[dns-operations] go daddy refuses to register NS not otherwise associated with go daddy controlled domains

[Andrew Sullivan]

A little more about what Joe was saying (I agree with him completely).

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 09:00:58PM -0400, Joe Abley wrote:
 
> The registry requirement is that a host object exist before a domain
> object is linked to it (this is the NET registry we're talking
> about; other TLD registries can be and are different). 

Right.  Some TLD registries, of course, don't implement EPP.  Of those
that do, they may either implement name servers as associations
between domain objects and host objects, or they may implement name
servers as attributes of the domain object.  Verisign is using the
former implementation, which has the extremely happy consequence that
if you update the IP address of a host object, it immediately works
for everything, and if you change the name of a host object, all the
domains relying on that host object get the new name automatically in
the NS records.  So this is not merely a registry requirement; given
the implementation choice, it's a registration protocol requirement.

In case you're not sleeping yet and want to, this is discussed in some
detail in RFC 5731 section 1.1, RFC 5731 section 3.2.1, and RFC 5732
section 1.1.  

> Further, a host object with a nameserver whose name is subordinate
> to the registry (in this case, ends in NET) needs to have address
> records associated with it, and is sponsored by the registrar who
> sponsors the domain the nameserver is subordinate to.

Some of us who spent the early years of EPP in the registry business
still weep over this problem.  It's even worse when you have a
repository (that's the EPP word for "registry") that contains multiple
domains, for the notion of what is an "external" and "internal" host
(we'd call them in-baliwick and out-of-baliwick) gets sticky in those
cases.  In general, though, it turned out to be best if the sponsor of
the superordinate domain had to be the sponsor of the subordinate
host.  Otherwise, the sponsor of the subordinate host could prevent
the deletion of the superordinate domain.  

That is, if I'm registrar A, and I sponsor example.com, and you are
registrar B, and you can create a host ns1.example.com, then when I
want to delete example.com, I can't, because there's still a
subordinate host name inside the domain.  See the EPP specification
bits mentioned above.  That means that I have to pay the continued fee
to keep the domain name alive even though you're getting all the benefit.

I agree that it's unfortunate exactly the way GoDaddy explained it,
but this one really isn't something they can fix.

Best,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at anvilwalrusden.com