Deadwood In The DNS

The differences between the zonefiles and the active domains on a nameserver can show more than just badly set up domains. They can show domains that have not been paid for by their owners. While these domains still appear in the zone file, the nameservers referred to in the zonefiles do not provide any data for these domains. The effect is that these domains do not exist on the net. But the reasons behind this can be interesting.

One of the tactics that some hosters use when a domain or hosting fee has not been paid is to pull the domain data from the nameservers. It is the old world model of suspending service until the bill has been paid. It also breaks the model of how the Domain Name System should work.

The August statistics for the Irish hosting business showed that one ISP had a major problem with dead domains. Approximately 30% of the domains it hosted are dead for one reason or the other. The dead domains percentage can vary considerably. Sometimes domains will be registered but never set up. They will be in the zonefiles but the nameservers will not provide any data. This happens a lot with speculative domain registration. But the way that the ISP section of the Irish hosting business is continuing to lose market share, the chances are that many of these dead domains are, to use a rather bad cliche, the roadkill of the information superhighway.

Tags: Irishblogs - ISPs - Domains - Irish Search Engines- Domain Statistics- Web Statistics

Written by John McCormac on August 15th, 2005 with comments disabled.
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