Hi James,

By definition they are advertising a connection to the Internet via Bigpond Net. Bigpond Net is part of the internet and it is the part its customers connect to. Bigpond define that service. Customers choose it (or not).

In a nutshell, my point is that you would be a very lonely person if you made your friends out of those of Bigpond's customers that care about BigPond's adherence to RFC 1034 or for that matter have ever heard of it. The punters don't care about anything other than the user experience and nor should they. The world changes. Businesses innovate to provide their customers a better experience and thereby differentiate their service. Frequently this innovation results from looking at convention and asking the question "what happens if we disregard the convention?". That's healthy. If the convention is important, ultimately it will maintain its integrity. If not, it will be weakened in the pursuit of a better user experience. That's what's underway here. It is a balancing act, because if Bigpond get it wrong, (as Verisign did) they could be shooting themselves in the foot. If they get it right (as they probably have), they get the benefit of innovation. It's one small risk and small reward in the mosaic of risk/reward that drives their overall business.


Regards,

Larry Bloch 

Direct: ???????????? (02) 9934-0536
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-----Original Message-----
From: dns-bounces+larry.bloch=netregistry.com.au§dotau.org [mailto:dns-bounces+larry.bloch=netregistry.com.au§dotau.org] On Behalf Of James Collins
Sent: Friday, 20 November 2009 3:30 PM
To: '.au DNS Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [DNS] Telstra DNS redirection

At the risk of being branded a purist and any number of other things, I
would like to make a comment. If they are indeed advertising themselves as
being a provider of a connection to the "Internet", then the internet is
defined by the protocols and intercommunication systems that make it up. If
they are advertising a connection to "Bigpond Net", then all bets are off :)


The "Request For Comments" structure is at the heart of this, and they can
be found at the Internet Engineering Taskforce home page -:

http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html

What Bigpond are currently involved in refers specifically to  RFC 1034 with
a little 1035.

5.2.1 section 3.
-----------------------
When the resolver performs the indicated function, it usually has one of
the following results to pass back to the client:

   - One or more RRs giving the requested data.

     In this case the resolver returns the answer in the
     appropriate format.

   - A name error (NE).

     This happens when the referenced name does not exist.  For
     example, a user may have mistyped a host name.
------------------------

These are the ties that "bind". You want to change them, submit an RFC.

Currently, if Bigpond are not providing that result from a DNS query on
their default name server, that name server is not performing as an Internet
Name server should as per RFC 1034. 

As regards the Web, it matters not one whit what is in the html of the page
that is returned. Technically speaking, it only matters what is in the
response code. There is no specification what is in the HTML or TEXT that is
returned, just the code.

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

It must return a 404 if the page does not exist. The 404 page can contain a
singing donkey and a dancing penguin. But it must be a 404. To be in spec.

-- James :) Collins - Head Office * +61-7-3823-5150 *
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