[MUD-Dev] Mail not getting to the list

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

coder at ibm.net wrote:
> 
> It turns out that Network Services, the guys that are in charge of the
> world-wide top level domains (things like .com, .edu, .nl, etc)
> screwed up and corrupted the top level name servers.  

Actually, as I understand it, AlterNIC -- a competitive company to
Network Services -- exploited a bug in the DNS standard to redirect
internet DNS servers to its own (incomplete) database in an attempt to
usurp the 'monopoly' held by NIS on the top level domains. AlterNIC has
proposed several additional top-level domains, but has been largely
unsuccessful in attracting network administrators to their 'Enhanced
DNS' platform; partially because BIND comes out of the box ready for
NIS, and network admins don't have a lot of time to go messing with all
their configs just to support some maverick company that wants to make
itself a major player in the internet community. While AlterNIC has some
good ideas, like using '.xxx' as the top level domain for pornographic
sites (which would make parental control and site filtering trivial),
their methods are suspect and they have been responsible for several
more localised problems of a similar nature for a couple years.

NIS is trying to recover from a literal attack on the domain name
services themselves. They've done pretty well, all things considered,
and something like this might very easily have resulted in much more
chaos than it has. The DNS standards are also under review, and there
have been rumors of legal action against AlterNIC... although AlterNIC
claims that their activity did not actually violate any laws at all, and
they may very well be correct. In short, NIS is not to blame.