[dns-wg] request about RIPE vs. ISP and RFC 1912, 2.1 [was: request about RIPE vs. ISP and RFC 1921, 2.1]

Hello,

first: Please excuse, there was transposed digits in my question, I mean 
RFC 1912.


> It might be helpful if you said a bit more about the problem(s) which
> encouraged to to ask these questions.

I'm a private customer of a not so small DSL Internet Provider in 
Germany and I use an ADSL2+ internet access product for very small 
companies.

My internet access provider offers an internet access via ADSL with a 
static IP address. The advertising message, as I signed the agreement 
with this company, was: "With this internet access you can run your own 
mail/web servers." ... but without PTR I can not run my own small mail 
server. Since more than a year I discuss with this company about this 
topic without any success.
The 1st level suppport does not understand, what a PTR is and why I need 
it (... btw: This company offers customers with this product (like me) 
an experts hotline ... *no comment*). It was for me impossible to 
contact a person with expert knowledge behind this 1st level support 
wall of stupidness.

After many, many requests I got answers like this from this company: "If 
you would pay more per month, you would get a PTR. Your product is for 
companies with less than 5 members of staff, we don't offer a PTR for 
this product and we don't offer support for your own mail server. But if 
you want a PTR, you can order one of our SDSL products." (btw: I never 
asked for support "how to setup a mail server", because I know enough 
about this.)

You see, there are _only_ commercial interests to avoid a PTR for my 
static IP address.
I checked the IP address range around my own IP address (It is i a 
x.y.0.0-x.y.89.255 net.). Perhaps 2% of ca. 23.000 IP addresses have a PTR.

All internet access products from this company without a static IP 
address have generic PTR.

>> Does or does not RIPE claim the compliance with (basic) RFCs (like RFC
>> 1921, 2.1 - I think it is a basic, that every IP must have a correct
>> PTR record.) for assigned IP nets?
>
> To the best of my knowledge, RIPE (and the NCC) have no policy in this
> area.

It's a pity that RIPE does not expect a good quality of reverse lookups 
for used public IP addresses.

> Note too that RFC1912 is rather old -- the DNS landscape has changed a
> lot since it was written -- and only an INFORMATIONAL. [BIND4 config
> file snippets? Eek!] It's not a sacred text. ISTR the IETF once mumbled
> about updating/replacing RFC1912. Though this might only have happened
> in my imagination. I'm not sure if it's wise to use this RFC as the
> foundations of a RIPE policy. However that is something for the WG to
> decide.

Shure, RFCs are not sacred texts, but for system administrators (like 
me) RFCs are every time a good source to find answers for common 
questions (i.e. How is the syntax for an email address? How works IMAP, 
SMTP, DNS,... protocol? W).

 >> I hope, I found the correct mailing list for my question.

 > You have.

That's fine. So I hope to find an answer. Must an _public_ IP address 
have a PTR or not?

> PS: Please don't say "IP" when you mean "IP address".

I thank you for this hint. Please excuse me, my english is really bad :(

Best regards,
thomas polnik.