Re: A proposal about hostcount and DNS

["Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet" <]

  Hi Magnus at.al.!

>    First, this is certainly not an intent to get precise numbers,
>    just geting somewhat closer.
>    Secondly, I assumed that there would be a separate discussion
>    on the need for better values. This was just a small proposal
>    to maybe provide better numbers
>That's turning the world upside down: it should be
>determined whether there is a need for "better"
>figures *before* coming up with a proposal how to
>get those "better" figures.

  Two observations from my point of view:
  
  1)
  We (to be better defined someday :-) are doing the hostcount in a very
  simple way which is easy to understand. We're simply pulling
  (accessible) zones, walking the DNS name tree, picking up the A entries
  and trying to sort out obvious duplicates. We're doing that once a month,
  and there is some variation as to exactly when during the month this is
  done.
  
  What we might want to think about is *if* it is useful to come up with
  some recommendations (RIPE-Document? BCP?) as to the *access* to that
  ionformation from the sites in the network which perform the tree walk.
  E.g. things like refusing zone transfers, address filters, and the like.
  
  Personally, I don't see a need to do some fancy new stuff, which would
  simply replace one educated guess with a different one, and at the same
  time would be open to "bending", like freely configurable meta entries.
  
  2)
  I don't think that it is reasonable for the RIPE-NCC or the RIPE
  Community as a whole, to try to perform - or even support - any
  particular interpretation of data!

  When and if there is a need for such activities, I'd propose to leave
  that to commercial entities. Both to provide reasonable incentives to
  invest resources to come up with "better" data, and to provide some sort
  of responsibility about the interpretations and/or accumulated data and
  findings.
  
  An example of what I'm thinking about, including a coarse translation to
  english is appended below for your information :-)
  
  Wilfried.
~~~~~~~~~~  
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 1997 19:58:13 +0200
From: Andreas Monari monari@localhost
To: helpdesk@localhost
Subject: Hosts

Es w|rde mich iteressieren ob es mvglich ist eine
Liste oder (evt. grafische) Tabelle von den vsterreichen Internethosts
bzw. Benutzern bei Ihnen oder bei einem anderem Provider zu bekommen.

M.f.G.
Andreas Monari

[
I would be interested to find out if it is possible to obtain a table
(maybe in a graphical format) of the Austrian Internet hosts and/or
Users from your site or from any other provider.
]
~~~~~~~~~~

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  Wilfried Woeber                :  e-mail: Woeber@localhost
  Computer Center - ACOnet       :  
  Vienna University              :  Tel: +43 1 4065822 355
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