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Why is DNS still hard to learn?

jvns.ca

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Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#191

Post by chefandy »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #156
tmpX7dMeXU wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is full of false dichotomy. Making things more understandable isn’t “dumbing them down”. There isn’t necessarily a trade-off. An application being CLI-based is not a get out of jail free card for UX critiques, nor is it an implication that it’s for power-users. You can’t just put the minimum viable effort into considering how someone will use your software without any thought to intuitive mental models and cry “…

> nor is it an implication that it’s for power-users. Yes it is. As an administrator being a CLI tool means that I can automate configs and deployment with ansible or Nix OS. I would argue doing these sorts of automation what are what “power-users” would do. GUI’s often lack any sort of automation capability or have some half-cocked API that usually lacks features or endpoints that would be trivial if the thing was j…

Good interface design absolutely does not require a gui. When I first encountered a BSD distro that used ports, that was a huge interface improvement. Then Deb or whatever beyond that.

Using sane labels and coherent layouts isn't dumbing anything down. You can make things easier for humans while having sane interfaces for scripting. Redirecting the output of `ls` and similar commands automatically change the layout to something easy for cli i/o manipulation.

We realized long long ago that the API and human-facing interfaces are often better when separated, which is why I don't browse the web with curl... or maybe telnet.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#192

Post by redog »

jvns wrote: post #159
tristor wrote: post #30

I don't agree with this article. I think DNS is something few people take the time to learn, but it's not actually hard to learn. One of the great things about DNS is that the system itself will tell you about it's internal state in response to queries. It's very easy to inspect a DNS server for a known zone and understand how it works, and there's very good tooling that's free and widely available to do this (like d…

Hello! I wrote this post and I have a couple of things to say about this "DNS is not actually hard" take. It took me many years to feel totally comfortable debugging DNS problems, and I wrote this post to explain why I think it was hard for me. I also used to think that "no, actually, it's easy!" was an encouraging response to "this is hard to learn". And I kind of get it! I love DNS! I think it is surprisingly simpl…

I get it. Your take resonates with me. Playing piano is easy too right? Right after you can do it. Until then it's mystically hard.

It just takes practice. Training helps but nothing can replace practice.

We can't jus b gud

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#194

Post by gloria_mundi »

chasd00 wrote: post #135
dgb23 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that everything which broadcasts/asserts routing decisions in a network (any layer) is deceptively simple and potentially dangerous.

> deceptively simple and potentially dangerous Also, there's not a lot of people keeping the whole thing running. iirc there's only like 13 or 14 root DNS servers on earth.

There are 13 root name server addresses, but most (all?) of these use anycast, i.e. there are actually several servers with the same address, and your traffic will usually be routed to the one closest to you. There are over 1500 root name servers.

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#195

Post by parentheses »

jvns wrote: post #159
tristor wrote: post #30

I don't agree with this article. I think DNS is something few people take the time to learn, but it's not actually hard to learn. One of the great things about DNS is that the system itself will tell you about it's internal state in response to queries. It's very easy to inspect a DNS server for a known zone and understand how it works, and there's very good tooling that's free and widely available to do this (like d…

Hello! I wrote this post and I have a couple of things to say about this "DNS is not actually hard" take. It took me many years to feel totally comfortable debugging DNS problems, and I wrote this post to explain why I think it was hard for me. I also used to think that "no, actually, it's easy!" was an encouraging response to "this is hard to learn". And I kind of get it! I love DNS! I think it is surprisingly simpl…

jvns, your articles and conversational writing style are great. I hear you saying "'X is hard' is a way to not lose a reader by insulting their intelligence". My immediate reaction is "'X is easy' is a reminder that things that look hard upon first examination can be quite easy".

I think in general this level of "kid-gloves" is overall unhealthy for society. It encourages mental weakness.

At the same time, I understand that your aim is to reach as large an audience as possible so your educational material can have max impact. For this reason, I can justify you having this stance. That said, I don't think it applies globally.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#196

Post by emmelaich »

jvns wrote: post #159
tristor wrote: post #30

I don't agree with this article. I think DNS is something few people take the time to learn, but it's not actually hard to learn. One of the great things about DNS is that the system itself will tell you about it's internal state in response to queries. It's very easy to inspect a DNS server for a known zone and understand how it works, and there's very good tooling that's free and widely available to do this (like d…

Hello! I wrote this post and I have a couple of things to say about this "DNS is not actually hard" take. It took me many years to feel totally comfortable debugging DNS problems, and I wrote this post to explain why I think it was hard for me. I also used to think that "no, actually, it's easy!" was an encouraging response to "this is hard to learn". And I kind of get it! I love DNS! I think it is surprisingly simpl…

Perfect response!

My own response to "X is actually hard to learn" is ... compared to what?

   1. compared to your first impressions?
   2. compared to general opinions that you're aware of?
   3. are you talking about general principles or deep down stuff?
   4. are you talking about the learning curve?  Is it irregular? Steep? Shallow?
"X is not hard to learn" is ultimately a pretty empty statement.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#197

Post by readonthegoapp »

i had hella trouble with it, but not just it - all the related topics - reverse dns/proxy setups, 10 ways to configure it/them, cname flattening and the 15 ways to configure that, the 15 ways you can do it with cloudflare or not, dis/advantages of all those setups/combinations/permutations, etc.

doubt a course could teach me half of what i would need to know in some reasonable amount of time - say, two or three months.

but open to the idea.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#198

Post by emmelaich »

jvns wrote: post #159
tristor wrote: post #30

I don't agree with this article. I think DNS is something few people take the time to learn, but it's not actually hard to learn. One of the great things about DNS is that the system itself will tell you about it's internal state in response to queries. It's very easy to inspect a DNS server for a known zone and understand how it works, and there's very good tooling that's free and widely available to do this (like d…

Hello! I wrote this post and I have a couple of things to say about this "DNS is not actually hard" take. It took me many years to feel totally comfortable debugging DNS problems, and I wrote this post to explain why I think it was hard for me. I also used to think that "no, actually, it's easy!" was an encouraging response to "this is hard to learn". And I kind of get it! I love DNS! I think it is surprisingly simpl…

My own hassles with DNS, some of which are mentioned.

    1. windows and apache httpd and others cache things
       for a long time, seemingly forever.
    2. The 'A' record is used in case of missing MX records. Who knew that?
    3. (in the olden days) confusion with winbios and other naming schemes
    4. The defn of 'authoritative'
    5. the misleading semantics of 'domain' in resolv.conf
    6. (minor) the casual use of CNAME to mean alias, whereas it fact
       means the opposite and is used to refer to the record, not the name.
    7. That DNS can use tcp/53.  The number of misconfigured firewalls I've
       dealt with argh.
    8. Split vs forwarding DNS.  e.g. impact on the .dev
       domain.
    9. The urge of some to put underscores in their names.
       I believe that some (early?) implementations allowed
       them.
    10. Someone putting in a lower 'serial' in named.conf and
        the struggle to restore sanity.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#199

Post by mekoka »

tristor wrote: post #30

I don't agree with this article. I think DNS is something few people take the time to learn, but it's not actually hard to learn. One of the great things about DNS is that the system itself will tell you about it's internal state in response to queries. It's very easy to inspect a DNS server for a known zone and understand how it works, and there's very good tooling that's free and widely available to do this (like d…

> I don't agree with this article.

But you address none of the article's points. You're basically disagreeing with the title. And I'd say that your answer seems to conflate DNS is hard and DNS is hard to learn.

> It just takes some effort and time to learn.

How much effort, how much time? Many people in these threads say that they learned by implementing a server. Some mention that it only took them some months to grasp, but then just echo in unison that "once you understand it, it's actually pretty easy". So can we agree that for something as ubiquitous and conceptually simple, it's actually hard to learn?

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#200

Post by sitzkrieg »

jvns wrote: post #159
tristor wrote: post #30

I don't agree with this article. I think DNS is something few people take the time to learn, but it's not actually hard to learn. One of the great things about DNS is that the system itself will tell you about it's internal state in response to queries. It's very easy to inspect a DNS server for a known zone and understand how it works, and there's very good tooling that's free and widely available to do this (like d…

Hello! I wrote this post and I have a couple of things to say about this "DNS is not actually hard" take. It took me many years to feel totally comfortable debugging DNS problems, and I wrote this post to explain why I think it was hard for me. I also used to think that "no, actually, it's easy!" was an encouraging response to "this is hard to learn". And I kind of get it! I love DNS! I think it is surprisingly simpl…

i thought to post about how i thought "dns looks fairly straightforward" (which i guess it is on paper) then learned all the nuances over the years of maintaining a few services across a few domains and debugging network issues as a networking fw dev. i paused and the difference is perfectly between the the parent and grandparent post really.

some things seem deceptively easy and you can get by for years on basic features. then it happens, you try something new you learned you can do with $THING , add to it and things start to break and you dig in and realize you never fundamentally understood how the basic features that got you here worked. and thats ok

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