North American Network Operators Group
Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical

Re: Fwd: The Root has got an A record

  • From: Janet Sullivan
  • Date: Mon Oct 10 11:57:18 2005 
Joe Blanchard wrote:
Hmm, B has the same one, and C has all the other Roots listed
as A records. Would/could this really cause any sort of an issue
though?
Its not records like

a.public-root.net. 369 IN A 205.189.71.2

that are the issue. That's as it should be. (Well... if you accept that public-root should be. ;-) )

This record, however, is not correct:

. 172800 IN A 57.67.193.188


That is the root.

For those of you who need reminding on how DNS works...

. the root
/ | \
/ | \
/ | \
.com .net .org top level domains
| |
| |
yahoo bgp4 domain names
| |
| |
www sea host (or subdomain)


The trailing dot is left out in day to day use when we use URLS like www.yahoo.com - however, its really www.yahoo.com. - note the dot on the end. That's the root.

Having an A record for the root is one better than having an A record for, say, .edu. In other words, this shouldn't work:

[aura.sea.bgp4.net] (ciscogeek) nslookup . a.public-root.net
Server: a.public-root.net
Address: 205.189.71.2#53

Name: .
Address: 57.67.193.188


As for what issues it could cause, I'm not sure. I can't think of any off hand, but who knows what poorly written application may not be expecting an A record for the root.

For most people though, it doesn't matter, because they aren't using public-root in the first place.

I now return you to the Cogent/Level3 thread.