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Date:      Tue, 30 Apr 2002 14:06:15 -0700
From:      Jared Rhine <jared@wordzoo.com>
To:        "Forrest W. Christian" <forrestc@imach.com>
Cc:        Peter Brezny <pbrezny@purplecat.net>, freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Help host resolution mixup.
Message-ID:  <87pu0gsxq0.wl@badger.wordzoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <20020430100204.B33246-100000@workhorse.imach.com>
References:  <NEBBIGLHNDFEJMMIEGOOMEBIFBAA.pbrezny@purplecat.net> <20020430100204.B33246-100000@workhorse.imach.com>

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[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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