[dns-operations] com. Glue

[Joe Abley]

Hi Jim,

On 19 May 2015, at 17:12, Jim Popovitch wrote:

> I'm stuck in the middle with $registrar saying glue exists, and
> intodns, et.al., saying no glue exists.   I would appreciate any
> insight into why there is no glue appearing for speedyiguana.com (a
> mailman dev/test system that i use)
>
> Link for the lazy: http://www.intodns.com/speedyiguana.com
>
> FWIW, I see the following with dig:

The problem with your question and the answers you've heard is that DNS 
protocol elements ("glue") and registry data objects ("host objects") 
are being conflated. This happens all the time. It may help to chant the 
mantra "registries, registrars and registrants are in the database 
business, not the DNS business"; the fact that the databases concerned 
exist for the purpose of provisioning the DNS should not distract from 
the fact that they are different.

The COM and ORG zones are published from separate registries.

The EPP spec as implemented for COM and ORG insists that host objects 
with address attributes can only be present if they are subordinate 
names. A host object "dns1.domainmail.org" in the ORG registry must have 
addresses; a host object "dns1.domainmail.org" in the COM registry 
cannot have addresses.

So aside from any DNS protocol discussion of whether it's legitimate for 
a COM nameserver to respond with additional-section glue for a 
nameserver named under ORG, the COM registry simply doesn't have the 
information it needs to publish one even if it was a good idea for it to 
do so.

The host object in the ORG registry for dns1.domainmail.org exists, and 
has addresses. I didn't check the others.

[walrus:~]% whois -h whois.pir.org 'host dns1.domainmail.org'
Server Name: DNS1.DOMAINMAIL.ORG
Registrar: eNom, Inc.
IP Address:192.249.57.247
IP Address:2604:180:0:6::2
WHOIS Server:
Referral URL:

[legal nonsense snipped]

[walrus:~]%

Everything seems normal and correct to me.


Joe