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Technical Committee Report to Council 31/05/03

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Committee Members:

Chair: Richard Bourne
Members: Bill Parkin, David Zanetti, Don Stokes, Drew Whittle, Nick Wallingford, Jonathan Ah Kit, Simon Riley

1. Lame (Broken) Delegations

Frank March (Chair, NZOC) asked the committee for advice on 'Lame Delegations' within the .nz name space.

  • "A 'lame delegation' occurs when the delegated nameservers according to the root servers do not respond with authoritative answers. A lame delegation effectively creates inconsistencies between different users of the Internet of the contents of a zone. The current policy states that such lame delegations will be automatically deactivated, but this does not appear to have ever been implemented, nor does there appear to exist a policy on how often the Registry should be checking for lame delegations, other than at time of submission."
    (From Tech Committee minutes from 27th March 2003)

The current SRS system checks to confirm that two name servers are listed in the Registry before each Zone push. A domain name with less than two name servers will be excluded from the Zone push. NB: This is a check of the database fields only, no check on the validity or availability of the name servers occurs.

For a domain name to be correctly delegated a 'SOA' record must exist in the domain details record on the specified name server. If the specified name server is unavailable or the SOA record is missing the domain would be considered 'lame'.

Lame delegations have an insignificant effect on the operation of the DNS however they are considered undesirable and should be discouraged.

The committee supports the view that any testing (and/or taking action) for lame delegations should not be the responsibility of the Registry.

The current policy is to 'encourage' Registrars to check lame delegations for the domains they manage. The reality is that few bother to do so.

The committee agreed that a regular check of the DNS should be undertaken to determine lame or broken domain names. The registrar responsible for a lame domain should be notified and requested to fix the delegation. This would also provide an additional measure of registrar competence.

Don Stokes (member of the Technical Committee) has had past experience with lame delegations on behalf of Domainz in the lead-up to the introduction of the DRS. Don would be happy to provide consulting services to set up a regular lame delegation checking regime.

The committee felt that the best place for these checks to be executed would be in the office of the Domain Name Commissioner.

Recommendations

  1. That the DNC adopt a policy to 'require' registrars to avoid lame delegations
  2. That the DNC set up a mechanism to regularly test for lame delegations and a process for advising registrars of offending domains.

2. IPv6

The report by Roger De Salis on his visit to APRICOT was received. There is clearly a question surrounding the likely uptake of IPv6 given the unclear commercial and technical advantages of IPv6. However, as representatives of InternetNZ, it is appropriate that we be involved in the evolution of IPv6.

To achieve this we need to continue to build a working relationship with early adopters of IPv6 (for example The NGI Group) and at some point set up an active IPv6 Working Party. This WP would need representation from Industry but most importantly a 'champion' to put in the effort to drive forwards the society's commitment to IPv6.

The role of the Technical Committee (at this stage) is to try to identify this champion.

3. Online Collaboration (MeetingWorks)

The MeetingWorks people have agreed to let InternetNZ run a meeting to evaluate the benefits of their system. Attempts to set up a meeting have so far been unsuccessful.

Action Point: Richard Bourne to talk with Drew about availability of this evaluation and arrange for a Tech Committee meeting to be held via MeetingWorks.

4. InternetNZ Web Site Update

Peter (Executive Director) is dealing with this issue, assisted by Simon Riley (Tech Committee member). A review of the current site is underway. Input from stakeholders will be undertaken and a recommendation available in time for the AGM.

5. NTP Network Time Protocol

Some discussion took place about sponsoring an Internet Time server. It may be possible to involve the NZRS. Further discussion is to take place to determine the benefit and logistics of providing this service.

© 2001 InternetNZ
Last updated 26 May 2003

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