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Re: VeriSign's rapid DNS updates in .com/.net


From: Paul Vixie <vixie () vix com>
Date: 23 Jul 2004 07:24:17 +0000


because i have sometimes been accused of being unfair to markk, i checked.

markk () verisignlabs com (Mark Kosters) writes:

the primary beneficiaries of this new functionality are spammers and
other malfeasants,

I think this is a true statement. 

Has anyone done any studies to prove this conjecture?

at dictionary.reference.com we see the following:

| con·jec·ture     P   Pronunciation Key  (kn-jkchr)
| n. 
| 
| 1. Inference or judgment based on inconclusive or incomplete evidence;
|    guesswork.
|  
| 2. A statement, opinion, or conclusion based on guesswork: The commentators
|    made various conjectures about the outcome of the next election.

as the author of the statement in question, and based on the definition
shown, it's just not conjecture.

If this was true, maybe those registries who do perform this particular
service today ought to slow down their update frequency.

as others have pointed out, spammers will always find a way to spam, and
while the number of cases where the beneficiary is not a spammer is small,
it's not zero.  so we have to do it.  but when someone says, later, that
the .COM zone generator ought to use a ttl template of 300 rather than
86400 in order that changes and deletions can get the same speedy service
as additions, i hope that icann will say "no."

wrt the mit paper on why small ttl's are harmless, i recommend that y'all
actually read it, the whole thing, plus some of the references, rather
than assuming that the abstract is well supported by the body.
-- 
Paul Vixie


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