Status of ns.ripe.net

[Geert Jan de Groot <]

[Sorry if you receive this message twice, but I think it is useful to many]

Hi,

During the last couple of weeks we have been shuffling around with 
public service machines. This is done to allow for some software
upgrades, some hardware changes and various other reasons.

In the past we had one machine, ns.ripe.net, that operated as whois
database machine, RIPE document store, FTP server, WWW server,
interactive services server and various other tasks. It's IP
address was 192.87.45.1

In the new situation, (and the migration to that), I am shuffling
services around and will continue to do so as time allows
till the upgrade is complete. Services will be split on
multiple machines depending on the type of service.

During this period, I will take measures to make sure that the
RR's as found in the DNS will point to the correct machine,
and try to install 'answer machines' on IPnumber/port numbers
that are not in use anymore. i.e. if you use ns.ripe.net for anonymous
FTP, then this might fail (in fact, it does currently), while using
ftp.ripe.net does work correctly. 
It is for this reason that we publish Well Known Names like
ftp.ripe.net, info.ripe.net, gopher.ripe.net, ns.ripe.net,
www.ripe.net, etc.
We will no longer use the old IP address 192.87.45.1

However, system logging learns that activity on old, not-supported
combinations (such as above) is not diminishing, even now most 
of these activities fail. I fear that there are some people 
that have hardcoded the IP address, or use the wrong
hostname for various servers and hyperlinks (such as WWW and gopher
links). Also mirrorring still happens quite a lot on the old
hostnames (FYI, some versions of mirror fails silently if the FTP
connect itself fails)

Can you please grep your system configurations and look for:
- using the IP address 192.87.45.1, e.g. as DNS forwarder
  (the 'new' ns.ripe.net does not support recursive lookups
  so you have to look for something else; DNS forwarding
  was never an official service), or as DNS primary for a zone
  you run secondary for;
- Usage of 'ns.ripe.net' for anything but DNS, such as 
  FTP or telnet;
- Have DNS A glue records for ns.ripe.net in one of your primary
  zone files (please remove them; you do not need them).
- Use the RIPE NCC machines for NTP services (also unsupported)
- Have packet filters on 192.87.45.0/24
- Use anything but whois.ripe.net (or nl-whois.ripe.net) for
  whois services;
- Incorrect gopherlinks / WWW links;
- Use of any hardcoded IP address to locate RIPE NCC services;
- Other similar cases.
... and fix them as you find them.

If you have specific requirements or are hampered  by these changes,
please contact me so we can work something out, but I need to know
about these so I can inform you if something changes outside of
our published services. 
Also, in case of questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Thank you,

Geert Jan