Just came across something that I'm rather curious about. I'm sure it won't affect too many people on here, and it's not really an OpenSRS related matter...I've just been unable to find a paticular answer anywhere else.
We have been registering domains with DNS servers of nsX.businessmedia.co.uk, where X is a number identifying different servers (eg. ns0.businessmedia.co.uk). We also have a set of DNS servers running as hostX.irl.com. The WHOIS records for the irl.com nameservers looks like: Server Name: HOST1.IRL.COM IP Address: 194.130.13.17 Registrar: TUCOWS, INC. Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org ....but the WHOIS records for the .co.uk servers looks like: Server Name: NS0.BUSINESSMEDIA.CO.UK Registrar: TUCOWS, INC. Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org No IP address? So I started poking further. Basically, it seems as if any DNS server ending in a TLD has an IP address beside it, and any country level DNS server does not. This wouldn't be of such concern to me, except that the root servers glue records reflect the same: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- # dig host1.irl.com a @a.gtld-servers.net ; <<>> DiG 8.2 <<>> host1.irl.com a @a.gtld-servers.net ; (1 server found) ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch ;; got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6 ;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 3 ;; QUERY SECTION: ;; host1.irl.com, type = A, class = IN ;; ANSWER SECTION: host1.irl.com. 2D IN A 194.130.13.17 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- # dig ns0.businessmedia.co.uk a @a.gtld-servers.net ; <<>> DiG 8.2 <<>> ns0.businessmedia.co.uk a @a.gtld-servers.net ; (1 server found) ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch ;; got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6 ;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 13, ADDITIONAL: 13 ;; QUERY SECTION: ;; ns0.businessmedia.co.uk, type = A, class = IN ;; NO ANSWER ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Through some usage of tcpdump, it seems that if a domain has the two ..co.uk's as it's nameservers, anytime DNS for that domain is queried, it must query our servers first to obtain the A records for the nameservers, rather than with the hostX.irl.com nameservers, where only the root nameservers are queried. The worry for me, is if I place businessmedia.co.uk on ns0.businessmedia.co.uk and ns1.businessmedia.co.uk, and say we have a long power outage. Is that domain ever going to recover without me changing the nameservers to TLDs? How are other resolving nameservers going to find the nsX.businessmedia.co.uk A records if the 2 nameservers are not available? Hopefully someone out there will know the answer to this one. -- Rick Hodger DomainsBuy.com
