NSI Backlogged (as Usual)

James Green sent in the URL to a news.com story that talks about how NSI is Backlogged handling orders of domain names. Big shock. Someday this might be decentralized. Someday we might have new TLDs. Someday this whole DNS growing pain thing will stop. Really. Bah who am I kidding. This is the DMV of the 90s.

Same here

[bob]

I've been trying to get drzyzgula.org moved off of granitecanyon.com (which was for the most part great when it was up but I find as I depend more on it I want to get commercial-level service) and on to my ISP's (eskimo.com) DNS servers for a week. My ISP has sent in the request twice and all we've gotten back is the autoreply. I sent it in again yesterday and have heard nothing. One week, three submissions, one automatic reply, no ACK requests: (*@? @#$ (@ $@( @#$ (*@Y!@$ @# $@. At least my old DNS servers are still working, so I can get email. They *used to* have a system where you could enter the tracking number of your request in a web form and look up the status of the request. I notice that that system is gone gone gone, and no wonder. BAH!

N$I

[drwiii]

NSI usually bounces back confirmation messages within the hour.. When I registered crashdot.org the other day, it took about 5 hours and finally sent the confirmation at midnight. WTG, N$I..

I'm shocked?

[Skyshadow]

What? A monopoly giving poor service to its
customers? Why, who ever could have seen something
like that happening?

Personally, I still believe that big monopolies
are the best thing for the computer industry. I
mean, look at what a terrific company MS is (not
that they're a monopoly, mind you!). You never see
them taking advantage of their monopoly status to
push half-assed and buggy products or excuse lousy
support and sky-high licensing fees. For example,
the cost of Windows hasn't gone up all that much,
and look what you get in return!

----

We Don't Need Any New Top Level Domains

[Aaron M. Renn]

We don't.

Why not allow _all_ TLDs?

[mattdm]

I still don't understand what all of this going on about adding 5 or 6 new TLDs is. Why not just allow any new TLD to be created, just as second-level domains are now? There's no good technical reason this can't be done.

--

TOTALLY BROKEN, not just delayed.

[glomph]

Worse than a delay, their sendmail config is broken, one of the anti-spam-relay filters is
bouncing mail sent to [e-mail]!!!

Holy Horse Manure! Worst monopoly ever, at least
there are alternatives to RedmondCrapWare!
__________________CLIP__________________________ __
The original message was received at Sat, 16 Jan 1999 08:01:42 -0500 (EST)
from biprrs0.lb.internic.net [192.168.120.38]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
[e-mail]
(expanded from: )

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mail-hub-mgt.mgt.internic.net.:
>>> RCPT To:
... Relaying denied
550 [e-mail]... User unknown

[ Part 2: "Delivery Status" ]

Reporting-MTA: dns; opsmail.internic.net
Received-From-MTA: DNS; biprrs0.lb.internic.net
Arrival-Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 08:01:42 -0500 (EST)

Final-Recipient: RFC822;
X-Actual-Recipient: RFC822; [e-mail]
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: DNS; mail-hub-mgt.mgt.internic.net
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 ... Relaying denied
Last-Attempt-Date: Sat, 16 Jan 1999 08:01:51 -0500 (EST)

"shocked?" But are you dismayed?

[smithdog]

Skyshadow,

Just because "big monopolies are the best thing for the computer industry," does not mean that MS should be allowed to operate without government regulation. The reason for this is that the federal governement is a monopoly that itself needs to be regulated. The feds certainly do push half-assed and buggy legislation, excuse lousy support and sky-high tax and license fees.

We need to open up competition in the government market.

[Victor Tramp]

the 90's are over..

Growl

[CWiz]

Yes, I sent in a change-request for a host record to them a couple of days ago. After about one day I get a message back from MAILER-DAEMON saying that their Perl-script dumped. Way to go. Then I receive a message telling me that they had sent a request to my second-level domain administrator asking for verification (thats me too), but I sure as hell hasn't received any such request for verification. Damn them. I want my host record(s) changed!

Wrong Solution to Problem...

[trims]

<sigh>

Once again, everyone falls into the same trap when discussing TLD and DNS in general. The actual problem is NOT lack of domain name space, and the proposed solutions of splitting NSI into competing orgs, plus adding new TLDs is wrongheaded.

DNS is a specific solution to a specific problem. The problem it is designed to solve (and it does it very well), is allowing humans (who cannot reliably remember random number strings longer than 7 digits (on average (ever wonder why US telephone #s are 7 digits?))) an easy way to identify machines rather than relying on IP addresses.

DNS is NOT intended to be used as domains are these days - that is, DNS is being used to identify some larger organization. THIS IS WRONG.

The real problem is not a lack of TLDs; no, the problem really is: how do I find what I want? The old-school answer is name-branding, thus the attachment to specific names in DNS. Instead, what the real answer should be is a new layer sitting on top of DNS, so that the majority of humankind doesn't have to type http://ww.foo.com at a web browser's location. Instead, they say "McDonald's Irish Emporium, San Jose, CA" and they get to that web site, not the one with the big yellow arches. Yahoo, and the portal sites are a good step in that direction, but there still needs to be more work here. Call it a global database that maps concepts to DNS names, so that (like IP addresses), Web surfing shouldn't require one to know a DNS name.

NSI sucks. But a great deal of energy that is directed at the DNS "problem" should be focused on the real solution. Where are the visionaries when you need them? Everyone seems to be focusing on near-term problems, with no thought put to the long-term architecture.

I really miss Jon Postel.

-Erik

Missing Article

[Anne Observer]

Huh? What happened to the article about the Pentium III/Katmai?

It was up and drawing a healthy stream of contents, now it's nowhere to be found.

What gives?

Secrets to Registering Before Others Revealed...

[Ron Bennett]

I feel one of the biggest reasons for Internic's backlog is their inconsistancy in registering domain names.

Most people assume that if a name is showing up in their database On-Hold, that it can't be registered...well, in a 'round about way it can if one emails Internic a Registration Template a day or so before or day of that it's going to expire...chances are that when the name becomes available, that person will beat out all others. In fact I've seen domain names go off hold and the very next day see they're registered to someone else the day BEFORE the name went off hold...how can that be!!!??? Unless they accept templates that are sent before names go off hold. That's most likely why Internic is getting spammed with zillions of registration templates...everyone is trying to beat out everyone else by mailing zillions of templates. The cat is out of the bag...

Here's another secret...use Worldnic to register...you read that right...costs a little more, but it's a damn good way to beat others who've submitted registration templates via email that have yet to be processed. Worldnic compares against their *real-time* database, not Whois like most third-party registers do.

Internic has got to become more consistant in how they process new names or the load problem will only continue to get worse as more and more domain speculators fight it out...1999 is going to be a blood bath since many names are expected to expire that were registered in 1997...the fun has only begun...the speculators are ready, but is Internic?

Ron Bennett

Where is it back-loged?

[Ron Bennett]

It's backlogged...I've done many updates over the last two years and lately they've taken days...in fact the last update I did took over a week to be completed. I've never seen Internic this slow.

Why not allow _all_ TLDs?

[Ron Bennett]

Technically adding TLDs (at least up to a point) is little problem, but will it really help matters...consider what's happening now with the global-like ccTLDs...people already are confused and most just stick with the familiar .COM when unsure.

Fact is that no matter how many new gTLDs they add, some gTLDs will continued to be more favored and thus valuable than the others.

So basically I feel the current approach of carefully adding gTLDs is the way to go to prevent total chaos and confusion.

NSI's Several Screw Ups...

[MJL]

The thing with NSI is that they are idiots when it comes to domain name registration. Their site is huge, and its hard to even find a sign up page sometimes.

NSI got the contract from the governemnt to regulate domain names very early on. In fact, domains were free for a long time.

But now, the Internet is taking off, e-commerce is on everone's lips. People are sapping up domain names like no other, and NSI is underpowered to contend. I understand that popular thought says that it takes 3 days. More like two weeks.

NSI also lacks in domain security. Stealing domain names is easy to any hacker, and its happened to me before. NSI is like this huge door waiting to be cracked.


However, there is some sort of salvation, their contract is nearly up. I actually heard from someone that their contract was renewed, but if the gov. has any brain cells up there, they wouldn't do it.

USENET

[MJL]

USENET for those who don't know, is the newsgroup system. Registering a newsgroup is a hell of a lot easier than doing a domain name registration, although the time until appearance varies.

The way to register a newsgroup involves writing a certain message in a certain format to alt.control, where news server and news server admins pick up the messages to add them to their servers feeds. There is no federal agency controlling these items, and all there is is just programs that pick it up.

The one snag in this is that the time before a certain newsgroup appears on the server varies. It can take anywhere from one day to a week, just because the servers have to process all the control messages. However, they are all picked up eventually.

Using this for doamain name registration poses a nother problem. In essence, the government wouldn't be making a cent off it. You do the math.