Earthlink DNS (Was: Re: Comcast Alternatives? Was Re: Why must Comcast's DNS suck?)

[Mark Polhamus]

Travis Roy wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, Michael ODonnell wrote:
>>> I have no love for ComcCast - I'd drop them yesterday
>>> if I had any better (or even comparable) choices -
> 
> I use Earthlink for my cable service...
> 
> It's from Comcast, and my bill actually comes from Comcast, but I get an
> Earthlink IP, Earthlink DNS, and Earthlink reverse DNS.
> 
> I did this because I have DirecTV. If you have Comcast for TV and
> internet, then Comcast is cheaper, but if you don't use Comcast for TV
> service Earthlink is cheaper (due to Concast's bundle discounts).
> 
> I've been very happy with it.

I'm a long time Earthlink subscriber -- started with dialup but now have
Earthlink through my cable broadband.  Until recently I have been
perfectly happy, but now I have one huge issue with Earthlink:

Remember when VeriSign decided to grab all nonexistent domain names and
return the IP address of  their "helpful" search service called
SiteFinder?  They did it using a wildcard DNS entry.  See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitefinder.

Now Earthlink is doing the same thing for users of it's default DNS
servers (from DHCP).  Enter a non-existent DNS domain and you get an
invalid "found" response with the IP address of their search/advertising
portal run by an outfit called barefruit.com.

You can read Earthlink's blog about this "helpful" service and the
furious responses from users here:

http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/08/handling_dead_domains_1.php
http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/09/update_on_dead_domain_handling_1.php
http://blogs.earthlink.net/2006/09/more_info_on_dead_domain_handl.php

See also
http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2006/09/earthlink_tries.html.

I'm an Earthlink subscriber (a reluctant one after this "SiteFinder"
stunt) but I've configured alternate DNS.


-- Mark Polhamus