RE: RIPE Region Hostcount for September 2000

> 
> (1) by removing AXFR privileges to the world (including our hostcount
>     host, 130.59.1.30), or
> 
> (2) by moving to a "split" DNS scheme, in which only hosts with
>     external services (in the "DMZ") are listed in the DNS, the
>     internal hosts being in another version of the organisation's zone
>     which is only visible from the inside.
> 
> The latter is proably difficult to work around.
> 
> The effect of (1) could be reduced by kindly asking people to allow
> AXFR from 130.59.1.80 when setting up zones directly under .ch/.li.
> Some cooperation from large hosting organisations, or ISPs which
> operate large numbers of secondaries on behalf of their customers
> would be valuable for keeping the hostcount realistic.

I agree, Simon.  We see a lot of (1) in the .ie domain as well
and would endorse and widen your plea to apply to all TLDs in the
RIPE area.  To help in this, RIPE NCC have set up a domain
hostcount.ripe.net, which is designed to advertise forward 
mappings to the hostcount collector in each ccTLD.  Thus, for example,
ie-collector.hostcount.ripe.net maps to 193.1.193.194, while the
reverse mapping is handled locally by the .ie collector (HEAnet in this
case).  In that way, RIPE NCC authenticates the IP address of their
hostcount collectors.  I would hope that this would carry some weight
with the ISPs/ASPs in question and would persuade them to take part in
this collaborative effort.


> 
> Asking for such cooperation would be easier if there was a strict
> privacy policy for the intermediate data produced by the hostcount
> software.

Absolutely.

Mike Norris