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Date:      Wed, 01 May 2002 12:47:11 GMT
From:      "Peter Brezny" <peter@purplecat.net>
To:        Jared Rhine <jared@wordzoo.com>
Cc:        "Forrest W. Christian" <forrestc@imach.com>, Peter Brezny <pbrezny@purplecat.net>, freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Help host resolution mixup.
Message-ID:  <20020501124711.24086.qmail@rack.purplecat.net>
In-Reply-To: <87pu0gsxq0.wl@badger.wordzoo.com> 
References:  <NEBBIGLHNDFEJMMIEGOOMEBIFBAA.pbrezny@purplecat.net> <20020430100204.B33246-100000@workhorse.imach.com> <87pu0gsxq0.wl@badger.wordzoo.com>

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Jared, 

Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation.  This really helps to clarify 
things. 

Yours, 

Peter Brezny
purplecat.net 

Jared Rhine writes: 

> [Forrest == forrestc@imach.com on Tue, 30 Apr 2002 10:11:28 -0600 (MDT)] 
> 
>     Forrest> There is a quite simple explanation for this.  For some
>     Forrest> reason the internic whois database still has the old ip
>     Forrest> addresses for the nameservers. 
> 
> I've had this problem before too. 
> 
> The root cause is there is no protocol is place for the global domain
> registry to push modified information back to registrars.  Local
> registrars do cache whois information, as it would be impractical for them
> to download the whole dataset frequently.  Once they've cached the
> results, there's no way for NetSol (or any other registrar) to know that
> it has been changed by another registrar. 
> 
> So this isn't a NetSol specific problem (as much as I love to hate them).
> At one point after I transferred registrars for a domain that had
> nameservers, I had to contact three different registrars to ask them to
> manually refresh their whois cache.  You should be able to write to NetSol
> to ask them to do that for you. 
> 
> It's getting impractical to do this for every registrar that runs a whois,
> so the general problem is intractable until the registry is able to push
> changes back to the registrars.  I have a script laying around somewhere
> which checks with a list of registrars to see if their information is
> current. 
> 
> I think registrars are used to this situation; when contacted, none of
> them (including netsol) acted confused and whois just started returning
> the correct information sometime later. 
> 
> Also note that this situation doesn't actually break anything related to
> name service.  The global registry ("the root servers") are the
> authoritative answer in all cases and all DNS queries go through that.
> They will always return NS records matching whatever the last registrar
> updated the database with.  Only whois is busted.  It's definitely an
> annoyance, though. 
> 
> PS. ISPs who used the information in whois (as described by one poster)
> instead of what's in the registry itself aren't being very careful.  It's
> easy to query the root nameservers for the current IP instead of using
> whois: 
> 
>   dig @g.gtld-servers.net. yahoo.com soa 
> 
> ; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> @g.gltd-servers.net. yahoo.com soa 
> ; Bad server: g.gltd-servers.net. -- using default server and timer opts
> ; (2 servers found)
> ;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
> ;; got answer:
> ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6
> ;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 5, ADDITIONAL: 5
> ;; QUERY SECTION:
> ;;	yahoo.com, type = SOA, class = IN 
> 
> ;; ANSWER SECTION:
> yahoo.com.		30M IN SOA	hidden-master.yahoo.com. hostmaster.yahoo-inc.com. (
> 					2002043010	; serial
> 					15M		; refresh
> 					5M		; retry
> 					1W		; expiry
> 					10M )		; minimum 
> 
> 
> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
> yahoo.com.		17h33m49s IN NS  ns1.yahoo.com.
> yahoo.com.		17h33m49s IN NS  ns2.yahoo.com.
> yahoo.com.		17h33m49s IN NS  ns3.yahoo.com.
> yahoo.com.		17h33m49s IN NS  ns4.yahoo.com.
> yahoo.com.		17h33m49s IN NS  ns5.yahoo.com. 
> 
> ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
> ns1.yahoo.com.		16h23m48s IN A	66.218.71.63
> ns2.yahoo.com.		16h23m48s IN A	209.132.1.28
> ns3.yahoo.com.		16h23m48s IN A	217.12.4.104
> ns4.yahoo.com.		16h23m48s IN A	63.250.206.138
> ns5.yahoo.com.		16h23m48s IN A	64.58.77.85 
> 
> ;; Total query time: 46 msec
> ;; FROM: badger to SERVER: default -- 127.0.0.1
> ;; WHEN: Tue Apr 30 14:05:57 2002
> ;; MSG SIZE  sent: 27  rcvd: 277 
> 
> -- jared@wordzoo.com 
> 
> War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. -Ambrose Bierce
 

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