Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cica!iuvax!rutgers!njin!princeton!twg.com!david
From: david@twg.com (David S. Herron)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: A plea for care when faking top-level domains
Message-ID: <7672@gollum.twg.com>
Date: 30 Jul 90 17:21:31 GMT
References: <1990Jul22.233936.2568@mel.dit.csiro.au> <1990Jul25.041622.15179@mlb.semi.harris.com> <1990Jul25.054936.25540@mel.dit.csiro.au> <1990Jul25.223636.22744@mlb.semi.harris.com>
Reply-To: david@twg.com (David S. Herron)
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Wollongong Group, Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 37

So it's fair to summarize that BIND has a problem in that it
returns the same answer to any questioner regardless of where
that questioner is.

There are many reasons why a site would like to return different
answers depending on where the questioner is.  For instance:

-- Giving out different lists of MX records for hosts on the LAN
   than is given to hosts outside.  Normally MX records are orderd
   as so:
		IN MX 0 mail-box-host.dom.ain
		IN MX 10 near-by-gate.dom.ain
		IN MX 100 other-gate.dom.ain
   And this happens to work.  But anybody sending mail to the interior
   domain names will pass through at least one timeout, assuming they
   aren't allowed to SMTP directly to mail-box-host.dom.ain.  This slows
   down the world needlessly ...

-- A different ordering of A records for multi homed hosts depending
   on where the questioner is.

-- Different ordering, or lists of, NS records.

etc

As I recall there's a mandated syntax/grammar for nameserver information
which doesn't allow this stuff to be described.  And that BIND is
required to follow that grammar.

Oh well..


-- 
<- David Herron, an MMDF weenie, <david@twg.com>
<- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <david@ms.uky.edu>
<-
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