nanog mailing list archives

Re: Slashdot: Providers Ignoring DNS TTL?


From: "Stephen J. Wilcox" <steve () telecomplete co uk>
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 10:22:03 +0100 (BST)


On Fri, 22 Apr 2005, Dean Anderson wrote:

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, Stephen J. Wilcox wrote:

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, Dean Anderson wrote:

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 sthaug () nethelp no wrote:

I'd rather expect this sort of behavior with anycasted servers... 

Where do you see any connection between anycast and ignoring DNS TTL? Or is
this just part of your usual rant against anycast DNS service?

The data he showed isn't necessarilly "ignoring ttl".  If there are multiple
anycasted caching servers behind a specific IP address, then those several
cache's will each have a different state.  Since, [as I

I fail to see the correlation still.. anycasted caches should all be operating 
independently getting their DNS data from authoritative sources. 

If at any point one of them uses a TTL that it has not received from the 
authoritative source it is ignoring the ttl, where does anycast get involved 
with this particular problem?

The queries produce different data, but none of the data is inconsistent 
if there are different caches responding on the same address. Here is the 
original description: (slightly reformated with roman numerals)

  (I) I ran a query for a name in a zone I control that has a five minute 
TTL on 204.127.198.4. The first query came up with 5 minutes. 
  (II) I quickly made  a change to the zone. 
  (III) Thirty seconds after the initial query, I try 
again...err... and come up with the change. Hmm... Not caching at all? 
  (IV) Another 30 seconds and I get the change, with 5m TTL. 
  (V) Thirty seconds later, I get the original response with appropriately 
decremented TTL. 
  (VI) Another thirty seconds, I get the change, with 4m TTL.

Here is the detailed anycast explanation:
  (I) Cache 1 gets answer to query X? = Y
  (II) Authority changes X? to Z
  (III) Cache 2 gets answer to query X? = Z
  (IV) Cache 3 gets answer to query X? = Z
  (V) Cache 1 responds 
  (VI) Cache 3 responds

No TTLs were ignored.

Ok gotcha, and you point seems valid except aiui the previous post was 
concerning providers who are actually overriding the TTL eg your zone has a 5m 
ttl, the provider caches it but sets TTL to 10 days.

i think this thread forked quite early :)

Steve


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