[dns-operations] The strange case of fox.com

[Andrew Sullivan]

Hi,

On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 10:04:51AM -0800, Johannes Erdfelt wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 02, 2016, marius at isgate.is <marius at isgate.is> wrote:
> There doesn't appear to be any way to contact the NIC about
> troubleshooting this issue. My ISP can't do anything without details
> about what network the problems are coming from. It's a frustrating
> situation to be in as a customer.
> 
> I ended up just removing that one nameserver from just my .is domain
> names.

On Wed, Mar 02, 2016 at 10:38:59AM -0800, Doug Barton wrote:
> On 03/02/2016 10:04 AM, Johannes Erdfelt wrote:

> How hard did you try? It took me roughly 60 seconds to type "nic.is" into my
> browser, follow the redirect, and find this page:
> https://www.isnic.is/en/about/isnic

If you ask me, Doug's question is the wrong one.  The problem with a
lot of the network-hygiene, make-Internet-better crusading is that
proposals depend on mechanisms in which people (in this case, domain
operators) have some sort of requirement imposed by others.  But the
history of humanity should convince us, I think, that the way to get
the right kind of behaviour is generally to align the incentives with
the behaviour one wants.  In particular, bossypants regulations
(particularly ones that impose operational costs on people) that try
to force people to behave well often fail.

As I read the story, Johannes has a notification of a failure that he
cannot reproduce and for which he needs to do work to make the
notifications stop.  The incentives are aligned perversely: turn off
the offending NS, and the alerts go away.  Asking, "How much work did
you do before reaching that conclusion?" presupposes that he is
willing to put in the slightest amount of work here.  That's a mistake.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com