Re: QWest is having some pretty nice DNS issues right now

[Daniel Golding <dgolding () burtongroup com>]

On 1/6/06 9:54 PM, "Steve Gibbard" <scg () gibbard org> wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, william(at)elan.net wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 6 Jan 2006, Wil Schultz wrote:
> >
> > > Apparently they have lost two authoritative servers. ETA is unknown.
> >
> > You forgot to mention that they only have two authoritative servers for
> > most of their domains...
[snip]
> So from my uninformed vantage point, it looks like they started doing this
> more or less right -- two servers or clusters of servers in two different
> facilities, a few thousand miles apart on different power grids and not
> subject to the same natural disasters.  In other words, they did the hard
> part.  What they didn't do is put them in different BGP routes, which for
> a network with as much IP space as Qwest has would seem fairly easy.
> While it's tempting to make fun of Qwest here, variations on this theme --
> working hard on one area of design while ignoring another that's also
> critical -- are really common.  It's something we all need to be careful
> of.
>
> Or, not having seen what happened here, the problem could have been
> something completely different, perhaps even having nothing to do with
> routing or network topology.  In that case, my general point would remain
> the same, but this would be a bad example to use.
>
> -Steve

At some point in a carrier's growth, Anycast DNS has got to become a best
practice. Are there many major carriers that don't do it today, or am I just
a starry-eyed idealist?

- Dan