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Author Topic: AA and aastatus.net  (Read 2903 times)

Weaver

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AA and aastatus.net
« on: August 15, 2018, 04:25:52 AM »

I see exactly why Andrews and Arnold has set up a completely separate domain aastatus.net for news, announcements and info about disruption outages and faults. But they are putting adverts for new services or changes there which I think is a really bad idea as people will not know to go there and that is what the main site is for: surely news and changes to service offerings, prices and so on should be advertised by links on the main home page of their own normal aa.net site. Any way, that criticism is by the by.

I was wondering why they can't simply do say status.aa.net which would be better because people know aa.net and know where to go and also can trust any sub domain as bring genuine. It is a bit of a minor whinge but as a general principle I do think it is the best thing if everything is routed from one well trusted and recognised domain.

Now the obvious answer is that having completely separate domain like aaststus.net makes sure that any cockup or outage will not affect aastatus and you will always be able to go there. But I wondered - is that really essential? Is it the only way of doing things?

Can something like status.aa.net be done with real redundancy and totally independent kit? Say aa.net is provided by multiple dns servers some of which are in the Netherlands say and run for AA by someone else and support.aa.net is provided in a similar alien server hosted in the same fashion, then would that be good enough? If the first main top AA dns server for aa.net that is in AA-land were to go down, then clients would just use the non-AA working ones, no? Could support.aa.net be set up to be defined by glue? Does that even make sense / is it possible? (I don't know what on earth I am talking about.) I wonder if that normal glue publishing mechanism can publicise a domain which is one more level down?

Just musing. Trying to understand how things work, not trying to disrupt things to make unnecessary extra work.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2018, 10:38:44 PM by Weaver »
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kitz

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2018, 04:37:00 PM »

Yes you can point a sub domain to a different server or location if that's what you're asking.

Years ago I ran an ftp server and pointed a subdomain to my home IP.   I got my web hosts to do the config but I believe its a simple procedure to just changes the settings in C-Panel or whatever management software you use as I've seen where it can be done when poking around in WHM
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Weaver

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2018, 10:03:58 PM »

Kitz you can do so in glue too? No reason why not?
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d2d4j

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2018, 10:24:52 PM »

Hi

Sub domain glue is not generally setup.

Sub domain is a sub domain of a domain, where the domain is glued.

You could glue a sub domain if you were a very big, but why, when you have glued the domain would you want to. It is simple and least cost to create an A record in the zone file and the hosting platform takes care of the transitional dns records

I am sorry for shortness, just tired and hot/humid here

Many thanks

John
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Weaver

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #4 on: August 15, 2018, 10:31:23 PM »

Hi john, I am told, it is very humid around here but we are really high up.

Brevity is a virtue, one which I do not possess :-)

Thanks for your explanation!

I was trying to understand the resilience argument.

If say the AA authoritative dns server goes out to lunch then we could have another company hosting an alternative authoritative server, so don't need my glue idea, but I wonder if they were concerned that a bad update from AA could pollute that second server with a bad config, it's not just about it being down. Would that be an issue? If you are trying to think of all possible risks, not just 'downness'. Janet once jumped into a pit that was full of mud and water because her evil small cousin 'told her too'. She was not faulty, just given evil instructions.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2018, 10:36:59 PM by Weaver »
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d2d4j

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2018, 10:56:29 PM »

Hi weaver

Many thanks

Sorry just going to have a very cold beer and bed

If I have understood the thread correctly, it is multiple issues you are raising at once

It does not matter if it is a separate domain or subdomain, they both should have geographical separate dns servers, so this should not be an issue. However, that said, I have seen and experienced one of the big players have geographically diverse dns systems, only to go down due to a farmer cultivating a field and slicing through convergent diverse fibre feeds, which should have been totally separate in feed routes, but apparently the contractors installed certain sections to different Datacentre in one field. The one that was dug up by farmer.

The bigger issue is if AA run their own monitoring or if they have multiple monitors from various locations. We use wug from 3 different locations on 3 different connections.

So I understand why AA may use a different domain and hope it is outside of their systems/platforms so they have an access to update users

Many thanks

John

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jelv

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2018, 10:58:32 PM »

Although you can have sub-domains on different servers I don't think you can have them using different DNS servers. By having them on different domains you have the ultimate resilience (probably way OTT for what is needed!).

aa.net.uk:
Name servers:
        primary-dns.co.uk         81.187.30.41  2001:8b0:0:30::51bb:1e29
        secondary-dns.co.uk       81.187.81.32  2001:8b0:0:81::51bb:5120

aastatus.net:
Discovered Nameservers
        ns-1657.awsdns-15.co.uk | 205.251.198.121
        ns-322.awsdns-40.com | 205.251.193.66
        ns-1437.awsdns-51.org | 205.251.197.157
        ns-725.awsdns-26.net | 205.251.194.213
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d2d4j

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #7 on: August 15, 2018, 11:04:54 PM »

Hi jelv

Many thanks

Yes, your correct but the domain should be on geographical separate dns servers, so this overcomes that sorry as the subdomain record should be accessible

A very good point though

Many thanks

John
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jelv

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #8 on: August 15, 2018, 11:20:13 PM »

A c***-up with a domain could take out both domain servers, even if separated geographically. Using a different domain with different name & DNS servers removes that possibility.

As I said, probably way OTT!
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Weaver

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #9 on: August 15, 2018, 11:31:11 PM »

@jelv is that because an evil update could spread badness to the other dns server when they were synced?

Their way is obviously the safest, it was just that I wondered if there is any tricky alternative at all. Probably not, of course. :-)

RevK said it is operated by a different company and in a different country. I just assumed for some bizarre reason that that was Watchfront in the Netherlands maybe ? But did that dig say aws?
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jelv

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #10 on: August 16, 2018, 08:04:22 AM »

Have a look - I usually use http://www.dnsstuff.com/
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d2d4j

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #11 on: August 16, 2018, 09:25:34 AM »

Hi

Ahh I understand now sorry

I was thinking AXFR between different providers.

I cannot remember the last bad update to dns software though

I think AA maybe have 2 separate status pages not because of dns, but rather because if AA hosting goes down, having dns up on secondary dns still working, does not matter if the hosting is down.

It maybe OTT but the cost is marginal and a cheaper alternative to high availability between 2 or more Datacentre for hosting

Many thanks

John
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kitz

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Re: AA and aastatus.net
« Reply #12 on: August 17, 2018, 12:08:33 AM »

RevK said it is operated by a different company and in a different country. I just assumed for some bizarre reason that that was Watchfront in the Netherlands maybe ? But did that dig say aws?

Yup it did. - Amazon Web Services
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