[dns-wg] Progress with DNS Quality, Also: Lameness

>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Karrenberg <daniel.karrenberg at ripe.net> writes:

    Daniel> How about your friendly RIR providing an extra service of
    Daniel> checking your reverse DNS tree for a small additional fee
    Daniel> that covers the people resources needed to get the reports
    Daniel> to you and follow up on them.

I agree that someone could/should offer a service selling police
reports. And related stuff such as audits and logs: "Yes, your name
servers were working just fine between 14:40 and 16:00 on June 1st
2002". However I am very uncomfortable with an RIR providing this kind
of service, even though they're more likely to be respected as
protocol police.

There are a number of reasons for this. First of all I'm not sure if
services like this fall within the remit of what an RIR is supposed to
do. Secondly an RIR is a monopoly and should be *very* careful about
extending into new service areas. The likes of the EU anti-competition
folks could get very excited about that. Thirdly, this the kind of
service that could be offered by others: ISPs, registrars, DNS
consulting companies and so on. Many of them will already be paying
fees to the RIR. An RIR shouldn't be competing with its customers --
why bite the hand that feeds it? -- or distorting the market. Fourthly,
if an RIR diversifies into offering these peripheral services, there
is a danger that it will lose sight of its core registry function.

I do like the idea of RIRs having top-up charging for additional
services. This is a good way to make those services self-financing and
be seen to not be a drain on the RIR's core funding. And if that keeps
the annual fees down, even better. However this is a discussion that
should be going on somewhere else: the new NCC services WG perhaps?

Finding out who'd be willing to pay for lameness checks would be
worthwhile. However I suspect it won't tell us anything we don't
already know. Clueful people might pay. But in general they don't have
lame servers. The clueless won't pay because they don't know or care
about lameness. They'll be the ones that have the lame delegations. The
challenge will always be how to reach out to these people.

There's an education problem here. I think the WG could come up with a
definition of lameness and a business justification why it's a bad
thing. It would be great if registrars & registries could pick this up,
point their customers at checking tools and persuade them to regularly
use those tools. This is do-able IMO.