An Open Letter To The Linux Enthusiasts. 17401

On Fri, 10 Jun 2005 18:39:05 GMT, Sinister Midget

I did address th epoint being raised. It was claimed that MS had to outsource their DNS because their inhouse *SERVERS* were incapable of handling the load. My response is that load isn't the issue, but rather the bandwidth going to the servers.

Going back to the old way would make them a target once again because their DNS would (once again) be run on only a few subnets.

Even if MS ran their DNS on Linux servers in their own shop they'd still be vulnerable. They're not hiding behind Linux, they're hiding behind a distributed DNS system that just happens to run Linux.

That's precisely the point. They handle lots of companies DNS, that's what allows them to provide the service cost effectively.

You seem to miss that point.

Microsoft isn't running the service. Akamai is. Microsoft isn't choosing to use Linux. They're choosing to use Akamai, based solely on their infrastructure service, not on the operating systems they run.

You're just being stupid. Nobody in their right mind would run their DNS servers in wiring closets of branch offices.

While I don't know how MS has their branch office infrastructure, you can bet they're not connected directly to the internet. They're likely branch to office dedicated lines. That way you don't have to run firewalls in all your offices either. This means that even your branch offices still user your main data center as its hub.

So what you suggest is that they reconfigure their entire data infrastructure just to run DNS out of branch offices.

I'm not sure what your original question was. It was more of an inference that you had to accept that Windows was incapable of running the DNS in order to even evaluate your question.

The fact is, MS's DNS was vulnerable to DDoS because of the NETWORK, not because of the OS. If you'd like to read up on how it happened, try here:

Here's more info on Akamai's DDoS, though I'm sure you'll pretend that's MS FUD as well.

Let me put this in a way you *might* be able to understand.

If my only goal is to collect moon rocks, it shouldn't be very expensive to build the infrastructure necessary to go to the moon and collect the rocks, since I only need to deal with picking up small little rocks, right?

There is an inherant cost in setting up the infrastrcture in the first place. You can make that more affordable by amortizing the cost over many clients. That's what Akamai does. Adding new clients is relatively inexpensive compared to setting it up in the first place.

I do no such thing. You ask stupid questions, I give you intelligent answers which you apparently can't understand, so your ineffectual brain says "Oh, it must be bullpoo because I can't understand it".