[asterisk-users] Nufone problems

[Joe Greco]

> Joe Greco wrote:
> 
> >><quote who="C F">
> >>    
> >>
> >>>Why is their DNS failing?
> >>>      
> >>>
> >>Looks like ns1 is down.  Probably their master DNS server.
> >>ns2 is up, but looks like their zone expired, since it could not refresh
> >>from ns1, so it is no longer reporting authoritative for nufone.net.
> >>
> >>They should look into longer expiry times on their SOA record.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Nufone seems to have a lot of DNS problems.
> >
> >Several years ago, when their domain expired with their registrar, I
> >pointed out that GoDaddy was a bad choice of registrars to begin with,
> >for a variety of reasons.  They're great if you want some cheap domain
> >name and hosting for your personal blog.  However, for commercial
> >enterprises, they're actually dangerous, as they have some "anti-spam" 
> >policies which allow GoDaddy to turn off your domain if you appear 
> >(note the specific word, "appear") to be involved with spam.
>  
> <snip>
> 
> Anybody who understands the role of the registrar would disagree with
> your statement.

Well, you apparently don't understand the role of the registrar.

A registrar is someone who sits inbetween you and the registry (the
organization ultimately responsible for operating a TLD, such as ".com"
or ".net").

There is one registry per TLD, but lots of registrars that sell
registration services within each TLD.  Some registries service multiple
TLD's, but that's not relevant for this discussion.

The average registrar takes your approximately-ten-dollars, and tells the
registry about your domain, and which nameservers to point it at.  You
get billed as needed, and you're provided with some tools to keep your
contact data up to date, and that's the basic role most registrars
perform.

GoDaddy is unusual in that they've adopted an "anti-spam" stance (along
with some other abuse policies).  They will take down domains if they feel
that there's been some abuse.  On the surface, this seems like a good
idea.  ISP's do it, don't they?  The problem is, GoDaddy often isn't in
the data path, and they lack the technical means to actually verify that
the company in question sent spam.  They also appear to lack the
intelligence to think clearly about it.

For example, recently, GoDaddy suspended the well known security site
"seclists.org".  MySpace experienced a password security breach, and a
notice of this (including passwords) was posted to a web archive on the
seclists.org web site.  Now, any retard will know that mail copies of
the message in question will have been already sent to thousands of 
users, and of course if it is being published in public, you can be damn
sure that the bad guys already have copies of the data.  Yet MySpace 
went to GoDaddy, and GoDaddy suspended the seclists.org domain for this
"breach" when Fyodor did not respond within an hour to their takedown
demands.

Of course, what GoDaddy should have done instead would have been to tell
MySpace to go pound sand (and suspend all those user accounts), since 
by the time it's made it to this stage, a mere archival copy of some
hacked passwords on a security site's mailing list isn't a serious issue.

You could argue that GoDaddy doesn't understand the role of the registrar
if you'd like.  I'll entertain that discussion.

> The free DNS provided by domain name registrars is
> usually not adequate for serious needs. It's fine for parking domains
> that you intend to use later for production needs.

I don't think I suggested that, did I?

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.