Err.. at least in the meeting, the VeriSlime carefully evaded
giving any quantifiable answer as to warning time. I have no idea
what they spun to the press afterwards.
What I observed was they started out cocky...as the meeting went on
and the questioning got pointed, they got snippy and defensive.
Further along, they got a clear tone of desperation in their
speech.
Their counsel actually stood up and blocked them from answering
some questions.
As for the ?35? companies they polled; note the number started far
higher and dribbled down. I suspect that the reason it was so low
was (SURPRISE!) the 35 had to sign NDA's....
Just out of curiousity, I wonder how many domain registrations those of us
on nanog represent? Contract sanctions from ICANN are one thing, taking
all of our business elsewhere might also be effective at getting a point
across (though it might also backfire - pushing Verisign to be even more
agressive at taking advantage of their positioning).
Miles
What I think will be interesting is who has the bind patch this
time around. The first time many companies didn't deploy the bind
patch for reasons ranging from taking a few days to study the impact
to not being able to deploy new software on their nameservers that
quickly to not being able to get management buy in on blocking
wildcard records.
If Verisign turns the "service" back on without ICANN approval I
expect a much larger number of people, and perhaps some larger
networks to implement the bind patch this time around.
It's unfortunate, as this is not the right way to run a network.
When left with no choice, engineers will work around any problem.
Miles Fidelman wrote:
Just out of curiousity, I wonder how many domain registrations those of us
on nanog represent? Contract sanctions from ICANN are one thing, taking
all of our business elsewhere might also be effective at getting a point
across (though it might also backfire - pushing Verisign to be even more
agressive at taking advantage of their positioning).
I get the impression they are still living under the old Bell Motto: We don't have to care, we're The Registrar.
A couple years ago when their monopoly was broken, I used it as a threat to try to finally get a report of all the domains on our nameservers. For years I would send requests every couple months, and each and every one was ignored.
I sent Verisign a list of ~1000 domains I knew were pointed to us, and said "Can you confirm these are the only ones? If I don't get an answer, I'm moving them all to another registrar." I never got an answer.
The final straw that sent us to OpenSRS was the creation of ~1000 unique accounts for us to use to manage those domains, when the old e-mail method went away.... Of course, the passwords were all snail-mailed to our clients, effectively taking away control of those domains from us. Verisign obviously doesn't want the Registrar business, or they would have found out a way to combine all those accounts when we asked.
We figure that a company so clueless doesn't deserve our certificate business either, and are pretty happy with GeoTrust.
Miles Fidelman wrote:
Just out of curiousity, I wonder how many domain registrations those of us
on nanog represent? Contract sanctions from ICANN are one thing, taking
all of our business elsewhere might also be effective at getting a point
across (though it might also backfire - pushing Verisign to be even more
agressive at taking advantage of their positioning).
We moved ours long ago (with the exception of a few customers that
inexplicably demanded to stay with VeriSign nee NetSol). I expect most
network savvy folk everywhere moved, too.
Amen to that. We did as well, except for our customers that re-upped
themselves with Verislime.
Kevin Bednar
Network Engineer
Dedicated Support
kevinb@tellurian.com
(973)940-6126
Personal Service with a 
Semper Vigilo
Tellurian Networks - Le Package Totale
http://www.tellurian.com/
1(888)TELLURIAN
Verisign obviously doesn't want the Registrar
business, or they would have found out a way
to combine all those accounts when we asked.
You do know they just this morning announced that they're selling the
Registrar business, don't you?
Ray
We've been moving all our domains to OpenSRS for a year, but doing it as
they come up for renewal. This has definately inspired not only us, but our
customers to do it before the deadline.
OpenSRS also offers SSL certs, and we've been moving those away from
Verisign too.