"dr" == Daniel Roesen <noc@entire-systems.com> writes: On Tue, Oct 17, 2000 at 02:00:19PM +0200, RIPE Hostcount Maintainer wrote: The overall decrease was largely attributable to a loss of around 320,000 hosts from the fr TLD.
Is this loss due to a technical problem or some general changes (named-based vhosting instead of IP-based vhosting)? Or just "fluctuation"?
In our region (CH & LI), when we "lose" large numbers of hosts this is usually because some large sites or ISPs restrict access to their zone data, either (1) by removing AXFR privileges to the world (including our hostcount host, 130.59.1.30), or (2) by moving to a "split" DNS scheme, in which only hosts with external services (in the "DMZ") are listed in the DNS, the internal hosts being in another version of the organisation's zone which is only visible from the inside. The latter is proably difficult to work around. The effect of (1) could be reduced by kindly asking people to allow AXFR from 130.59.1.80 when setting up zones directly under .ch/.li. Some cooperation from large hosting organisations, or ISPs which operate large numbers of secondaries on behalf of their customers would be valuable for keeping the hostcount realistic. Asking for such cooperation would be easier if there was a strict privacy policy for the intermediate data produced by the hostcount software. -- Simon.