Internet Domains: A Fragile Existence...

Anyone who maintains a domain on the Internet leads a very fragile existence. I only realized how fragile an existence this was about six months ago when the service provider supplying my dedicated connection to the Internet lost their technical staff. As it turned out, a contract dispute had been broiling between the technical staff and the owner of this service provider, and the deadlock finally reached a critical point. The owner, confident that he could keep his business going without the technical staff, refused to concede to any of their demands, and laughed as they walked out.

Internet Stability And E-mail Re-routing The Internet was designed to allow military computers to maintain contact, even in the event of a nuclear attack. The theory was essentially this: build a network which could be easily corrected to allow network traffic to continue flowing between computers, even if a network connection went dead. This theory has continued to grow with the Internet, and is one of the reasons data keeps moving back and forth, even though computers and routers cease to function from time to time. The inherent stability in the Internet, especially the ability to re-route information, has been applied to e-mail. To give you an idea of how well the re-routing works, here's how my domain retrieved the e-mail during the service outage. The server temporarily storing e-mail for my domain belongs to another service provider. I was able to make my server dial-in to this other service provider on a standard user dial-up account. Once connected, the service provider made a simple DNS change, which told their server that my mail server was now at a new (albeit temporary) address. The next time their mail server started to send queued messages--which was a few minutes after the DNS changes were made--the modems ran non-stop for about forty minutes as the e-mail made its way into my mail server.

Unfortunately for the owner, his backup plan failed. He believed that a hot-shot 16-year-old part-time system administrator would be able to keep the provider running. It took 12 hours before the provider's connection to the Internet was completely dead. The 16-year-old set out to reprogram the service provider's main router to the Internet. By the time he was done, even the router manufacturer couldn't figure out how to fix the problems.

When all of this happened, my connection to the Internet went dead, too. At first, I wasn't concerned. The Internet, in theory, is a very resilient network. I had followed many of the Internet guru's recommendations regarding DNS setup. For instance, I had my DNS records configured so that e-mail sent to my domain would be delivered temporarily a server on an entirely different network carrier; this prevented e-mail from bouncing outright. As soon as the service provider was able to restore service, my mail would come flying into my server.

For short breaks in service, this re-routing works. For longer breaks in service, everything fails. After so four days without service, e-mail will bounce back to the sender as undeliverable. Worse, the settings for the domain will disappear. DNS records typically have an expiration date (typically a number of hours). This is done so that DNS servers will update their records, and thus reflect any recent changes made to your domain. If you add another computer to the network, and want it to appear on the Internet as part of the domain (i.e., newcomputer.yourdomain.com), you need to make changes to your DNS records. Once the changes are made, they need to be picked up by other DNS servers. If your DNS server goes offline--as mine did when the connection died--eventually the DNS records stored in the other computers will expire and be eliminated, and there won't be any new records to replace the old. This has the effect of erasing your domain from the Internet (at least for web and e-mail services).

After two days without service, I canceled my contract and found a new service provider.

Hindsight is 20-20 vision...

To say that this was a frustrating experience is putting it mildly. In retrospect, I've had very few experiences with the Internet which have been as valuable. Not only did this point out just how reliable the Internet can be--especially when it comes to the flow of e-mail--this also helped me create my six point checklist for selecting a good service provider. I'm presented them here, although I'll go into more detail next month.

When selecting an Internet service provider, consider the following points:

1) Is the Internet service provider an established company with a solid user base?
2) Can the Internet service provider support your particular needs?
3) Does the Internet service provider have a competent technical staff that can help resolve problems, especially with dedicated connections?
4) Does the Internet service provider provide services that will allow your Internet usage to grow?
5) How many T-1 or T-3 connections does the Internet service provider have to the Internet? If the provider resells these types of connections, how many have they sold?
6) What agreement, if any, will you have with the Internet service provider?

Next month, we'll examine each of these points in detail.

Got A Story? Share It!

If you hear information about firms moving towards technology, or a new way to become more productive through the use of technology (old or new), or any other war stories, please let me know. Send your story to <Edge@CompLaw.com>. Who knows, the story might be reproduced here.

Samuel Lewis is an attorney practicing Computer/Internet Law and Intellectual Property Law with the firm of Romanik, Lavin, Huss & Paoli in Hollywood, Florida, a member of the Florida Bar's Computer Law Committee, and the creator of COMPLAW^SM . He can be reached at 954-922-4656 or via e-mail: <slewis@CompLaw.com>. The URL for the COMPLAW^SM web site is http://www.CompLaw.com.

Copyright © 1996, Samuel Lewis. All Rights Reserved.

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