RE: Microsoft spokesperson blames ICANN

[Roeland Meyer <rmeyer () mhsc com>]

Blaming it on ICANN, even indirectly, is about as clueless a move as can be
imagined. ICANN has no direct authority over the root, the USG/DOC/NTIA has
reserved that privilege for itself alone. They have let out the operations
contract to NSI, who manages the a.root-servers.net and has been doing so
for years.

MHSC has been working with MS engineering and support staff, for the past
few months, to integrate BIND8.2.2p7 servers with Win2K/DNS/AD. It isn't
easy because of semantic inconsistency, radically diverse architecture
concepts, and [above all] severe lack of documentation on MS part (as well
as a few roaches in the SRV update stuff).

> From our efforts, it is not at all surprising that someone, at MSFT, munged
the DNS configuration, totally. Even their best guru could have done it, due
to the murky nature of the config. I suspect that there are less than 100
ppl that could even have a clue, in this area, and they don't all have the
same pieces of clue.

Win2K DNS is self-consistent, BIND is self-consistent, they may be mutually
consistent, but that has yet to be determined. MSFT works in a glasshouse
with many of the panes painted-over, others are distorted. Similary, there
is a tendency, among *nix folk, to discount anything MSFT (a mistake, IMHO).

What's needed is for some(one/group) that has a though understanding of both
systems, at the design level, to sort out the bits. This is properly, a
development project, one that most system admins are unsuited for.
Unfortunately, it is left at the system admin level, IMHO.

-- 
ROELAND M.J. MEYER
Managing Director
Morgan Hill Software Company, Inc.
TEL: +001 925 373 3954
FAX: +001 925 373 9781
http://www.mhsc.com
mailto: rmeyer () mhsc com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sean Donelan [mailto:sean () donelan com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 11:40 AM
> To: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: Microsoft spokesperson blames ICANN
>
>
>
> Microsoft appears to be blaming ICANN for the failure with Microft's
> domain name servers (all located at the same place at Microsoft).
>
>   Microsoft has yet to pin down the cause of the DNS error. "It can
>   be a system or human error, but somebody could also have done this
>   intentionally," De Jonge said. "We don't manage the DNS ourselves,
>   it is a system controlled by the Internet Corporation for Assigned
>   Names and Numbers (ICANN) with worldwide replicas."
>
> http://www.idg.net/ic_386962_1793_1-1681.html
>
> Microsoft gamers (users of www.zone.com) quickly came up with various
> workarounds so they could continue playing.  They were 
> posting HOSTS.TXT
> files on various gamer bulletin boards overnight.  In particular
> "Asheron's Call" had several problems during the last week, including
> banning a number of users and rolling back experience points due to
> a game bug.