DNS question, null MX records

Wed Dec 16 20:53:20 UTC 2009

On 2009-12-16, at 20:44, Brian Dickson wrote:

> So, how about using sink.arpa. as a(n) MNAME?

That was another imagined use of SINK.ARPA.

> Or perhaps, one of the hosts listed in AS112?

My personal opinion is that there's an operational need for some people to receive an explicit reply from AS112 servers, or at least that a change in current behaviour will have noticeable consequences.

> Does an MNAME really need to be fully qualified?

All names in the DNS are fully-qualified on the wire, regardless of what short-cuts are available in the zone file format understood by particular pieces of software.

> Cute idea:  use the "search" of non-fully-qualified names, to direct bad UPDATE traffic to a very local server, e.g. "ns1" (no dot).

All names in the DNS are fully-qualified on the wire.

> It would also be nice to have a place-holder in DNS that "resolves" (in the loose sense) to an appropriate pre-defined "thing", like the default nameserver for a client, or "yourself" for a resolver.

Beauty is apparently in the eye of the beholder :-)

Joe