[dns-wg] [dns-operations] Additional information about the RIPE NCC reverse DNS issue

Dear DNS working group,

Shane's explanation of the zonelet exchange system is correct. This
system was adopted by the RIRs in the early days of resource transfers.
The RIR with the majority of address space in a given IPv4 XXX/8 of
address space is responsible for running the corresponding
XXX.in-addr.arpa zone. If any of this address space is registered in
another RIR, then the majority RIR needs to get delegation information
from that RIR, and this is done by importing "zonelets", which are
similar to zone files, and contain NS and DS records, and perhaps glue
records for in-bailiwick name server names.

The original code for this at the RIPE NCC was indeed written in perl.
However, that code is not in use any more. It has since been replaced
with newer code, for a variety of reasons. However, it still produces
and consumes zonelets for exchanging delegation information with other RIRs.

The zonelet system is quite simple in many ways, and I can appreciate
why it was chosen back in the day. However, it is pull-based, and so
delegation information takes time to propagate. In the event of an
error, it similarly takes a while before correct information can be
republished.

Shane mentioned the use of DNAME records, but I don't think it's the
right solution for this case. DNAME records alias a name and everything
below it to another name. But here, we don't quite want aliases. We just
want the NS and DS records of delegations from another RIRs merged into
the parent zone we operate.

We are working with the other RIRs to look at the system, to see if we
can make it more robust, and perhaps faster, so that delegation
information can be exchanged more quickly, and in the event of errors,
also corrected more quickly.

Regards,
Anand Buddhdev
RIPE NCC

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