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Date:      Wed, 25 Jun 2003 11:44:12 -0400
From:      Ken Smith <kensmith@cse.Buffalo.EDU>
To:        Dan Langille <dan@langille.org>
Cc:        Ken Smith <kensmith@cse.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject:   Re: DRAFT - DNS Admin Guide
Message-ID:  <20030625154412.GB9860@electra.cse.Buffalo.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <3EF983CC.11367.3F0939E6@localhost>
References:  <20030625081018.GC3446@atrbg11.informatik.tu-muenchen.de> <3EF983CC.11367.3F0939E6@localhost>

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On Wed, Jun 25, 2003 at 11:13:16AM -0400, Dan Langille wrote:

> I may have a working example which will help.
> 
> nz.freebsd.org is delgated to me.  I look after DNS for everything 
> under that subdomain.  I've been doing this for the about 4 or 5 
> years I think.  The only time I have to contact dsnadm@ is if I need 
> to change the IP address on my DNS server.    Apart from that, I do 
> everything else.  Granted, we have only one of www, cvsup, and 
> [sometimes] ftp, but it is an example.

Perfect.

Now, suppose a small University in your country comes online with
an FTP server, they become ftp2.nz.freebsd.org.  Their University
Administration is content with them providing this sort of service
but the University would not be willing to provide full-blown DNS
service even if you asked them to.  And now, heaven forbid (sorry
but you volunteered to be an example), your company goes out of
business.  If we're strict about the country code thing this becomes
a big ugly mess.  Some other country's DNS folks might be able to
step in and take over but how does the "organization" even begin
to ask around for a replacement?  How are the folks at the University
informed?  How does the next site at a different University, again
willing to provide FTP mirror service but not DNS, figure out who
to talk to?

Under the proposal nz.freebsd.org simply gets sucked back in to
the central administration and life goes on with zero other stuff
needing to happen.  The University had already been told that their
primary contact was the Mirror Site Coordinator.

So, is the benefit of having things being managed on a country code
level worth all of the (I admit completely - *potential*) messes
these sorts of scenarios can cause?  Jun had asked for a concrete
DNS Admin Guide, factoring in all of the uncertainties these sorts
of situations could cause (there are lots more similarish scenarios
I was able to dream up :-) along with other factors (e.g. above
situation of a University being willing to provide ftp but not DNS,
and them being inside of a country currently not delegated) my
guess was the administrative overhead of that much delegation cost
way too much as compared to the benefits it could provide.  But it
was a huge guess.

I could post the whole train of thought that lead to the Draft but
you guys complain about how long the Draft was...  :-)  Alternatively
I could post things in smaller chunks, leading slowly from one thing
to another and opening it up to discussion that way.  Or I can just
shut up and let someone else do this stuff...  What would be best?

-- 
						Ken Smith
- From there to here, from here to      |       kensmith@cse.buffalo.edu
  there, funny things are everywhere.   |
                      - Theodore Geisel |



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