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From: he@spurv.runit.sintef.no (Havard Eidnes)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.domains
Subject: Re: follow-up to clouso.crim.ca. as bogus root name server.
Message-ID: <1990Nov16.174337.6518@ugle.unit.no>
Date: 16 Nov 90 17:43:37 GMT
References: <9011142027.AA00555@bond.crim.ca>
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Reply-To: he@spurv.runit.sintef.no (Havard Eidnes)
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Organization: Computing center at the University of Trondheim, Norway
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In article <9011142027.AA00555@bond.crim.ca>, kinley@BOND.CRIM.CA (J. Darren Kinley) writes:
|> 
|> 5. Am I finished?
|> 
|>    I received a mail from someone on another Canadian regional
|>    network. Apparently, before having a connected status on the
|>    core, some admins on this particular network found that naming
|>    clouso.crim.ca. as a "." name server solved their immediate 
|>    problems.
|> 
|>    Perhaps some name servers are still configured in this way.
|>    As it turns out, my primary assumption must now be discarded
|>    (sigh) and I have possibly/probably not seen the end of the
|>    problems.

I think there is a less offensive workaround in such a situation,
namely to set up their name server as an unregistered secondary 
name server for e.g. the "ca" top-level domain. The assumption is
that they do not have IP connectivity to anywhere outside Canada, 
so the fact that looking up names on the "outside" is impossible
is probably less of an issue.

Sure, BIND will yell after a while that it's unable to contact the 
root name servers. I don't know (or remember) whether it will still 
work, though -- it's too long since I was in this situation myself, 
and BIND has changed quite a bit since then. If BIND stops working 
in the absence of connectivity to a root name server, IMHO I'd say 
BIND deserves fixing.

- Havard