Managing an Internet outage


Managing an Internet outage
\ Mike Diggins (11 May 2008)
. \ Dawn Connelly (11 May 2008)
. . \ Damien Hull (11 May 2008)
. \ Mike Diggins (11 May 2008)
. \ Mark Andrews (11 May 2008)
. \ Damien Hull (12 May 2008)
. . \ Dawn Connelly (12 May 2008)
. . . \ Damien Hull (12 May 2008)
. . . . \ Dawn Connelly (12 May 2008)
. . . \ Mike Diggins (12 May 2008)
. . . . \ Pedro Espinoza (12 May 2008)
. \ Robert Spangler (12 May 2008)
. \ Rob Szarka (12 May 2008)

2 msg	WPAD / PAC woes
5 msg	dnssec-keygen: a key with algorithm 'HMAC-MD5' ...
4 msg	Resolution Check
3 msg	BIND can't resolve with unreachable second NS
10 msg	special features
2 msg	Modifying BIND to provide requesting IP address...
3 msg	Setting up my MX's records to redirect mail fro...
9 msg	Multiple SOA records?
6 msg	Bind and OpenLDAP
3 msg	bind dlz : using only Mysql
8 msg	Suggestions for coping with this issue
7 msg	Questions about Bind and AD dns integration
14 msg	Overriding MX records to internal gateways
3 msg	Bind + DKIM (ran out of space)
2 msg	time set to UTC
1 msg	Split horizon with forwarding
8 msg	Are failures cached?
2 msg	catch-all
2 msg	Problems Configuring Bind on Windows Server 2003

Subject:	Managing an Internet outage
Group:	Bind-users
From:	Mike Diggins
Date:	11 May 2008

We occasionally have a situation where our Internet access is completely
down. My Manager has asked about the viability of locating a DNS server
off site, and during a situation when we're down, modifying it so that it
resolves my entire domain to a single IP address. Web users would be
redirected to that address, and a web page would explain we're off line.

Our DNS TTL is set to 1 hour, however, I'm concerned that sites might
cache that address for longer than the TTL, and affect things such as mail
delivery beyond the outage. Does anyone have an opinion on this plan?
Obviously improving our redundancy is a better solution, and that will
come in time. Right now this seems like a quick and easy (dirty) solution.

-Mike