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

[Andrew Newton <anewton@verisignlabs.com>]

Kee Hinckley wrote:
> > 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.

To be clear:  you have internal applications that have one code path for
.com and .net and a separate code path for .biz, .edu, etc...?  This 
raises a bunch of questions:  Not that it happens all that often, but 
what do you do when new TLD's come on-line?  And where are you getting 
your spec on the TLD structure?  What are you doing for the ccTLD's?

> 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?

You'll get no argument here.  There do no appear to be guidelines for 
this.  However, VeriSign would be willing to participate in their creation.

-andy



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