[dns-wg] request about RIPE vs. ISP and RFC 1912

On 15 Oct 2010, at 16:23, thoma spolnik wrote:

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

Yeah. I think we all realised you had made a typo. :-)

> 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.

Right. So why are you continuing to do business with these bozos?  
Aside from your reverse DNS entries, it's clear their customer service  
and clue levels leave plenty of scope for improvement. Economic  
Darwinism should take care of this problem. I don't think RIPE needs  
to intervene in that natural process.

> 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'm not so sure about that. It looks to me that your ISP has realised  
you consider reverse DNS to be important and have decided this is a  
business opportunity they want to exploit. :-) Quite a few ISPs charge  
customers more for static IP addresses. Not because it costs the ISP  
more. But because their customers value having the same fixed IP  
address. Your ISP is applying the same thinking.

Most ISPs will bundle reverse DNS with their base offering. You've  
chosen one who doesn't. If you can't convince them to provide the  
service which meets your requirements, find someone else who does.  
Easy for me to say...

You might also have a claim against them for false advertising or  
breach of contract if what they're providing doesn't match what was  
offered. As you already know it will be hard to run your own mail  
server if it doesn't have a PTR record.

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

That's not what I said Thomas.

I'm fairly sure RIPE does expect a good quality from reverse lookups.  
And many on the people on this list do a lot of work to make sure that  
happens. Not that I speak for them or RIPE of course...

It's just that this quality or expectation is not underpinned by a  
policy document. If there's a need for that, anyone is welcome to  
develop a document or suggest a policy. The RIPE policy development  
process is open to all. So far nobody sees this as a priority or  
something worth doing. Perhaps your email will prove me wrong.

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

The short answer to that is no. There's no mandatory standard or  
policy on the Internet which says this and no protocol police to  
enforce it either.

We might well be moving to an Internet where working reverse DNS is  
the exception: think stateless autoconfiguration for IPv6.

>> 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 :(

Not at all Thomas. Your English is far, far better than my German.  
Which says more about me than it does about you. :-) The use of "IP"  
instead of "IP address" is one of life's little niggles which annoys  
me. "PIN number" is another. Yes, I need to get out more...