The National Communications Commission (NCC) has stated that the public Domain Name System (DNS) providers, such as Google, IBM/Quad9 and Cloudflare plan to jointly hold the DNS FLAG DAY on February 1 2019 so as to test the compliance of EDNS (Extension Mechanisms for DNS). Where users of aforesaid public DNS visit a website that does not support EDNS on the DNS FLAG DAY, the users may suffer difficulty in parsing the IP address string of the said website. In other words, the users may not be able to visit the website or the network speed will slow down when visiting the site. In response to this issue, NCC and TWNIC are offering the public certain solutions.
NCC clarified that DNS is an internet service and as a distributed database that converts a domain name into an IP address, DNS enables users to enter the domain name on the web server to immediately check and access required data. This year, a number of public DNS providers, such as Google (DNS service address: 8.8.8.8), IBM/Quad9 (DNS service address: 9.9.9.9), Cloudflare (DNS service address: 1.1.1.1) and Cisco’s OpenDNS (DNS service address: 208.67.222.222), will take part in the DNS FLAG DAY (for detailed information, please refer to https://dnsflagday.net/). Consequently, if the aforesaid public DNS service providers do not have a back-up mechanism, users may experience difficulty when visiting websites of current DNS agreement (old version) on the DNS FLAG DAY.
NCC emphasized that, when using aforesaid public DNS services, the public will be required to adjust the setting themselves, affecting about 8% to 9% of all DNS users. To prevent the occurrence of unexpected errors during public DNS providers’ implementation of EDNS compliance tests, which may affect users’ experience of browsing specific websites, TWNIC provides not only solutions to domain name managers, ISP and general users, but also DNS setting related counseling services by e-mail. In the meantime, NCC has also requested Type I telecommunications operators and ISP operators to operate in coordination with relevant measures. For details in regard to solutions provided by TWNIC, please visit the TWNIC website at https://blog.twnic.net.tw/2019/01/29/2384/.
