At 10:23 -0400 10/12/2001, Stefan Jeglinski opined:
>Also, is it my imagination, or are there fewer PTR records as time 
>goes on anyway? In my admittedly minuscule sampling, it almost seems 
>like fewer and fewer PTR records exist, perhaps because admins 
>somehow think the "anonymity" will keep them low on the radar w.r.t. 
>crackers?

I think the decline in PTR records probably has more to do with 
fundamental changes in the way IP addresses are allocated. It used to 
be that IPs were controlled in large monolithic blocks, and it was 
unusual for an IP to be associated with more than one domain name. 
Control of the authoritative DNS for the PTR record was very likely 
to reside with the owner of the machine associated with that IP.

Now, IP blocks are fragmented and resold at many levels. IP sharing 
is common. My main IP address has something like 18 domain names 
associated with it. I do not own the delegation for the IP address, 
and obtaining that delegation would cost me a significant amount of 
money for zero increase in functionality (since any authentication 
scheme that used reverse lookups would only stand a 1 in 18 chance of 
success).

Fortunately, my ISP does provide a PTR record, even if it is a 
hideously ugly one.

--Ron

-- 
Ron Risley      ||   ...the poet's pen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  ||   Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
www.risley.net  ||   A local habitation and a name.

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