Root Server Operators (Re: What are they smoking?)

Wed Sep 17 16:00:50 UTC 2003

Aaron Dewell wrote:

> What if there was a requirement to add something that would work as a
> wildcard, but also be easily detected as a wildcard with one additional
> query?  thisisawildcard.*.com IN A 127.0.0.1 or something.  One additional
> query, and applications can decide whether they want a wildcard result or
> not.  That could be added to spam filters to make them work again.

One additional query is the problem. For example, a mail server running 
sendmail with a bind recursor. If sendmail has to check for the 
wildcard, it will have to check for *.com as well as example.com and do 
a set comparison to see if example.com is a wildcard. For every new 
process, this has to be repeated, doubling the number of queries on the 
recusor.

If, however, the recursor performed the processes, caching *.com for the 
TTL and recognizing that all domains resolving to its set is also a 
wildcard, and caching/marking them as such, then the resolver can 
request the record, without wildcards, on behalf of sendmail. This means 
one query to the recursor who has properly cached 1) the domain record, 
2) if the domain record is a wildcard, and 3) the wildcard set. This is 
about the minimal number of queries that can be performed across the 
board. Applications that want to accept the wildcard would ask the 
record normally (accepting wildcard).

-Jack

Root Server Operators (Re: What *are* they smoking?)

Root Server Operators (Re: What are they smoking?)