Category: Isle of Man

Categories
Isle of Man Stuff

It’s Always DNS

I recently registered a nice short domain name for someone. I had a choice of registrars. One was my usual domain registrar, and another was a local Isle of Man company who were significantly cheaper. I decided to buy local (and save money!) thinking that I was doing the right thing of supporting a business that pays taxes here and employs local people. I did have a niggling doubt about how good they would be, given that I’d never used them before…

I wasn’t too surprised to see pre-filled IP addresses against my new domain name in their clunky configuration pages. A lot of domain companies do this, so that the new domain points to some advertising pages along the lines of “This domain was just registered by ACME-Domains…” so I duly deleted everything and replaced it all with just the A record that I needed.

Now it was a waiting game. DNS records propagate from server to server across the internet. My registrar claimed this takes around 48 hours. I checked about 24 hours later and nothing had updated. A bit suspect, I felt. So I deleted all the records and re-entered them. This seemed to work, as within minutes I could see DNS servers around the globe serving the correct details. Success. Or so I thought.

I waited another couple of days, and it looked like I was good to go. All the DNS servers I queried around the world were returning the correct IP address for the new domain name. I went ahead and built the website to go with the domain name.

I ran into a problem when trying to get an HTTPS certificate for my site. I use Certbot to do this for me, and it failed. I spent a good while tinkering with my server’s configuration files and double checking everything, but it all seemed to be fine. I was clearly doing something wrong…

Except I wasn’t. I sifted through my server logs to find the error was actually at the point where Certbot queries its own DNS to check the address for my domain. Yep, the DNS which Certbot uses was still returning the original IP address of my registrars advertising page! That’s despite it now being almost a week since I updated the DNS records.

A little digging later and it looked like half the planet had the correct DNS info, while the other half didn’t. I queried my registrar’s name server. You know, the one which should have the definitive records. Most of the time I got the result I expected, but sometimes it would spit out the rogue record. I assume they have a few DNS servers behind a load-balancer and some of these servers were telling lies.

Anyway, it was time to try out my registrar’s “industry reputation for reliability, support and customer success” which they tout on their website. To be fair, it wasn’t too long before I was able to chat with a human rather than an AI. Of course it must be my fault. I need to clear my DNS caches and the like. I pushed on, giving evidence of their misdeeds with some screenshots of the queries and replies from their own name servers. The person on the other end of the chat was able to “update the records” and magically the solution propagated around the internet. Funnily enough, it only took about half an hour this time, instead of the quoted 48!

I asked the support person what the issue was. They denied there was a problem. It’s just that these things take time. I was curious though, and provided more evidence, and even cheekily asked if their DNS service is unreliable. In the end, the support staff conceded “there was a glitch”.

So, it’s nice to know I *do* actually know what I’m doing when it comes to domain names, DNS, web servers and HTTPS. It also shows that you probably do get what you pay for when it comes to buying domain names. My decision to go cheap (but local!) might not have been the best, but I suppose I should be thankful I was able to get a reasonably quick solution from their support channels.

Whenever anything breaks on the internet, it’s always DNS…

Categories
Hardware Isle of Man

The Things Are Coming

Recently, I attended #offcamp – a barcamp style discussion around open data which was organised by the Isle of Man branch of the BCS and was free to attend.

The morning sessions were OK and it was good to see that some thought is being given to making data open and available, especially data that has been collected by governments and already paid for by the public.

However, what really caught my attention was the crowd sourcing of data using sensors and the Internet of Things. I hadn’t realised that the problem of expensive telecoms links for remote IoT devices is beginning to be solved by new RF chipsets based on spread spectrum techniques similar to those used in QRP amateur radio experiments.

Sadly most of these RF technologies are proprietary, but that doesn’t mean that the infrastructure built with them has to be. A group of people from Amsterdam have built The Things Network which is an open movement with the aim of providing free and open communications for IoT devices around the world.

Given my interest in radio and electronics, together with the open philosophy of building something free for community use, I knew that I wanted to get involved with this. So, I’ve established an Isle of Man community with the aim of getting our very own Things Network established here.

Categories
Isle of Man

Food Security

The Isle of Man has arable land. It has farmers. It has crops. It has livestock. It has a slaughterhouse. It has a dairy. It has the potential to feed itself.

However, because of the crazy world we find ourselves in, economies of scale mean that Isle of Man milk and cheese can cost more than imported products. The same is true of meat. This means that many people choose to buy the cheapest food products, which don’t help to sustain our farming industry.

A few weeks ago, I had cause to visit that well known large (UK owned) supermarket in Douglas. At the time, the weather had been very stormy and several boat sailings had been cancelled. So what was the result?

Empty shelves. Scarcity of food.

This got me thinking. If people continue to buy the cheapest possible food rather than locally sourced food, we could be in a situation where we are entirely dependent on imported food for our survival.

What if the boats and planes were cancelled for a week or two? What would happen? This could be due to a freak weather event, but it could equally be caused by the global economy faltering to such an extent that the companies that run the transport links collapse. International disputes could cut off the supply of fuel for the boats and planes. The IT infrastructure of the air-traffic control system could fail. Godzilla could rise from the Irish Sea… (OK, maybe that one is a bit far fetched!)

You get the picture though. We either live on an island that could cope without imported food, or we starve. Which would you prefer?

The simple answer is to maintain our farming industry. If you are able, please consider always buying local produce. A few pence more at the checkout is a small price to pay for an insurance policy that maintains our supply of food in a crisis.