RE: Contact handles disappearing mysteriously from the whois database!

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

Seeing as how my main technical contact was completly missing from Internic
I called them.
I was told by their helpdesk that Whois is being updated and will be
unreliable and/or useless
until sometime next week after May 1.
I was told that their database is fine and that all the information is there
and I should just
trust them that all would be okay.
They did not have an answer as to why they did not announce this before hand
or gave warning as to the length of the outage.
Also I must note that I had to go to bigyellow.com to find their phone
number as they seemed to have removed it completely from their new website
and the "about" portion of their site is forwarded to a black hole.

just my .02 and frustration.

Derrick Bennett

2

Seeing as how my main technical contact was completly missing from Internic
I called them.
I was told by their helpdesk that Whois is being updated and will be
unreliable and/or useless
until sometime next week after May 1.

I've seen domains that show NO contact information at all in the past day
or so.

I was told that their database is fine and that all the information is there
and I should just
trust them that all would be okay.

Oh... That's what I'm going to do. Just trust NSI. The people who sold
the .com database to the spammers. Sorry. Not gonna happen.

They did not have an answer as to why they did not announce this before hand
or gave warning as to the length of the outage.

I have a theory:

1) mailboxes filling and phones ringing off the hook about contact info
vanishing.
2) Contact M$/Clinton spin doctors. They seem to know how to get out of
these kind of messes.
3) Go with outright lie about "upgrading" the database.
4) Ignore any questions regarding REQUIRED notifications that did not happen.

In other words, when you look up SNAFU in the dictionary, it says:

See: Network Solutions

Also I must note that I had to go to bigyellow.com to find their phone
number as they seemed to have removed it completely from their new website
and the "about" portion of their site is forwarded to a black hole.

I noted this as well. Then again, it might be part of their stress
management program for their telephone operators -- It is rumored that they
are leaving in mass to go be air traffic controllers citing "less stress"
as their reason for the career move. :wink:

3

Actually they kind of did it a round about way. I noticed they
have turned to the TV news media to explain some of their
problems and they kind of hinted at they were having technical
difficulties but that these problems would be resolved shortly.

-henry

Derrick Bennett wrote:

4

And giving the information to the media vs the established channels (or
even their own web site) is an acceptable alternative who WHAT reason?

To NetSOL, it is acceptable because they know that the vast majority of the
media are clueless and will thus take whatever is given them as scripture.
To those of us who depend (for now) on NetSOL actually doing their job and
earning our $35/yr per domain, it is outright unacceptable.

I am not saying that NetSOL is the ONLY provider of services critical to
operations who is falling down on the job but they DO own the patent on the
process of screwing up and then lieing about it, getting caught and still
getting away with it. (They just license it to the politicians.)

5

Actually they are like any animal as it attempts to survive
in a competitive marketplace and demonstrated rather
clearly they have over 300 online operators processing
submissions 24/7 with over 300,000 applications a month.

I not here to argue the semantics or right or wrong. I simply
pointed out an observation of mine and stated it. I understand
the problems and the frustrations.

The problems now will multiply. soon when more people get into
the game and the expense will go up with the added problems.

I think for the most part people do not now realize the disruptions
to come from companies that do not have the experience or i
infrastructure. I wish there were any easy solution.

I wish computers and networks didn't break and that
software wasn't broke ware when came out the door,
but then if it were a perfect world they wouldn't need
us to fix the problem and yes I am being sarcastic, just
because I can be.

-henry

John Fraizer wrote:

6

The major problem is that NSI refuses to be honest about what's
going on.

7

Two things have occured over the past week that have lead to changes
in whois.

First, there is a bug in the whois generation code that generates the
indexes that whois uses. The information is still correct in the database
that whois is generated from. The fix is in QA now and should be in operations
shortly.

Second, in the advent of the registry coming operational to other
testbed registrars, we cleaned up a number of hosts that where orphaned
(parent domain of the nameserver did not exist). Thus, if you had
an orphaned host listed as a nameserver, it has been removed as a
nameserver to the domain.

Regards,
Mark

8

My ghod; they _are_ alive!

You know, I didn't see those things mentioned on RS-ANNOUNCE...

Cheers,
-- jra

9

Hi Jay!

rs-announce@merit.edu is for route server-related news....

-abha :wink:

10

The major problem is that NSI refuses to be honest about what's
going on.

Well, I got one from them today concerning this. You'll love this. I have
included my reply to them as well:

Cc:

Ahem,

Excuse me. These are separate ROLE accounts. They have separate purposed
and actually have a separate person on the other end of the email address.
We use these ROLE accounts so we don't HAVE to modify any domains when/if
someone leaves the company.

We are a hosting company. We have a NIC handle for our NOC, and a NIC
handle for our registration services department.

I notice that Network Solutions, Inc has a separate NIC Handle for your
accounts payable department.

Accounts Payable (AP5173-ORG) ap@NETSOL.COM
703-742-0400

Wow... CERF.NET has the same scheme on their end:

   Administrative Contact:
      CERFnet Administrator (CA597-ORG) cerf-admin@CERF.NET
      619-812-5000
   Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
      CERFnet Hostmaster (CERF-HM) dns@CERF.NET
      619-812-5000

Same goes for BBNPlanet:

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
      BBN Network Operations Center (BNOC) ops@BBNPLANET.COM
      800-632-7638
Fax- 781-262-6351
   Billing Contact:
      AP, GTEI Domain (GDA35) domain-bill@GTEI.NET
      800-632-7638 (FAX) 617-873-6012

OOPS! It looks like C&W are in the same boat I am:

Cable & Wireless, Inc. (CW3-DOM)
   1919 Gallows Road
   Vienna, VA 22182

   Domain Name: CW.NET

   Record last updated on 18-Mar-99.
   Record created on 13-May-95.
   Database last updated on 26-Apr-99 10:40:23 EDT.

   Domain servers in listed order:

   NS.CW.NET 204.70.128.1
   NS2.CW.NET 204.70.57.242
   NS3.CW.NET 204.70.25.234
   NS4.CW.NET 204.70.49.234

Look Ma! No Contact handles!

Thank you for contacting Network Solutions.

Each contact in NSI's database is assigned one "handle" - a unique tag to
differentiate him/her from all other contacts in the database.
Only one handle should exist for each Individual or Role. If the contact
handle is already in the database, insert it and leave the rest of the
section blank. If the contact handle is inserted and additional information
is also provided, only the contact handle will be used.
Any additional information will be ignored.

We are pleased to help you consolidate your multiple NIC handles. In order to
accomplish this task, please take the follwowing steps in the prescribed
sequence.

1. Choose which one of your NIC handles will become your sole NIC handle.

2. For each domain name registration affected, submit a Domain Name
Registration Agreement modification. On these Domain Name Registration
Agreements, replace any occurence of the additional NIC handles with the one
NIC handle you chose to be your sole NIC handle.

The Domain Name Registration Agreement is available on our Web site at
www.networksolutions.com. From our home page, choose Make Changes, enter your
domain name, then select the Domain Name Registration Agreement.

3. After you have received confirmation from Network Solutions that your
modification request has been processed, you should delete the contact records
for each additional NIC handle. Accomplish this task by submitting a Contact
Form deletion to HOSTMASTER@INTERNIC.NET.

The Contact Form is also available on our Web site at

www.networksolutions.com.

From our home page, choose Make Changes, then select Contact Form at the

bottom of the page.

If your request to delete your NIC handle is not submitted from your e-mail
address according to our database, you will be sent an e-mail message

providing

11

No, I meant the RS-announce list at Internic, for registry services
announcements...

Cheers,
-- jra

12

First, there is a bug in the whois generation code that generates the
indexes that whois uses. The information is still correct in the database
that whois is generated from. The fix is in QA now and should be in
operations shortly.

you have the gall to spend time ensuring that it will work before deploying
it? while all of us out here who paid $35 are waiting for the absolutely
mission critical whois service without which our lives can not continue!
what nerve!

we all look forward to the new day when all the brilliant nanog posters who
know how to do the job oh so much better will deploy fixes immediately
without testing. then again, they won't have to, because they won't have
any bugs.

and pigs fly.

randy

13

From: Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
To: Mark Kosters <markk@internic.net>
Subject: Re: Contact handles disappearing mysteriously from the whois database!

you have the gall to spend time ensuring that it will work before deploying
it? while all of us out here who paid $35 are waiting for the absolutely
mission critical whois service without which our lives can not continue!
what nerve!

Randy:

Thanks for helping to verify my theory that your posts to nanog
consist mainly of personal attacks and innuendos, with relatively little
content compared to most of the other regular posters.

It seems to me that a number of people have already said that their major
problem is not the changes, per se, but the lack of any kind of announcements
of said changes. I'm one of those people. The few mails I've seen from NetSol
have been more promotional than operational in nature.

But, please don't let the facts get in the way of the wonderful prose you
contribute to NANOG on a regular basis.

... because they won't have any bugs.

This is about as likely as us seeing a post where you *don't* tell the
entire readership of NANOG how ignorant we are.

Mark:

I speak only for myself here, but as far as I'm concerned, you're not part
of the problem. The problem is at the top. NetSol has no accountability,
and refuses to let customers know about upgrades and potential outages. The
company's entire philosophy of customer service is apparently "Customer? Screw
the customer, we'll do whatever we feel like doing."

Feel free to pass that on. I'd like to be proven wrong, but I have a hunch
that that will not happen.

14

I find it rather curious that QA procedures were not in place to prevent
the bug from happening in the first place. I also find it curious that
there are no rollback procedures in place to recover quickly from a bug in
generating whois data. For example, most network operators store their
router configs in a revision control system and can quickly rollback to a
previous config when changes go awry.

15

michael, you forgot the mandatory ad hominem attack on me falsely claiming
that i had made a personal attack. where is your contribution to nanog
hypocrisy? sheesh! :slight_smile:

I find it rather curious that QA procedures were not in place to prevent
the bug from happening in the first place.

to paraphrase dijkstra because i am too lazy to look up the reference,
testing can demonstrate the presence of bugs, it can not demonstrate their
absence.

i.e. if they could do what you suggest, there would be very few new bugs in
the world. this would be a truly great advance.

I also find it curious that there are no rollback procedures in place to
recover quickly from a bug in generating whois data.

good point. a possible explanation is that they changed the back end, and
hence the front end. while one might roll back the front end, the back end
could be much more difficult as
  o new updates had flowed in, i.e. can't just roll back, need to convert
    the data back, and
  o when people write database conversion code, they tend to think of it
    as one way, and do not double the cost by writing un-conversion code.

in private email, an acquaintance suggested that extensive alpha and beta
testing might have caught it. with a product such as whois this might be
hard. i.e. alpha/beta tests are usually done by shipping product to a
select few. how would one do this with whois? with registration services?
etc.? not saying one could not, just that this is far from trivial or
obvious.

as i have said before, i would not want nsi's job.

randy, who spent 20+ years in software development

16

you have the gall to spend time ensuring that it will work before deploying
it? while all of us out here who paid $35 are waiting for the absolutely
mission critical whois service without which our lives can not continue!
what nerve!

Thanks for helping to verify my theory that your posts to nanog
consist mainly of personal attacks and innuendos, with relatively little
content compared to most of the other regular posters.

hypocrisy alert!

bye steve

<plonk>

17

michael, you forgot the mandatory ad hominem attack on me falsely claiming

^
% Invalid input detected at '^' marker.

that i had made a personal attack. where is your contribution to nanog

^
% Invalid input detected at '^' marker.

hypocrisy? sheesh! :slight_smile:

^
% Invalid input detected at '^' marker.

Hmmm. This could be a problem in 11.3(2)XA3. I've opened a case with the TAC.

Jim Browne jbrowne@jbrowne.com
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in
creating the Internet." -- VP Al Gore trying to top Quayle's "potatoe" gaffe

18

michael, you forgot the mandatory ad hominem attack on me falsely claiming
that i had made a personal attack. where is your contribution to nanog
hypocrisy? sheesh! :slight_smile:

Damn! You're right. You arrogant fool! How dare you preach to us gods when
we all know you come from the same state as Bill Gates, the evuil Satan.

to paraphrase dijkstra because i am too lazy to look up the reference,
testing can demonstrate the presence of bugs, it can not demonstrate their
absence.

Right again. However, the frequency with which there has been corruption
of whois data over the years makes it seem as though there is no QA in
place. Either that or the tools they use to do the job are the most
bizarre Rube Goldberg lashup you've ever seen. I tend to suspect a little
of both.

> I also find it curious that there are no rollback procedures in place to
> recover quickly from a bug in generating whois data.

good point. a possible explanation is that they changed the back end, and
hence the front end. while one might roll back the front end, the back end
could be much more difficult as
  o new updates had flowed in, i.e. can't just roll back, need to convert
    the data back, and
  o when people write database conversion code, they tend to think of it
    as one way, and do not double the cost by writing un-conversion code.

I have done database conversions many times in my carreer and while I have
always written the code to do a one way conversion I have also always made
provision for rolling back the database to a prior state even when that
meant logging transactions so they could be reapplied after a rollback.
Most of the clients I have done database work for rely on their databases
for the mission critical infrastructure of their business and cannot
accept failures like this. Where there is a will there is a way to prevent
buggy conversions from corrupting your database.

as i have said before, i would not want nsi's job.
randy, who spent 20+ years in software development

If only they had a few people like you and I on staff, we would not be
discussing this now.

19

If only they had a few people like you and I on staff, we would not be
discussing this now.

dunno 'bout you, but i helped deliver my share of bugs to customers in
my years. that's life in the big city. what drives me up the wall is
developers who deny problems, "just tell the customer not to code that
way," instead of just fixing them. as an industry we still undervalue
qa folk, just look at their pay.

but the rate of and nature of some of the problems we see in the net
infrastrucure today do make one wonder about a lack of rigor or a
failure to transfer the lessons from some years of software engineering.
as our society relies more and more on the net (no accounting for
taste), formal methods and the like become more crucial. whether they
do remains to be seen.

then again, in about '88, when asked why he, hoare, parnas, et al. were
no longer beating the software methodology/engineering drums, klaus
wirth replied "no one was listening."

but, to keep this somewhat operational, would any large registrants be
actually willing to use test.whois.internic.net and test.internec.net or
whatever they would be called? i.e. is there anyone with significant
data willing to be test victims? i doubt i could make a case for it in
my company. what's the perceived gain i could use to sell it?

randy

20

Could all of this have something to do with why the whois database didn't
get updated today, and why I'm receiving the same 'request for confirmation'
emails over and over again? Is anyone else seeing this?

I'm seeing it here. I've been getting the same ones over and over again
for about a week now.

Also, a domain of mine somehow got it's administrative handle changed from
'KD748' to 'KMD44' (both are me)...

Consider yourself lucky. Some have had their domains given to other people
by this SNAFU. Next trend for speculators: Load up on NIC handles and
just wait for bought-and-paid-for domains to be handed to one of them by
NetSOL.