[dns-operations] IPv6 PTR records

[Andrew Sullivan]

On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 10:16:25AM -0500, Wayne MacLaurin wrote:
> 
> I seem to recall a heated debate at the RIPE meeting in Rome back in
> November.  It would seem that most people wish PTR was never
> invented and it causes more grief than its worth.  A few folks
> seemed to be resigned to having to do PTR for MTAs and other
> services that have built-in requirements but most would like to see
> the entire concept go away….

For what it's worth, there was a failed attempt some years ago to
produce an RFC from the DNSOP IETF working group that would address
this topic.  The document was never advanced from the working group.
(It was, however, successful in achieving the non-goal of causing Dean
Anderson to write an Internet Draft.  Also, apparently, of causing his
undying enmity for me.  So there are downsides and up.  I'll leave it
to the reader to decide which is which.)  The final versions of that
draft can be found under
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/dnsop/draft-ietf-dnsop-reverse-mapping-considerations/.
An ancestor document, with a more contentious name, was
http://tools.ietf.org/wg/dnsop/draft-ietf-dnsop-inaddr-required/.

A currently active draft at the IETF is being pursued by Lee Howard
and Alain Durand.  You can see it at
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-howard-isp-ip6rdns-04.  The draft
argues that PTRs for all AAAA records are not going to be practical,
and makes three recommendations (none of which, I'm surprised to see,
is "forget about it for residential hosts").

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at shinkuro.com
Shinkuro, Inc.