MaraDNS 1.4.04 released

[Sam Trenholme]

> Did you ever considered offering your existing proposition of
> shared/dedicated support on a yearly subscription/monthly retainer (+ fee
> for organizations)?
> DNS is strategic enough (and probably is going to be more) for businesses to
> expect a small organization to be dedicated to it?

I think there are definite possibilities in having me perform that
kind of consulting services for companies who want to look at their
DNS solutions.  One thing I have observed is how many hosting
providers completely drop the ball with DNS hosting; DNS problems make
it harder for their potential customers to reach their website,
resulting in lost sales.

For example, avira.com, which I mentioned earlier in the thread has
three out of four DNS servers not working.  From where I sit, this is
perfect for me right now since these kind of acid tests help me debug
Deadwood and make sure Deadwood is a reliable DNS resolver.  On the
other hand, it isn’t in Avira’s best interests for potential customers
to see “host not found” instead of the web page for their products.
[1]

One idea I had while writing Deadwood was for Deadwood to have a
“solve” switch to help debug bad hostnames.  Like a lot of ideas I
have had for Deadwood, it never got implemented in the interest of
getting MaraDNS 2.0 and Deadwood 3.0 finished (but there are some
functions in DwRecurse.c for looking at a DNS packet which I currently
don’t use).  Maybe, after 3.0 comes out, I will make a version of
Deadwood with “solve” to make it quick and easy to see if DNS servers
for a given hostname are down.

> I understand this is the economy of other DNS products?

I’m still figuring out how to make lots of money with MaraDNS.  If
anyone has any suggestions, let me know.  That said, having MaraDNS be
open-source is much better than any resume can be to let the relevant
people know I’m a clued programmer who is looking for work.  In this
economy, anything that gives me an edge over other job seekers is
valuable.

- Sam

[1] As another example, kintera.org has two out of three DNS servers
down, which causes lookups to frequently outright fail, especially
with long CNAME chains like “www.gbod.org”.  I loved the hostname
“www.gbod.org” and all of the mismanagement Blackbaud Internet
Solutions did with this domain [2] while debugging Deadwood; the
process of resolving that hostname showed me all kinds of bugs in
pre-beta releases of Deadwood.  But, I don’t think people who actually
want to visit gbod.org or the Methodist church who host this webpage
would feel the same way about its DNS issues.

[2] Kintera.org has three glueless NS entries for resolving their
hostname: ns1.kintera.com (206.190.70.84), ns011.kintera.com
(216.39.103.70) and ns012.kintera.com (216.39.103.71).  Of these three
DNS servers, ns011kintera.com does not reply to DNS queries (and
previously, two out of the three hosts did not resolve).   Also, the
long CNAME chain www.gbod.org uses slows down and makes unreliable DNS
resolution.  Since kintera.com is a redirect to Blackbaud’s webpage, I
think it’s safe to say they’re the responsible party for this DNS
configuration.