On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Keith Moore wrote:
their mistake is in assuming that they can respond appropriately for
all ports - particularly when the association of applications with
known ports is only advisory, and many ports are open for arbitrary
use.
Agreed but this is overstating the issue since interoperability demands
we know which port is doing what and when. What we needed was time to
either stop this before it happened or to deal with the implications.
in fact, a 550 response in SMTP is a different condition from NXDOMAIN,
and sometimes the difference is important - as the spam filter folks
have discovered.
Yes and this could be fixed with a new well-defined error code, which
brings us back to needing time to make an adjustment (or to have stopped
it from ever happening).
> Would have been nice to get
> some advance notice even if there are other TLDs that have been doing
> this for some time.
"nice" is not a word that seems to apply to forcing the entire net
to have to patch its applications and libraries just because
verisign decided to make inappropriate assertions about unregistered
domains. that's like calling a mugger "nice" because he talks to
you politely while he takes your wallet at gunpoint.
Agreed but let's be fair. Verisign was not first. In fact, they are
almost 10th in the process. Someone earlier (just today, sorry for not
looking back for the name) asked about .museum, which I've seen
references elsewhere to suggest it has in its contract with ICANN to
have this wildcard. I have not confirmed this but undoubtedly someone
out there will know and provide a reference.
And there is the matter of the other TLDs that are already doing this
and have been doing it for some time.
None of this makes it right but let's focus on the issue not Verisign.
And the issue is with ICANN and convincing it that this is bad behavior
for all registries. Verisign just made us all notice.
> It is worth noting that if we are to "pass judgement against" Verisign
> there are at least half-dozen other TLDs that blazed the trail. We just
> overlooked them because of their size as compared to .NET and .COM.
not only their size, but their scope also.
What's the difference? Their scope matters because of their size, or
vice versa.
Jim