Discuss mailing list

[Peter Green <peter AT greenpete.co.uk>]

I've noticed two or three on the T2 list that have been dead for a 
while,
one since February!

I think if a server goes down, or is not resolving one or more T.L.D.s 
and
the operator doesn't respond to contact from OpenNIC members, their 
server
should be removed from the list after 2 weeks.

I would like to see all T1 and T2 servers have at least a web page (if 
not
a site, and obviously T1's do), in which you will find at least an up 
to
date contact address (some T1's don't seem to have a contact address) 
and
possibly more, like server stats and a blog communicating the state of 
the
server etc.

I feel if dialogue is being made and an op' is having problems but IS
communicating with the OpenNIC community then removal should be open 
ended.
After all OpenNIC is a very helpful community, there's no need to hide 
away
from problems.

Reliable servers and operators are necessary for OpenNIC to be a 
quality
service that is taken seriously by the world.

As an example, the T2 that Jonathan and I run has this web page;
http://opennicproject.org.uk/

Peter


On 15.08.2012 05:16, Jeff Taylor wrote:

> It seems that occasionally we get new folks signing up to run a 
> public
> server, then fall short on the commitment of actually running the
> service. There is such a case right now where someone created a new
> server which went offline again shortly afterwards. There was no
> notification of trouble on the mailing lists, and the person has 
> failed
> to respond to personal emails.
>
> In the past, one of us have simple removed such servers from the 
> listing
> after some random period in which we finally notice the outage.
> However, with all the other automated tools we have been developing, 
> it
> seemed appropriate to create an official policy regarding the forced
> removal of these servers. When someone checks the wiki pages to 
> choose
> which public servers they wish to use, we want those choices to 
> reflect
> servers that are generally reliable.
>
> There are three situations that should be addressed. The first is 
> when
> the server simply stops responding to DNS queries, and appears to 
> have
> gone offline completely. Of course not everyone monitors their 
> servers
> on a daily basis, and there could be situations such as when the 
> admin
> goes on vacation. There could also be issues with their internet
> provider. In most cases, I would expect the admin to at least notify
> the mailing list if there is an extended problem that they are trying 
> to
> fix. However when there are no notifications and the admin cannot be
> contacted, I would like to propose that their server be automatically
> removed after 14 days.
>
> The second situation is when the server is online, but failing some 
> of
> the zone tests. Again there are a lot of factors to consider, but the
> concern is that their server is not responding reliably to all 
> queries,
> and users of that server will not be able to reach all OpenNic 
> domains.
> This situation has more pitfalls, but in the end it comes down to 
> making
> sure the users get the answers that they expect. So I would also
> propose a 14-day grace period for this situation.
>
> The third situation is overall reliability. If a server only answered
> queries 50% of the time, you wouldn't want to use it. Because we are
> recording test results for each server, we can create a historical
> profile to rate the reliability. I think the easiest way to score a
> server would be to check the percentage of passes over the last X 
> days.
> So how many days do we want to look at, and at what percentage do we
> consider the server unreliable? As an initial starting point (and
> because conflicting rules between the first and second situations 
> would
> make programming tricky), I am going to suggest removal if a server
> drops below 66.7% in 60 days. That is an extremely lenient score, but
> it would actually remove at least seven tier-2 servers immediately.
>
> There is currently no code in place for automated removal of dead
> servers, but if we can create a policy for their removal, it would
> provide a guideline for the admins to manually trim the list down.
>
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