Re: Should a nameserver know about itself?

[Jim Reid]

>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Andrews <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

    >> Right.  Now that we've gotten that out of the way, can anyone
    >> suggest a *reliable* test for verifying that a nameserver is
    >> responding ( which is seperate from verifying that a nameserver
    >> is authoritatively serving a given zone )

    Mark>       Send it a non-recursive query.  A nameserver should
    Mark> always answer even if it is just a header containing
    Mark> refused, servfail or notimp.

Yes, but there is one notorious DNS implementation that doesn't do
that. It fails to return any answer -- not even a referral for . -- if
it's asked for a name that it isn't authoritative for.