[ga] Re: "Alternative roots": a big technical failure

[Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@xxxxxx>]

On Sunday 7 March 2004, at 13 h 24, 
Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> The fact that ICANN would do it in no way excludes others from doing it as
> well.  For example, there is the non-ICANN-created delegation checking
> tool at http://dnscheck.se ICANN could use that tool (or a copy of the
> tool) to check, every day, that each TLD is properly delegated from the
> root zone.

A good idea but just one word: the above tool is far from being the best one 
available (I consider only free-as-in-free-speech software).

I prefer Zonecheck <URL:http://www.zonecheck.fr/> which is the basis for 
<URL:http://www.generic-nic.net/dyn/mon/>.

The main strength of Zonecheck, compared to dnscheck.se: it is 
policy-independant. The list of what is an error and what isn't (see the list 
at the end of <URL:http://dnscheck.se/dns-package.pl>), for a DNS testing 
tool, is not an univesral agreement. Some people (private joke) even regard an 
IP address in the right-hand side of a NS record as OK.

So, Zonecheck is policy-neutral: the list of tests to perform, as well as 
their severity (fatal or not if the tests fails) is in a configuration file, 
not in the code.