[dns-operations] Why post this here?

[Edward Lewis]

At 16:59 +0100 10/30/08, Florian Weimer wrote:

>This is a bit of a strange thing to write for someone working for a
>company whose marketing material contains gems like "Elimination of
>the typical latency and dropped UDP packets associated with BIND",
>"Non-BIND proprietary software mitigates against DDoS attacks and
>requires no updates/patches", and so on.

I don't see the conflict.  This is an operations venue, not a marketing venue.

And - Lutz said nothing about BIND. (???)

>I suppose Lutz was trying to contact someone to fix the problem.  A
>lot of companies in the DNS/domain business are difficult to reach
>unless you have already established contact.  For instance, there is
>no contact information on the Neustar or UltraDNS web pages for
>reporting operational issues, either.

Here are the reasons why I posted.

1) The subject of the message states that the company is not competent to
    do it's job
2) The body of the message makes statements that are not supported ("all down")
    by fact
3) Perhaps Lutz did this, but didn't indicate an attempt to contact them first
4) The WhoIs shows URL and email addresses that are not reliant upon the error,
    in fact Lutz did not report checking the WhoIs record
5) I assume that both he and the operators, being in Germany, speak at least
    one common language, therefore the phone number listed could be useful
6) Lutz did not ask if others noticed a problem
7) There was no asking if there was a contact for the company on the list
8) No request to contact him off-list if there was

The standard I am applying here comes from the NANOG list.  It's fair 
to state you are having problems related to some service or address 
or route and asking for verification.  (I.e., checking that it's not 
just problem local to the reporter).  But pointing out "lacking clue" 
is just not cool.

Also - I want to emphasize that there are professional ways to 
interact with a company.  And there are immature ways.  The more 
professional this list behaves, the more valuable it is.  If the list 
dives into a place to point fingers, etc.,   folks will stop reading 
it and sticking to the work to be done clearing trouble ticket queues.

PS - A few months ago someone mentioned that a certain TLD was 
unresponsive.  As an exercise I figured I'd try appropriate channels. 
First mail to the tech contact failed.  Then the admin contact.  Then 
I went to IANA and reported the lame delegations.  They took it from 
there.  I'd rather see folks do that than point fingers in public.
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Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
NeuStar

Never confuse activity with progress.  Activity pays more.