[dns-operations] TelstraClear DNS server issue

[Joe Abley]

On 2013-02-15, at 09:54, "Frank Bulk" <frnkblk at iname.com> wrote:

> http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/8293896/TelstraClear-intern
> et-outage
> 
> Wondering if anyone knows what happened here.  It's seems a bit odd that a
> larger service provider could lose all their DNS servers.  We hand out our
> customers a heterogeneous set of caching resolvers on different networks to
> avoid just this sort of thing.

I have no insight into what happened at TCL, but their 30 minute (as reported) outage seems mild compared to other recent large companies.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/317356/telstra_internet_outage_points_dns_failure/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2013/01/09/toronto-rogers-outage.html

The latter was interesting; again, no insider info, but I did see a pronounced split in public rage, one side venting generically about Rogers customer service, "monopolies", the regulator, refunds, I WILL SUE YOU!11! and the other side disseminating the magic fix "change your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and it all works again". See, e.g.

  http://blog2.easydns.org/2013/01/09/rogers-ontario-users-we-can-help/

Perhaps the message that needs to be drilled home everywhere is that recursive DNS service is important; if it breaks, everything gets really bad and really expensive really quickly.


Joe