heading is moving the policy oversight for me.us, that is, the marketing of "Maine" as a state on the internet from the DoC/NTIA to Maine, and the operations for me.us from Virginia to Maine. Then we can use John Baldacci or Steve Rowe, who presumably couldn't be bothered who thinks Michael Heath is a big fat idiot, or has unflattering things to write about Verizon or TimeWarner, or discusses breast feeding, to "proxy" registrations, preserving free political and commercial speech, until due cause for "lifting the veil" is argued, and at some non-trivial standard of proof. Plus we innoculate our local policy makers from a highly contagious case of bird brain flu on issues like spam, privacy and jurisdiction. Thanks for your patience, really. Eric - ------- Forwarded Message
From WiReD:
"The U.S. Commerce Department has ordered companies that administer internet addresses to stop allowing customers to register .us domain names anonymously using proxy services." "The move does not affect owners of .com and .net domains. But it means website owners with .us domains will no longer be able to shield their name and contact information from public eyes." http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,66787,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1 - - - ferg - ------- End of Forwarded Message _______________________________________________ Maineisp mailing list Maineisp@lbs.midcoast.com http://lbs.midcoast.com/mailman/listinfo/maineisp ------- End of Forwarded Message
participants (3)
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Brent Chapman -
Eric Brunner-Williams in Portland Maine -
Fergie (Paul Ferguson)