[dns-wg] Moneytizing error pages using DNS

On 5 Oct 2011, at 07:22, Kostas Zorbadelos wrote:

> .... Of course, the solution involves NXDOMAIN remapping.
>
> We as technical people are against the idea.

Well duh! :-)

> Apart from technical implications that are difficult to explain to  
> non-technical people, we would like to have some arguments  
> supporting our position.

IMO Kostas, technical arguments are probably not going to be heard, no  
matter how distinguished the DNS experts are. Though one killer  
argument against NXDOMAIN rewriting could be DNSSEC. First off, it  
stops this nonsense. Or it reduces the scope for selling adverts when  
customers switch on DNSSEC or switch to a (paid for?) "secure" DNS  
resolving service. Next, DNSSEC deployment will be made more tricky  
for you if there are NXDOMAIN rewriters spreading their special kind  
of magic inside your network.

Increased operating and support costs might support your position. For  
instance, maybe you'll need an extra DNS infrastructure: a "clean" one  
to run the network and another to do NXDOMAIN rewriting. [Maybe you'll  
have yet another for customers who expect a DNS service that doesn't  
tell lies.] This will of course complicate things and make life  
difficult for those doing customer support. For instance, what they  
see with the "clean" DNS is not the same as what the customers see.  
Bad Things happen to various services like email: mail goes to the IP  
address that serves up adverts instead of getting bounced. This could  
have all sorts of nasty legal issues: privacy, lawful intercept, etc.  
Remember the IAB statement on wildcarding which followed the  
SiteFinder debacle?

However I doubt the beancounters and other members of the B ark will  
care about any of this. They will be salivating at the prospect of  
earning zillions from pay-per-click. So I think you need to construct  
arguments on business grounds: cost/benefit analysis, return on  
investment, customer support issues, etc. Questions that might be  
worth asking are how much money has the subsidiary spent on its  
NXDOMAIN solution, how much revenue it raises, what are the actual  
operating costs. I expect honest answers to these should settle the  
issue in your favour. Though the inevitable problem in most  
organisations is hadly anyone knows what DNS actually costs to run or  
the business impact of any service disruption.