[GRLUG] dns hijacking

[john-thomas richards]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 01:57:31PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 1:44 PM, john-thomas richards<jtr at jrichards.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 11:09:26AM -0400, Benjamin Flanders wrote:
> >> I've tried OpenDNS multiple times but it seems to have a lot of
> >> issues.  A couple times a week it couldn't find google.com or more
> >> often than that it had trouble finding about half of the Google maps
> >> tiles  I would have to refresh about 3 times for all the map to show
> >> up.  This was a while ago so maybe they have fixed things.
> >
> > I'm wading into things I really don't have the chops to discuss, but how
> > would that be an OpenDNS problem?  Since you were able to load part of
> > the map, you were able to get to maps.google.com.  (This may be a
> > *really* dumb question, I admit.)
> 
> Because the image files aren't served up from maps.google.com.
> 
> Each time you load an image from a website, if the website has
> previously assigned a cookie, your browser is supposed to send that
> cookie back to the server.  For a website that serves up tens of
> thousands of requests per second, that's a lot of cookies being sent
> back, and a lot of bandwidth consumed.
> 
> To get around it, sites like ImageShack, Flickr, Google, Yahoo, et al
> like to put the images on a domain that your browser won't send the
> cookie to.
> 
Ah.  This is a clear example why I am strictly an end-user.  Linux has
"just worked" for me for twelve years now.  It's guys like you and many
others on this mailing list who make that happen.  For that I am very
grateful.

> For load balancing purposes, many such domains may be used.  So if
> your DNS provider isn't entirely reliable, one of those DNS requests
> might fail temporarily.

I've never experienced this sort of problem with OpenDNS.  I've only
used it for about three years-ish.
-- 
john-thomas
------
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of
fighting a foreign enemy.
James Madison, fourth US president (1751-1836)