Re: [IP] VeriSign prepares to relaunch "Site Finder" -- calls

[Jason Nealis <nealis () rcn com>]

FWIW,  We had PAXFIRE in over here last week and heard their dog and pony
on the product, basically they make money by using your customer base and
diverting them to a search page that they developed with their "partners".  Of
course they only divert them on failed www lookups. 

It's a module plug-in into bind and if you prefer to try and do this in a
opt-in basis they have a client program that you download and it gets hooked
into the users browser. 

They claim that the embedded MSN search page that you get diverted to by IE
is making MSN millions and millions of dollars and they want the ISP's to 
get some of that revenue share.


Jason Nealis
RCN INTERNET 



On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 04:54:51PM -0500, Stephen J. Wilcox stated
> > > I am curious what the operational impact would be to network operators
> > > if, instead of Verisign using SiteFinder over all com and net, Verisign
> > > or their technology partner for SiteFinder began coercing a large number
> > > of independent ISPs and network operators to install their form of DNS
> > > redirection at the ISP-level, until all or most of the end-users out
> > > there were getting redirected.
> >
> > It would be no worse than NEW.NET or any other form of DNS pollution/piracy
> > (like the alternate root whackos), as long as it was clearly labelled.  As
>
> Sorry my threading is screwed, something to do with the headers so I missed half 
> the replies.
>
> Anyway I just sent an email, I dont think this is the same as the new.net thing, 
> in that case you have an unstable situation of competing roots arising which as 
> it grows or collides the operator community is left to pick up the pieces and 
> complaints.
>
> With a local redirection you get to choose that you want it, you dont impose it 
> on other parts of the Internet and given enough clue level your customers can 
> run their own DNS if they object.
>
> So with that in mind this is no worse that http caching/smtp redirection or 
> other local forms of subversion..
>
> Steve
>
> > an occasional operator of infrastructure, I wouldn't like the complaint load
> > I'd see if the customers of such ISP's thought that *I* was inserting the
> > garbage they were seeing.  So I guess my hope is, it'll be "opt-in" with an
> > explicitly held permission for every affected IP address (perhaps using some
> > kind of service discount or enhancement as the carrot.)