TriNetre - Archive for September 18, 2003
(no longer updated)
September 18, 2003
Why the hoo-haa
[Technology]
@ 07:39 AM
For those of you who may not understand the implications of the recent decision by VeriSign to return an A record instead of an NXDOMAIN pointer, it would be good to read this email from Internet Architecture Board. At a very fundamental design level, the objection is that
At the core of all of the IAB's concerns is the architectural principle that the DNS is a lookup service which must behave in an interoperable, predictable way at all levels of the DNS hierarchy. Furthermore, as a lookup service it is such a fundamental part of the Internet's infrastructure that converting it to an application-based search service, as the deployed system does, is not appropriate even in the case where the query presented would not normally map to a registered domain.
What makes all this so much more infuriating is that the email sent by IAB clarifying its technical stand was sent in January when Verisign first decided on a system like this. Even when one of the foremost technical bodies on Internet design expressed its displeasure at the step, Versign went ahead with the move!
