The NANOG list today was the virtual equivalent of a nearby nocturnal car alarm:  "panix.com has been hijacked!" (whoo-WEE, whoo-WEE); "those jerks at VeriSign!" (duhhhhh-WHEEP, duhhhh-WHEEP); "no one's home at Melbourne IT!" (HANK, HANK, HANK, HANK).

Finally, on Monday morning in Australia, the always-competent and helpful Bruce Tonkin calmly fixed the situation.  So the rest of us can get some sleep now.

But as we nod off in the quietness, let's consider just exactly what happened here.  A savvy NY ISP had its domain name hijacked and moved from Dotster to Melbourne.  Somehow this happened without either Dotster or Melbourne getting any official notifications.  As a result, email directed to panix.com domains was redirected to Canada.  VeriSign said that the registrars in question would have to get involved in order for the situation to be reversed.  Melbourne IT was closed and seemed to have no emergency contact information. 

This was a very bad day for panix.com.  And, I think, a bad day for Melbourne IT (but thank goodness for Bruce).

Panix.com should have had its names locked down so that changing their nameserver information required a login to the the registrar.  (Panix said they did do this, but somehow this status was changed by someone -- maybe the hijacker.)  Melbourne IT should have been reachable.

Some on the NANOG list have suggested that ISPs should cooperate to point to the right information without waiting for registrars/registries to tell them what to do.  This is, of course, the secret to the DNS:  ICANN isn't in charge; the ISPs are.  If they decided not to point to whatever ICANN denominates as "authoritative" information, no one could say Boo to them.  It's up to the ISPs what to do.

On the other hand, I think the real lesson here is that customer service (24/7, someone answering the phone and dealing with nocturnal virtual car alarms) is everything.  It is, in fact, law. 

This may seem like an overstatement to you.  But look at it this way:  how often do you see a cop on the streets online, walking by and noticing that something's amiss?  You don't.  You're online anyway, because the law of customer service is taking care of you.  Most things get resolved without the involvement of any central authority, whether it's ICANN, the FTC, the FCC, or a federal judge.

I hope that panix users are feeling confident in panix today -- they should, because panix did everything humanly possible to fix this situation.  And peaceful acclamation to all customer service people out there.  You're the law and we believe in you.