I'd just like to clarify what the base requirement is for
nameservers. There have been quite a few comments made recently
about what is necessary, and what is not. There have been some
generalizations that, while no doubt made in good faith, I consider
to be at best special cases and therefore misleading, and at worst
just plain false. I acknowledge that some registrars may be more
stringent than others, but if it's much more than the following
then you may want to look for another registrar.
Note that below I make reference to the registrar's database. This
is *not* the whois database, but is used in the construction of the
whois database.
These are observations I've made through dealing with a few registrars
in both hemispheres.
- nameservers must be placed on machines with static IPs. This isn't
enforced, but you're going to run into trouble if you try it with
a dynamic IP, no matter how long that dhcp server may have been
serving it up to you
- for the common TLDs (.com, .net, .org, etc) there are two registry
databases. One is for North America, one for Europe. Which one your
domain is in depends on who you use as a registrar. A given
nameserver/IP can exist in one and only one of these databases. So
if you have a nameserver that serves up domains from both NA and
European registrars, you need two IPs and two hostnames for the
same machine. An example of this is ns2na.gno.org vs ns3eu.taiga.ca --
this is the same machine, but one is for each registry database.
(There may be other regions besides these two, but I've not encountered
them.) (Also, don't read too much into the .ca machine above. CDNNET
uses yet another database, so this can result in some pathological
cases which bypass the above restriction. Although taiga.ca is not
in the European registry, ns3eu.taiga.ca is. Go figure.)
- there is normally a one-one mapping of hostname to IP in the registrar's
database. Consequently, you cannot in general use an IP for more than
one nameserver.
- When you first register a nameserver, you must provide an IP. If the
nameserver is already registered, then it can be referred to in new
domain registrations by name (without specifying an IP).
- If you want to use a nameserver for more than one domain (very common),
then
register it once in its primary domain (ns.example.com) and then reference
it in your other domain zone files and whois entries.
I don't know what the implications are when moving a domain containing
registered nameservers from one registrar to another, when those
registrars span regional boundries.
Note that regional boundries have nothing to do with where the domains
are being used -- it's only relevent to where the registar is located.
I hope this helps, and is not too off-topic for this list.
--
Devin Reade <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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