PAB I got the feathers, warm up the tar.

["Robert F. Connelly" <rconnell@psi-japan.com>]

Dear Colleagues in PAB, POC and CORE:

Some times we dumb chemists do strange things.

Like, for instance, running tests.

Most of the time, we discover something which differed from what we
expected, what we "knew" from our "intuition".

My boss man in my second job as a chemist was Ulric B. Bray, a brilliant
industrial chemist and the father of heavy duty motor oil.  Doc Bray would
come out in the lab to discuss one of my projects, then would say, "Let's
have a meeting of the Sceptics Society".  He'd get a beaker and a graduated
cylinder, some chemicals and run a test or two.  His ideas were usually good.

Or, he'd say, "One test is worth three expert opinions".

Now, back to the subject;-)  Oh, I didn't tell you the subject yet.

At the Stanford U and Georgetown U (D.C.) WIPO Conferences there was a
familiar strain running through the testimonies of many firms with famous
trademarks --- "The NSI database is full of erroneous data". Some cyber
pirate was using one of their trade names or brands, perhaps to post hard
core pornography.   Some speakers had tracked down the problem to 1.
deliberate misrepresentation by the registrants, 2. lack of verification by
NSI, 3. obsolete data, e.g. a. registrant changed Email address without
updating record, b. primary or secondary DNS in error, c. an ISP had gone
out of business or has changed domain name, d. post office box address
fictitious, e. physical address (street or town) incorrect.

As I listened to the day's testimonies in Stanford, it occurred to me that
it would be possible for the registry to automatically PING to the domains
of the Email addresses for Administrative Contact, Technical Contact,
Billing Contact, primary and secondary DNS servers.  (By "domains of the
Email addresses" I mean if the Email address is  "charlie@hometown.com",
then PING "hometown.com.)

I mentioned my idea to Don Heath after that first day's meeting.

At the Georgetown meeting, I suggested this strategy, proposing that
registries could ping automatically on a periodic basis (as CPU time is
available), say weekly or monthly.  Of course, there would be occasional
failures even with perfect data.  I suggested that there be a threshold at
which there would be an "amber light", alerting the Registrar of a
potential problem.  Above some higher threshold, a "red light" would alert
the Registrar of the need for action.  Perhaps a registered letter
announcing an intent to cancel the registration within 30 days unless the
registrant contacts the registrar and corrects the errors.

To that point, the whole  PINGing idea was "gedanken", just thoughts in my
cerebellum.

Jet lag got me up this morning at 03:00.  I decided to look into our own
Web-Domains mSQL file of registrations.  What did I find?

Test   DNS     Email Domain
A	Both OK  OK	  But the IP's differed*
B	Both OK  Bad
C	Both OK  Bad			
D	Both OK  Bad
E	Both OK  OK
F	Both OK  OK
G	Both OK  OK
H	Both OK  OK
J	Both OK  OK
K	Both OK  OK
L	Both OK  Bad
M	Both OK  Bad
N	Both OK  Bad
P	One Bad   Bad
Q	Both OK  OK
R	Both OK  Bad
S	Both OK  Bad
T	Both OK  OK
U	Both OK  OK
V	Both OK  OK
W	Both OK  Bad

My original sample was 84.  I selected 21 or 25% for analysis.  One record
had both DNS entries bad, one had one DNS name bad, ten had bad Email domains.

In the case of "A", the IPs shown during "lookup" of the domains differed
from the IP's in the record.  The stated IP's were bad.  In "P", the
secondary DNS was shown as "dns.tinker.com".  Checking the IP given for the
secondary, I found it conformed to "troll.tinker.com".  Perhaps it was
changed, perhaps the applicant made a mistake.

How could errors of this type affect us as CORE Registrars?

Toward the end of the afternoon in Stanford, a representative of Cisco made
this statement:  "These problems with bad data only started in 1995 when
NSI stopped *administrating* the registration process".  He was referring
to the fact that SAIC acquired NSI and then showed it how to turn domain
name registration into a money machine.

Think about that!

Put it in the context of the proposal by many speakers who proposed that
registrants be required to designate the *registrar* to accept service of
process:-{  Can you imagine what will go through the mind of the registrar
when the first "hot potato" Summons arrives at his or her front stoop?

Other speakers (I think AT&T was one of them) thought that 1. the
registrar, 2. the registry and 3. ICANN or IANA should *all* be designated
to accept service of process on behalf of the registrant.  If and when that
happens, registrars will want to have correct data!

The WIPO meeting in Tokyo will occur on Monday, 19 October.  I'll be there
again;-)

Regards,
BobC