North American Network Operators Group

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Re: ISPs blocking port 53? (was Re: Annoying dynamic DNS updates)

  • From: Paul Vixie
  • Date: Sun Sep 28 22:47:06 2003

> > the whole end-to-end argument depends on uniform clue distribution
> > for scale.
> ...
> Getting vendors to supply more appropriate defaults offers better
> scaling possibilities.  Your complaint might fix one user's computer,
> Microsoft updating the default behaivor would fix tens of millions
> of users' computers.  Which scales better?

you've got a real mad on about software monopolies, and i guess i ought
to join you since on any other day i'm just as worried.  (the fact that
dan geer lost his job over this issue makes it even more painful.)  but
in this case microsoft's culpability is toward their user, whereas the
isp's culpability is toward me, so there are two "culpability segments"
in the path, and i can't really complain to microsoft about these updates
even if, as you point out, they are the ones who would find fixing it
easiest, among all involved parties.

> How can a Windows system have a fatal error every hour for days and
> months, and the user not be aware of it until someone else calls them?

from microsoft's point of view, the failure in that case is that they
are not monetizing a condition which is very common amongst their users.
MSN has the ability to sell domain names.  windows has the ability to
tell that a microsoft customer does not have a domain name, or does not
own the one they are pretending to be in, or whatever.  microsoft should
not be waiting on complaints, nor should they have to feel any remorse
before they fix this.  the verb they should be considering is "monetize".

> If Dynamic DNS Update is so critical that Microsoft feels the need to
> enable it by default, why doesn't Microsoft pop an error dialog window
> on the user's machine every time it fails?  Then the user could decide
> to fix the problem, or stop doing it.  If the user doesn't know there
> is a problem, why should he fix it?

that's an excellent question, especially since it could have a "click here
to send microsoft more of your money" button.  but no matter how good an
idea it is, my complaint is still that sending e-mail toward the whois
contact for a network or AS# should elicit a clueful reply, and if it
doesn't, then the key word we're looking for is "cost shifting".  (and
that, in case y'all wondered, is why this is relevant to [email protected])