Re: COM/NET informational message

[Leo Bicknell <bicknell () ufp org>]

In a message written on Fri, Jan 03, 2003 at 12:49:06PM -0500, Verd, Brad wrote:
> response. The web servers refuse connections on all other UDP and TCP
> ports, so other network services are minimally affected.

In a message written on Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 11:04:08AM +0100, Måns Nilsson wrote:
> That Verisign are taking this forward is, in the way they have chosen to
> do, not really elegant, but I do understand their reasoning, and to some
> extent appreciate that things are happening. Keep in mind that they are not
> breaking standards, they are extending one application. 

The first bit from the original announcement caught my attention.
The ongoing defense of this as not "breaking" things makes me want
to point out something that I think could occur:

A mail server in .COM or .NET gets an e-mail, say korean spam, that
has an 8 bit high character in one or more addresses.  The mail
server, while not 8 bit clean, is 8 bit clean enough to pass this
on to standard DNS routines.  They get back no MX, but an A record,
pointing to this farm.  Most mail servers will go ahead and try
the A record, getting connection refused.  The mailer will keep
retrying for several days, all the while these backing up in the
queue.

That's just mail.  I can see a half dozen other situations where
something might get one of these names and have to timeout, probably
at best making a user wait longer to get an error message, at worst
backing up all sorts of services if they are accidently given one
of these "special" names.

Was this problem discussed in the working group? 

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell () ufp org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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