Author: Roller Network

Categories
Announcements

DNSBL RFC-Ignorant.org Shutting Down

As of September 15, 2012, the 12-year tenure of the RFC-Ignorant.org DNSBL has come to a close. Citing old hardware and a change in the nature of email deliveries where a small handful of large providers dominate the email landscape, the maintainer has made the decision to discontinue its operation. We certainly understand the “large provider” dominance of the Googles and Yahoos and Hotmails of the world; they’re “too big to block” even while they misbehave in ways that would get smaller providers quickly blacklisted.

Read the full announcement at http://www.rfc-ignorant.org/endofanera.php

We’ve copied the shutdown schedule below as well:

Effective 9/15/2012 – All publicly visible DNS slaves have been removed from the NS-set other than SONIC.NET’s primary RBL servers, a change that is percolating through DNS caches now
Effective 9/20/2012 – we will no longer accept submissions of new domains
Effective 9/30/2012 – All entries currently marked as “Listed” in the databases will be marked as “Deprecated”, which will cause them to not generate DNSBL entries. This will, effectively, mean that lookups of any domain in our database will always return “false”, i.e., “clean”.
Effective 10/15/2012 – The rsync service for slaving of zones will be shut down
Effective 10/30/2012 – All sub zones will have their NS-set set to “localhost.rfc-ignorant.org”, with lengthy TTLS, which will direct all DNS traffic back onto the server requesting it.
Effective 11/30/2012 – The root NS set for “rfc-ignorant.org” will be deleted entirely, preventing any resolution

As such, we will be administratively removing all references to rfc-ignorant.org from accounts utilizing it as part of their DNSBL configuration in order to eliminate our traffic burden towards the remaining name servers, and its ultimate shutdown.

Categories
IPv6

Europe Officially Runs Out of IPv4 Addresses

The big news today is that RIPE has officially reached their final /8 of IP4 addresses and exhausted their free pool. Per RIPE’s final /8 policy, no new IPv4 Provider Independent (PI) space will be assigned. RIPE follows on the heels of APNIC, who exhausted their IPv4 pool on April 14, 2011. What are your IPv6 plans?

Europe officially runs out of IPv4 addresses

Earlier today, the RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre) announced it is down to its last “/8” worth of IPv4 addresses. This means that it is no longer possible to obtain new IPv4 addresses in Europe, the former USSR, or the Middle East, with one small exception: every network operator that is a “RIPE member” or “local Internet registry” (LIR) can obtain one final block of 1024 IPv4 addresses. To fulfill these requests, the RIPE NCC is keeping that last /8, which contains 16.8 million addresses, in reserve.

 RIPE NCC Begins to Allocate IPv4 Address Space From the Last /8

On Friday 14 September, 2012, the RIPE NCC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia, distributed the last blocks of IPv4 address space from the available pool.

This means that we are now distributing IPv4 address space to Local Internet Registries (LIRs) from the last /8 according to section 5.6 of “IPv4 Address Allocation and Assignment Policies for the RIPE NCC Service Region“.

This section states that an LIR may receive one /22 allocation (1,024 IPv4 addresses), even if they can justify a larger allocation. This /22 allocation will only be made to LIRs if they have already received an IPv6 allocation from an upstream LIR or the RIPE NCC. No new IPv4 Provider Independent (PI) space will be assigned.

It is now imperative that all stakeholders deploy IPv6 on their networks to ensure the continuity of their online operations and the future growth of the Internet.

Categories
Uncategorized

Bad Results from IP2Location.com

The geolocation site “IP2Location.com” has a bad database that’s incorrectly attributing search results to Rollernet that actually belong to other entities. This was brought to our attention after receiving two calls this week regarding Comcast IP addresses because this geolocation site incorrectly lists us as the “domain”. Although we’re probably easier to contact than Comcast, there’s little can do to help other than to suggest using a different geolocation service.

We recommend using MaxMind GeoIP or an RIR “whois” search instead.

Categories
Announcements

Forum New User Registration Disabled (again)

We had to turn off new user registration on the forums again due to a flood of scam/spam registrations. We have better things to do than wade through junk registrations.

Categories
Announcements Changes

No New Dedicated Servers

Roller Network will no longer be offering new dedicated servers as a service option. We came to this decision after much thought over the work we have to put in to keeping the price/parts list up to date and hardware on hand compared to the actual number of dedicated server customers. We also had an issue with customers ordering a dedicated server and disappear after only paying a month or two of their term, leaving us unable to recover those costs. After putting these together it unfortunately no longer made sense for us to continue going down that path.

We want to stress that while we are no longer taking orders for new dedicated servers that all customers that currently have a dedicated server will continue to be supported under their original term agreement, although we will no longer be able to offer upgrades. At the end of their current term we will offer the following options:

  • Convert the dedicated server into a colocation and transfer the hardware to the customer,
  • Continue supporting it as a dedicated server for as long as we have spare parts to do so,
  • Or discontinue service to seek a new provider.

There are no immediate changes that our current dedicated server customers will notice. The option to convert to colocation will, in most cases, result in a lower monthly cost. The only visible change in the account control center will be the retirement of the “dedicated servers” section and moving them under “colocation services” while retaining a dedicated server identifier.

We appreciate those that have a dedicated server and chose Roller Network for their service needs, and those that worked with us to create billing arrangements in times of hardship rather than abandoning their accounts. Please direct all questions to us by email at the normal support address.