Re: [sitefinder-tech-discuss] Pseudo code please

[Kee Hinckley <nazgul@somewhere.com>]

At 1:43 PM -0400 10/23/03, Andrew Newton wrote:
> Owen DeLong wrote:
> > 1.      The RCODE-3 / NXDOMAIN result is a useful part of the protocol
> >        which many applications have come to expect in the .com and .net
> >        zones.
>
> So your applications have hardcoded behaviour specific to .com and .net?

Of course.  Why do you think everyone's screaming about the cost of 
your change?  And if we don't clean up this situation, they'll have 
to have hardcoded behavior specific to other TLDs as well.  That's 
what wildcards do--they introduce registry-specific policy that has 
to be dealt with on an application-by-application basis.

I don't know what Owen's position is, but I believe that *no* 
registry should be using a wildcard unless the wildcard is specific 
only to certain types of applications and generates the results they 
need to function.  The only current case I can think of where that 
would work is for an MX wildcard where the synthesized MX record 
actually does accept email and has valid reasons for doing so.

One of the problems is that a wildcard introduces new policy into 
something that was previously assumed to be purely technical. 
VeriSign's A record wildcard policy is that it provides a web site 
and a fake mail server.  Another registry might have a completely 
different service they make available.  How is a web browser supposed 
to know which is the case?  Another problem is that wildcards have 
side effects.  VeriSign incorrectly assumed that A records were used 
solely in order to connect to the machine in question.  Therefore 
they assumed that if they disallowed connections on other services, 
everything would be fine.  That's not true.  A records are also used 
to determine existence.  Sure, the spec doesn't require that it work. 
But how many of the tens of thousands of people who have written code 
that calls gethostbyname do you think knew that?

But don't get me wrong.  There are non-technical reasons why I don't 
think you have the right to introduce a wildcard at the root, but 
from a technical perspective, I'm glad you brought the existence of 
root wildcards out into the open.  Once we've solved the problem 
here, we need to revisit it with the other registries.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/         Next Generation Spam Defense
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/  Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.

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