It all started in 2003 when VeriSign – the administrator of Top Level Domains (.com, .net, .org, .tv, .cc) – started a “service” calledSite Finder. This new “service” violated the DNS protocol by returning false IP addresses for non-existent domain (NXDOMAIN) names. Although the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) essentially forced VeriSign to stop the practice, many ISPs have adopted it as a way to boost ad revenue. Sadly, the short-sighted scheme literally breaks the Internet for unwitting customers of ISPs that engage in the despicable activity.
Broken Internet: A Case Study
Canada's largest ISP, Rogers Cable, recently adopted the practice of re-directing non-existent domain names to the IP address of an advertising server it is responsible for. This has had a significant impact on many telecommuting employees that use their laptops to work from home. The following is the sequence of events that one Network Administrator undertook in order to identify this serious problem: