more on From the amazing headline department -- Libya disappears from the Internet

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:30:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
Subject: Re: [IP] From the amazing headline department -- Libya disappears from
 the Internet
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Reply-to: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
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> Libya disappears from the Internet
...
> However, one intriguing clue has come from company Lydomains.com - the
> company charged with selling all .ly domains and which, oddly enough, is
> based in Macclesfield in the UK. Lydomains.com put out an email on Friday
> which read: "It is with regret that we have to inform you, that due to
> unilateral action by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
> (http://www.iana.org), the Domain Name Servers that host the zone files for
> the ccTLD .ly have been disabled.

I don't read the same story at all from the the tea leaves.

The root zone has a delegation for .ly.  And it matches the IANA record
which says that it has not been changed since Dec 11, 2002.

The problem is that the two delegated-to servers seem unaware that they
are delegated-to.

Assuming that those two delegated-to servers for .ly ever worked before,
then something has in fact changed.

But it appears that the change has nothing to do with ICANN/IANA.

Rather it appears that either those two delegated-to servers have decided
to stop honoring .ly.  This could be by human action or it could be
because those two servers were receiving their zone file from a third
machine which has stopped providing the zone file.

> This is backed up by a quick check over the Net. Libya's top-level domain
> doesn't appear to point anywhere at all. It should have primary and
> secondary name servers where all the details of .ly domains are contained.

And there are, in fact a pair of name servers for .ly that the root zone
points to.

From what I can see, this appears to be something that either somebody
tripped over the plug of the machine that provides the zone file to the
two designated servers for .ly or the operators of those two servers have
done a coordinated change.  My versions of Occam's razor suggests the
former explaination.

The folks who run those two delegated-to servers, AUTH02.NS.UU.NET and
NS1.MAGIC-MOMENTS.COM could clarify why their machines are not answering
for the .ly zone.

There is, of course, an ancillary question - which is whether it is ICANN
or IANA that is in charge of ccTLD delegations.

This is an important distinction because ICANN has no intrinsic lock on
IANA.  ICANN merely does the IANA job becuase it won a purchase order
contract from, get this, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic
Administration.  What the *&(! does NOAA, a worth agency in its own area
of expertise no doubt, have to do with internet governence, much less the
e-recognition of nations?  If there is an agency in the USA that has this
expertise and has authority in this area that it can contract-out,
it is the US Department of State, not NOAA, a sub-agency of the
US Dept of Commerce.

                --karl--

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