[ncc-services-wg] Re: Allow DNSMON services to monitor ENUM domains

On 4 Oct 2007, at 14:34, Jim Reid wrote:

> 1 DNS Monitoring is not a core NCC service. It should not be doing  
> this IMO. It's OK for the NCC to monitor its own name servers, but  
> that's all.

Disagree - the NCC is community led, and provides infrastructure  
services (including, but not limited to numbering resources) to the  
community.   I strongly value the quality of independent data I  
receive as a stakeholder from services like DNSMON, but also TTM and  
RIS.  Although my LIR could realistically have done everything it  
'needed to' from a resource point of view with ripe through another  
LIR, we joined because we value the work of the NCC in areas away  
from numbering resources.

> 2 By offering a commercial DNS Monitoring service, the NCC is  
> distorting the market. Its presence presents other organisations  
> from offering similar services because the barrier to entry has  
> been artificially increased. And on top of that the NCC has cherry- 
> picked the best customers.

I think DNSMON is used for something completely different to real  
commercial monitoring services like alertsite.com and similar.   
Furthermore, can I get information about the availability/quality of  
root servers from the commercial guys ?  For free ?  I use this data  
from time to time, as do many more people in the community at large,  
and if RIPE didn't do it, someone else would.  RIPE do it extremely  
well, and have the historical data - please let them continue.

> 3 The costs of the NCC's DNS monitoring service are not clear.  
> Which raises the prospect of complaints about monopoly membership  
> fees cross-subsidising non-core commercial activities. This is a  
> particular worry of mine given that the NCC's initial investment in  
> name server monitoring was met from its membership fees.

I don't have data to comment on this - but see my reply to (1) - we  
joined because we wanted to support the RIPE community work, as well  
as needing access to numbering resources.


Best wishes,
Andy Davidson