At 4/21/02 12:07 AM, William X Walsh wrote: >Friday, Friday, April 19, 2002, 1:00:31 PM, Jonathan McDowell wrote: > >> Is there a reason why we still have to create host records and yet when >> we do so with a ccTLD domain (a .uk in my case) no glue records are >> added to the zone file? This leads to the situation whereby if one wants >> all domains to have glue with them you have to setup your nameservers >> under a gTLD. This would seem to defeat the purpose of having host >> records in the first place - why are they still around in this somewhat >> broken form? (I'm told ccTLD NS used to get glue added.) > >> Anyone able to shed any light on this? > >There is no need for glue to be added now that the gtld zones are not >served from the same servers as the root zones.
Just so this isn't misleading if taken out of context, you still need (and get) glue records in ccTLDs if the nameservers are under the same ccTLD, of course. For example: $ dig demon.co.uk @ns1.nic.uk. ns ;; ANSWER SECTION: demon.co.uk. 14400 IN NS ns2.demon.net. demon.co.uk. 14400 IN NS ns0.demon.co.uk. demon.co.uk. 14400 IN NS ns1.demon.co.uk. ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns0.demon.co.uk. 14400 IN A 158.152.1.65 ns1.demon.co.uk. 14400 IN A 158.152.1.193 There's glue in there for ns0.demon.co.uk and ns1.demon.co.uk, as required. There's no glue for ns2.demon.net any more (there would have been in olden times), because as you point out, you can get to that separately by a new query from the gtld roots (to be honest I can't really think of any reason why that wasn't possible even when the gTLDs were directly under X.root-servers.net -- was it technically impossible then?). So if the original poster really wants glue records for his .uk domain, he could create .uk nameservers for it, and he'll get the glue. For an exposition on why this might be desirable even beyond saving a lookup or two, see the "Gluelessness" and "Expiring Glue" sections of: http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/notes.html As to the side question of "why does the .uk registry need to have host record entries for gTLD nameservers before you use them", that no longer appears to be true: I was just able to set the nameserver for one of my .co.uk domains to "supermonkey.netscape.com", a nonexistent gTLD nameserver. They've apparently stopped checking gTLD nameserver validity. The .cc, .biz and .info registries do still require that the hostname be entered into a list beforehand ("Registry Nameservers" in the RWI). Perhaps it's just to eliminate typos. Chuck, any insight as to why they're bothering with it? -- Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies "The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was."
