[dns-wg] Secondary service on ns.ripe.net for reverse delegations.

As there was very little response to Jim's posting I am replying  
(hoping to stimulate further discussion) to his post as an individual  
interested in DNS and it's stability and after having removed my RIPE  
NCC hat.

On May 14, 2007, at 12:25 PM, Jim Reid wrote:

> On May 14, 2007, at 10:20, Jørgen Hovland wrote:
>
>> I hope this does not become mandatory, only optionally or  
>> discontinue it.
>> A very few amount of LIRs would have to send a zonefile in the  
>> size of (2^96 ) * 32 * 4 * 20 bytes to ns.ripe.net if it becomes  
>> mandatory.
>
> Let's step back. Slave service for reverse zones was something the  
> NCC has been doing since the dawn of time. In the early days,  
> connectivity was sometimes erratic, bandwidth was limited, lame  
> delegations were common and DNS skills were worse than they are  
> today. It made sense to have a robust and stable DNS platform and  
> the NCC was in the position to provide that service. That was then.  
> But this is now. The environment has changed. And there's less  
> reliance on reverse DNS lookups these days too, even more so in an  
> IPv6 world.
>
> So the questions for the WG should be IMO:
>
> * Is there value in having the NCC provide DNS service for big/ 
> important reverse zones?
>

Yes I think that this adds stability to the reverse dns, although I  
would say it is not as critical as it once was.


> * If the answer to the above question is yes, under what  
> conditions? ie What do we mean by big or important?

I would class them as those allocations which encompass large amounts  
of address space (relatively within ipv4 and ipv6 respectivley)  
probably taking the largest normal allocation sizes and hitting the  
nearest bit boundary for reverse delegation would be sufficient.

> * If the answer is still yes, should this service be compulsory or  
> optional? And under what conditions would optional use become  
> compulsory and vice versa?
>

I think it should be optional under all circumstances. The knowledge  
of DNS and it's stability has been greatly improved in the past  
decade so I don't see any issues with moving to an optional model as  
opposed to the current mandatory in some cases model.


> * If the answer to the orginal question is no, what, if anything,  
> does the NCC do about things like lame delegations for reverse  
> zones and the operational problems these cause the NCC?
>

Well of course the NCC have a seperate project to notify and report  
on lame delegations expect more news, statistics and notifications  
(if you have lame servers) within the next six months.

--
Brett Carr