Re: best practices for PTR naming and whois (was, sadly, Re: Arrogant RBL list maintainers)

[Michael Thomas <mike () mtcc com>]

On 12/10/2009 09:06 AM, Joe Abley wrote:
> On 2009-12-10, at 16:42, Michael Thomas wrote:
>
> > On 12/10/2009 08:38 AM, Mark Andrews wrote:
> >
> > > The way to do this is to put other data in the ip6.arpa/in-addr.arpa and
> > > stop trying to infer things from the PTR records.
> >
> > Sigh. What is the "this" to which you refer?
>
> I think Mark means "the question of whether a particular address is statically-assigned or dynamically-assigned", but...

Which assumes that that's the question that actually needs to be answered.

> > The problem space here is what's important. And I think it's worth considering
> > that port 25 isn't the only abuse vector anymore.
>
> ... I agree that there's no clear limit to the kind of questions we could come up with that we could answer in such a way. 
> Maybe we don't need to boil the ocean, though.

Sure, but positing the deployment of any infrastructure comes at a huge cost.
Making certain that you're solving the right problem should be the first
concern, since it's so expensive.

> $ORIGIN 90.212.90.in-addr.arpa.
> @ SOA ...
> @ NS ...
> ;
> 13 PTR calamari.hopcount.ca.
> 13 HINFO Apple-Mac-Mini "Mac OS X Server"
> 13 RP jabley.hopcount.ca. .
> 13 TXT "dynamic"

See, that makes the assumption that that is the right question. Is it really
though? Dynamic vs static is a placeholder for "authorized for this role or not",
right? And not a very good one when you start to consider the larger world of
protocols. I don't think it's "boiling the ocean" to ask the question of what
the producers and consumers of that information are actually looking for.

Mike


> ;
> * RP jabley.hopcount.ca. .
> * HINFO Nothing "Unallocated"
> * TXT "unallocated, should source no traffic"
>
>
> Joe