[LINK] RFI: Telstra DNS outage

[Roger Clarke]

itNews reports:
>Telstra suffered a nationwide network outage last night, as two of its internet domain name servers ceased to respond to queries from thousands of customer systems.

Am I missing something here?

I've chastised small-time ISPs in the past for having both or all of their DNS-servers on the same sub-net and therefore (under IPv4 at least) subject to the same threats.  They thereby represent a single-point-of-failure, rather than the redundancy that is the whole point of having >1 DNS-server.

But Telstra currently shows this:

telstra.net.		NS	dns1.telstra.net.
telstra.net.		NS	sec1.apnic.net.
telstra.net.		NS	sec3.apnic.net.
telstra.net.		NS	dns0.telstra.net.

dns1.telstra.net.	A	203.50.5.200
dns0.telstra.net.	A	203.50.5.199

Is the largest provider in the country utterly incompetent?

Or is there something important about Internet architecture that I fail to understand?

______________

Telstra DNS outage causes customer grief
By Juha Saarinen on May 13, 2016 6:51AM
Two-hour interruption to services.
http://www.itnews.com.au/news/telstra-dns-outage-causes-customer-grief-419496

Telstra suffered a nationwide network outage last night, as two of its internet domain name servers ceased to respond to queries from thousands of customer systems.

Two Telstra name servers used by customers for domain resolution, ns0 and ns1.telstra.net, went offline just after eight o'clock last night, users reported.

Domain name system servers are used to look up and point client systems to the correct IP address for human readable URLs such as www.telstra.net.

Without working DNS resolution, web browsers and other applications are unable to locate the IP address of the server they need to communicate with.

The name servers appear to have come back up around 11pm yesterday.

Telstra's service status web page made no mention of the DNS server problem.

While many Telstra customers took to Twitter and Facebook to complain about the outage, the telco did not confirm the service interruption until this morning, when it said the issue had been dealt with.

    @crakd67 Sorry for the delay in replying - the DNS issue has since been resolved - Steph
    - Telstra (@Telstra) May 12, 2016

iTnews has contacted Telstra for comment on the outage.

The telco earlier this month pledged to pour an extra $50 million into its mobile network after a series of damaging outages in the early months of this year.


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 6916                        http://about.me/roger.clarke
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University