[dns-wg] DNS Lameness Checking Proposal

At 3:37 PM +0200 8/8/06, Brett Carr wrote:
>As per the dns-wg Action point 52.3 from RIPE 52
>
>"post questions and proposal to wg mailing list on how to deal with lame
>delegations when either the NCC is responsible for maintaining the parent or
>for running a (secondary) server for the child that is or is about to become
>delegated lame due to an unavailable *xfr source."
>
>Please find attached "dnslamecheckAug2006.txt" a proposal on how the RIPE
>NCC should test for lameness and what the resulting actions could be.
>
>Your feedback and discussion on this proposal is welcomed.

I can't resist dwelling in lameness.

I'll throw out a few ideas at a non-detail level.

One is that I'd like to see a plan to measure the success of the 
efforts.  More or less, how big is the problem and what dent is being 
made.  This will help decide if the work is worth the payoff.

Two is to clear up "one email per server."  The average number of 
zones per server is higher in the reverse space than forward space (a 
/20 translates into a bunch of /24's).  I think you should look at 
what you want to present to an admin from their point of view.  Not 
just for their benefit, but also to make interactions more manageable 
for you.

I think is it beneficial to just observe and report lameness, maybe 
there's no need to remove lame delegations for this to have a 
benefit.  I don't see any mention of what the plan is for zones that 
remain lame.  Do you just want to let them be, or do you want to 
"enforce" non-lameness?

Three is remove any specificity about "A or AAAA" - just call them 
address records.  And make it clear that the testing is network-layer 
protocol independent.

Four is what do you do about failed lookups of address records for 
name servers?  Like, no response as opposed to NXDOMAIN?  Without an 
IP address, you may still have to track a lame NS record, as opposed 
to a lame NS-A[AAA] combination.

Five, what about anycasted servers?  It's possible that a zone may 
have no available servers in some regions (because of routing 
effects), but be okay in other locations.  Will all testing be done 
from one location?
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Edward Lewis                                                +1-571-434-5468
NeuStar

Soccer/Futbol. IPv6.  Both have lots of 1's and 0's and have a hard time
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