Subj : Feedback re: Fidonet.org MX
To   : All
From : Nick Andre
Date : Tue Nov 24 2015 19:42:11

Hello,

I am in the process of provisioning the fidonet.org domain onto my own DNS 
servers. These servers are located in a major data center in downtown Toronto.

The DNS for the domain is a freaking mess.

For those of you not familiar with DNS, it is essentially a "phone book" of
translating fidonet.org references into numeric IP addresses. Mail eXchange 
(MX) records in DNS tell a remote server system how to route mail to a
destination address off of the fidonet.org domain.

The existing Zone DNS table has a tonne of MX records for emails. A custom
script was written in Perl to allegedly "cull" the nodelist and generate MX 
entries. I will not be publishing that script, at least not at this point, 
until I can get some feedback as to its purpose. I did not write that script, 
it has been inherited from its author, more or less.

The majority of MX entries in DNS are being generated for Zone 2, and it is my
understanding that there is a lot of Russian Sysops that are making use of 
routing Internet email via. those entries. Upon suggesting to the 
individual whom I obtained the Zone records from, that the MX be pointed to a
central email server or changed; I was met with immediate harsh criticism.

That individual was NOT Ward, by the way, so we are all clear...

The problem I have with allowing Sysops to have their own MX entry in DNS is 
that if that Sysop vanishes, the domain incurs traffic from the Internet for 
anyone (mostly spammers) who attempt to route mail for that system. In 
addition, from a security perspective, if a Sysop runs an 
improperly-configured SMTP server, spammers have a field day exploiting that 
system and the domain as a whole suffers as a result.

I would not want to yank the MX records, at least not at this point, until I 
get some serious feedback from anyone who has an MX entry in DNS for routing 
Internet email. Is having a fidonet.org email address THAT important?

I am NOT against reinstating the IEEE gateway, I have the means to do so, but 
I am not yet seeing the benefits of having an "open address system" again.

I welcome anyones feedback, suggestions or criticisms.

Nick Andre
net229.org

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