Re: [squid-users] Verisign puts wildcard in .com and .net TLDs

From: Henrik Nordstrom <hno@dont-contact.us>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 17:50:05 +0200 (CEST)

Cool! the main registrar of .com/.net sets up a mission to destroy the
trust in the manaegement of the Internet infrastructure. Really exciting
times. I wonder what will happen tomorrow.

I would recommend all serious users to contact their ISP and ask them to
file a complaint to verisign on the ground that this bad business practice
(apart from being unfair to all other registrars) breaks the Internet
error recovery mechanisms in how the DNS system is supposed to find out
that a site does not exists. This causes great griefs in

  * Fault searching

  * Error recovery in non-HTTP protocols, especially SMTP

  * SPAM filtering

  * Problem reporting by end-users to their support department

  * DNS resolution using domain search lists

  * and many other situations

As someone else in the Slashdot thread said Internet is not only the web.
Moreover not all persons who surf the web are looking for registering
domain names.

Adding a wildcard A or MX record in a root domain is not exacly a wise
move by any means. In fact it is generally a bad move in any domain and
should only be used in controlled subdomains of your own domain.

Regards
Henrik
Received on Tue Sep 16 2003 - 09:50:12 MDT

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