Netscape DNS Rant

This note concerns bad error reporting in Netscape.

Here's a snippet of a thread from a Usenet newsgroup. A guy posted a note saying,

Been trying to access the [ATSC site] for about a week now ... without success.

Someone else followed-up,

... "NO DNS ENTRY" ... means it isn't registered as a site ...

Not exactly. Upon being presented with a new host name, the first network transaction of a web browser is to contact the domain name server (DNS) system to perform a name lookup. If you have no connection to the DNS, or a faulty connection, Netscape's alert says

"Netscape is unable to locate the server www.atsc.org The server does not have a DNS entry. Check the server name in the location (URL) and try again."

This represents a failure of Netscape (and many other Internet apps) to give useful diagnostics, the Abort, Retry, Continue syndrome. Failure to contact the DNS is by no means the same as a successful DNS contact that reports a failed lookup. Netscape should report "Cannot contact DNS, perhaps your network connection is faulty." Even more sensible would be for Netscape, upon failing to contact the DNS, to ping your router. If THAT fails, then the network connection has certainly failed, and a suitable alert could be presented.

The situation is entirely analagous to your roommate asking you to dial 411 and obtain the telephone number for the Capitol Theater. You pick up the phone, but there's no dial tone. You report to your roommate, "There's no directory listing for the Capitol Theater."