Re: [dnsext] getting people to use new RRTYPEs

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

I am speaking here as an individual and as an operator.

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 06:41:31PM -0700, Doug Barton wrote:

> 1. Insert the ability into the interface to add freeform stuff
> 2. Run the equivalent of named-checkzone prior to committing the change
> 3. Profit!

That's preposterously naive.  Step 2.1 is "Find that customer who has
no theory of the mystifying DNS arcana screwed it up, so you can't
publish, and now you have to contact a human.  Stop.  Invoke expensive
off-page customer service process."  In some significant number of
cases, we never get to step 3.  In the DNS business, the margins are
small.  

This list -- and indeed, much of the IETF, as is often lamented -- is
heavily populated by people who either are not operators or else are
not consumer-facing operators, though there are notable exceptions.
It sseems at least possible that this introduces a bias of ignoring
problems that others report (or that are observable in deployment)
because they're not the problems of the people who happen to be here.

I have to agree with John Levine that the usual answer of the DNS
community to provisioning problems -- in caricature, "This is easy,
you must be morons."  -- is not helpful, and is indicative of a closed
mindedness that is unbecoming.  Maybe, just maybe, the people out
there who are successfully operating systems at some scale have
something to teach us about the real barriers to the things we think
would be ideal.  We dismiss those observations not at our peril, but
at the peril of the DNS (and Internet).

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]