"Stefan" == Stefan Paletta <stefanp@cabal1.com> writes:
Stefan> All, good to see nsd make progress (played with it a litte Stefan> while ago, but tinydns continues to serve me best). Oh dear. It seems that the behaviour of tinydns is preventing you from registering domains in some TLDs. That wouldn't appear to be "serving you best", at least not to me anyway. Stefan> Some TLD registries, however, make unreasonable demands Stefan> regarding the behaviour of servers to which they delegate Stefan> zones. Most notably the .fr and .it registries, which Stefan> apparently demand that servers return a Stefan> (non-authoritative!, in the case of .it) referral to the Stefan> root servers when they are lame. These demands are highly Stefan> questionable -to say the least- and are hard and sometimes Stefan> impossible to follow for users of at least tinydns and Stefan> nsd. While I am not speaking on behalf of these registries -- they can do that themselves -- I believe they're acting out of enlightened self-interest. Many people think a registration entitles them to hours of free consultancy from the registry on how to set up and configure their name servers. [I have been in several registries and overheard the helpdesk staff answer floods of these calls.] Expecting a customer to have name servers that answer authoritatively and/or know about the root servers goes a long way to reducing the number of these misdirected requests for help. "Don't come to us until your name servers are working" is not an unreasonable stance IMO. Stefan> I was wondering if RIPE or a group from the RIPE community Stefan> might appeal to those registries and try to make them stop Stefan> acting stupid. First or all, you do not do your cause any good by spreading insults. This is not constructive or helpful. Secondly, you should be aware that it's not for RIPE or the DNS WG to dictate policy to a ccTLD registry -- that's a national matter -- or tell anyone how to run their name servers. How an organisation chooses to operate its infrastructure is up to them. The WG can produce recommendations or a best common practice (eg RIPE-192) but that's it. People are free to accept or reject or ignore that advice as they see fit. If you wish to prepare such a recommendation, go ahead. The matter can be discussed on this list and I'll be happy to arrange discussion time for the subject at future sessions of the WG. As WG chair, I would welcome a wider analysis of the registration policies of the TLD registries in the RIPE region (and beyond?) and try to see if some common guidelines can be established. This could be a worthwhile subject for a WG recommendation. The topic has exercised you, so I think you'd be an ideal candidate to get that work under way. :-) And if I can be provocative, why don't you ask the author of djbdns to make the software do the Right Thing and at least *respond* whenever it gets a query for something it's not authoritative for?