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Re: [Asrg] New Version Notification for draft-irtf-asrg-dnsbl-07

2008-10-15 17:33:42
At 12:24 PM -0700 10/15/08, Franck Martin imposed structure on a stream of electrons, yielding:
I'm not requesting for a root.

I'm just highlighting the first post in the thread which is to make clear in the draft there is no root.

Sorry also I'm catching up on the spec (yes I know I should read the archives).

A few questions:
-DNSBL usualy return an A record where the value ma indicate a status. Should this draft try to codify some answers? For instance a particular answer would mean DNSBL is shutdown -Should a listing in DNSBL generates an email to the listed to inform them of their new status. As stated in the document (3.4) many mail servers logs are not well watched, and it may take a while to recognise a listing has been added.

These would both be policy issues, and so belong in http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-irtf-asrg-bcp-blacklists-04 instead, if anywhere.

There is some muddled discussion of your first question in Section 3.3 of that document. Ideas have been tossed around here about what should go there, so you may get something out of the list archives. I bet Chris & Matt would welcome a reworking of that section, but I don't think it is possible at this time to codify much of anything beyond what is there already. That boils down to:

1. The IP's returned for a listed address should be in 127/8
2. Lack of an entry for 127.0.0.2 should be considered as an indication that a list is dead. 3. An entry for 127.0.0.1 should be considered as an indication that a list is dead. 4. For lists that use different IP results for listings to signify different things, the meanings should be documented and should be similar within a common zone.

I am fairly sure that there has been discussion of listing notification policies here in the past. I know that the issue has been discussed at great length and vehemence in other places, including some like NANOG and the news.admin.net-abuse.* Usenet groups that have public archives. My view is that there can be no valid blanket recommendation about notifications of listings. This is because of the different natures of DNSBL's and because even while the principle of alerting listees might fit some lists in theory, in practice there is more risk of harm from trying to notify than not. I don't think that is too far from the general slant of discussions here. Notifications make sense primarily from the viewpoint of people who have had IP's listed that send some legitimate mail, but from the broader view of all DNSBL's and all listings, those are exceptionally uncommon cases. Historically, when unsecured SMTP relays were larger contributors to the spam problem and there was a plausible chance that mail to postmaster@<listed open relay> would reach a reasonably competent human, notifications for those lists that focused on open relays made some sense. With no major DNSBL currently specializing in that increasingly insignificant niche and mixed sources being increasingly the fiefdoms of intentionally inattentive fools, it makes less and less sense to ask DNSBL operators to try to engage attention with every listing.


--
Bill Cole bill(_at_)scconsult(_dot_)com

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