Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!intercon!news From: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp Subject: Re: rerouting to an absolute address Message-ID: <26C0380D.19C0@intercon.com> Date: 8 Aug 90 16:04:29 GMT References: <1990Aug6.230109.4220@ibmpa> <1990Aug7.081953.6108@terminator.cc.umich.edu> <1990Aug7.134658.23389@Octopus.COM> Sender: usenet@intercon.com (USENET The Magnificent) Reply-To: amanda@mermaid.intercon.com (Amanda Walker) Organization: InterCon Systems Corporation, Herndon, VA Lines: 24 In article <1990Aug7.134658.23389@Octopus.COM>, pete@Octopus.COM (Pete Holzmann) writes: > If foo.com is not directly connected to the Internet, then it cannot answer > any queries regarding anything.else.foo.com. peter, are you saying that > this is a vvvvv wrong use of domains? Every domain *must* have two machines acting as name servers for it on the Internet (a primary and a backup), even if (a) neither machine is actually a member of that domain and (b) no machine in that domain is directly connected via IP to the Internet. Normally, the way this case is handled is to advertise a wildcard MX record for the whole domain. INTERCON.COM is an example: our only links to anyone else are via UUCP, but our name servers are uunet and seismo, both of which are on the Internet, but neither of which are part of our domain. They advertise an MX for *.INTERCON.COM. If there are no nameservers for a domain that are reachable from the Internet, that domain doesn't exist. Period. Mail will bounce. People will be mad at you, and it will be all your fault. -- Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation