Re: [nznog] Update to Telecom Xtra DNS servers

There are stats but we do not have a view on the exact numbers of people who have configured alien and terminator as their DNS. There will be some and they will be impacted in some way from recursion being disabled. Hence the heads up. Regards, Ted Grenfell ISP Performance Manager IS Online Services T 09 359 5854 F 09 377 0781 M 0274 435 455 E ted.grenfell(a)telecom.co.nz W www.telecom.co.nz Level 11, Telecom House, 8 Hereford St, Private Bag 92028, Auckland, New Zealand ________________________________ "This communication, including any attachments, is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not read it - please contact me immediately, destroy it, and do not copy or use any part of this communication or disclose anything about it. Thank you. Please note that this communication does not designate an information system for the purposes of the Electronic Transactions Act 2002." -----Original Message----- From: Brian Gibbons [mailto:brian(a)outersite.co.nz] Sent: Wednesday, 2 November 2005 1:46 p.m. To: Joe Abley Cc: Ted Grenfell; NZNOG Subject: Re: [nznog] Update to Telecom Xtra DNS servers

From: "Joe Abley" Unless Xtra's planned configuration is particularly unusual, I would imagine they would return answers from the cache where they exist, return authoritative answers in the case of queries that they have authoritative data for, and otherwise return a referral to the root.

"no answers" is the usual "not here" reply (like ns1.ihug.co.nz) And therein lies the problem. For a non Xtra user, that has Xtra DNS servers hard coded, 90% of DNS requests will probably work because Xtra's servers have much of the nz internet namespace in their cache, (or the servers are authorititive) The IP address 202.27.184.3 is a virus, it seems have spread into the configurations of many NZ computers, I think it is one of those "it just works" scenarios and computer technicians have used it as a default fix for many "wierd" DNS issues. Once Xtra disable recursion for non Xtra customers, those same techncians will be challenged with trying to diagnose a very intermittent "page can not be displayed" fault. Ted, if we assume this change is being made because there are a significant number of requests (relative to the size of your user base) coming from non Xtra IP addresses, then we would have to assume that a significant number of users (that have dumb client resolvers) are going to be affected. Are there any statistics available from your name servers on the scale of this issue (Like is it 10% non Xtra requests?) Cheers BG