[enum-wg] Name "ripe" in the e164.arpa zone

[Anand Buddhdev anandb@localhost]

Dear Colleagues,

A question has been raised on why the resource record "ripe.e164.arpa"
exists in the e164.arpa zone.

Our DNS provisioning tools, which read the information held in objects
in the RIPE Database and generate the appropriate DNS zone files, create
this extra name "ripe" in the zone for the benefit of the other Regional
Internet Registries (RIRs). The provisioning system generates zone files
mainly for the in-addr.arpa zones, and some address ranges from one /8
allocation are actually allocated to other registries. So each registry
generates "zonelets" that are transferred to the majority RIR of a
particular /8.

The tools that transfer these zonelets rely on this extra piece of
information in the TXT record for consistency checks. Similarly,
AfriNIC, ARIN and APNIC also generate zones for their /8 allocations
with records named "afrinic", "arin" and "apnic".

The e164.arpa zone does not really need this "ripe" record in it, since
it is not shared among the registries in any way. However, because the
e164.arpa zone is generated automatically from the RIPE Database by the
same tools, it automatically receives this extra name. Currently, there
is no way to stop the zone receiving this extra entry. But it has no
negative effect on the zone or on ENUM operations.

Regards,

-- 
Anand Buddhdev
DNS Services Manager
RIPE NCC