[dns-operations] I missed the announcement: .ARPA has beendeleted

[Paul Vixie]

> From: "George Barwood" <george.barwood at blueyonder.co.uk>
> Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:30:00 -0000
> 
> Is it possible for the resolver to send a more suitable query in the
> first place for TLDs?
> 
> My resolver ( when the Bailiwick is root ) sends a NS query for just the
> TLD, unless the original question was just for the TLD ( and not a
> sub-domain ).

huh.  some years ARPA. is an ns, some years ARPA. is an empty nonterminal
containing only IN-ADDR.ARPA.  and some day there may be a "LOCALHOST."
having only an A RR.  but this is, in principle, not a bad idea.

> This means that non-existent TLDs get cached, and on startup, there is
> query-sharing - the resolver only sends a single query for each
> TLD. There is a slight privacy gain as well ( which I think was the
> original motivation ).

i can see the privacy benefit, yes.  and if it's only done for multilabel
queries when the baliwick is "." and if it falls through to forwarding the
whole query if the result is RCODE=0 ANCOUNT=0 then it shouldn't break
anything.

> I don't know whether it is strictly in accordance with the standard, but
> I have not noticed any problems.

the standard's will is weak concerning QTYPE=NS, and indeed, many load
balancers do not implement this.  but it will pretty much always work for
the root baliwick.  you should write this up as an I-D over in DNSEXT, it
seems like a good innovation.