On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 9:44 AM, Richard McClary <[email protected]>
wrote:
> The trailing dots on the LHS were there from when records including
> Faxcore were imported first from AT&T (which may have put them in
> somewhat automatically in their web interface) to Internap, and then
> from Internap to Cogent.

 That seems to translate as, "We have no idea why those records are there."
 :)

> SO, to summarize, before my next test, I should:

 I don't have enough information to tell you what you "should" do.

 But I suspect your DNS records aren't doing what you think they are.

 In standard notation, a fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) ends in a dot.
 If there is no dot, it's assumed to be a relative domain name.  For
relative domain names, the origin and/or search path can/will get involved.

 <www.microsoft.com.> is an FQDN.  <microsoft.com.> is an FQDN.  <com.> is
an FQDN.  <.> is an FQDN.

 <faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org.> is an FQDN.

 <faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org> is *not* an FQDN.

 <faxcore1.mwro> is *not* an FQDN.

 <faxcore1.mwro.> *is* an FQDN.

 So when you see:

faxcore1.mwro     A   63.85.204.151
faxcore1.mwro.    MX  10  faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org.

... I suspect the computer sees:

faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org.    A   63.85.204.151
faxcore1.mwro.              MX  10  faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org.

  While the name <faxcore1.mwro.> is valid according to the DNS protocol,
in the public DNS structure, it's not delegated from the root, so nobody
will find it.  To wit:

> *dig +noall +ans ANY faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org. @auth1.dns.cogentco.com.*
faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org. 600    IN      A       63.85.204.151
> *dig +noall +ans ANY faxcore1.mwro. @auth1.dns.cogentco.com.*
>

  I have no idea if this is related to your other issues.  But you should
prolly get a handle on your DNS even if this is unrelated.

  Oh, I bet I know what's going on.  The RFCs say that in the absence of an
MX record, an SMTP implementation should try for an A record, and if it
gets one, assume that is the mail exchanger.  So when DNS clients try for
an MX record for <faxcore1.mwro.aspca.org.>, they don't get one, but then
try for an A record, and succeed.  The bogus <faxcore1.mwro.> record never
gets involved.

-- Ben

~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/>  ~

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