Why forwarding is a Bad Thing

[Roel van Meer]

Jim Reid wrote:

> Well I've made my views about forwarding known many times here.
[...]
I haven't had the chance te read your previous rationales, but i think i
can agree with you in this one to a great extent. However, to get back
to my original post, there is a good reason for using forwarding in my
case. (i'm not argueing with you here..)

The problem is this. We have some linux servers in the field that have
an internet connection by using adsl. (It's mxstream adsl, supplied by
KPN, you might have heard of it if you live in the Netherlands)
There is a problem with automated logging in though. You have to log in
twice. The first login happens by setting up a ppp connection, which can
be done wihout running into trouble. The second login has to be done
throug a webpage, by means of submitting a form. The problem is as
follows:

You have to login by requesting a page from start.mxstream.nl which then
redirects to wwwn.mxstream.nl (n being a number from 1 to 6). At this
time you have only a connection to a few servers of KPN. So a simple
nameserver cannot contact any root servers, and cannot resolve anything
in the mxstream.nl domain. You can reach the namservers of KPN however.

I could think of two solutions to this problem:
1) Put the *.mxstream.nl hostnames in /etc/hosts.
2) Have the nameserver use the nameservers of KPN as forwarders.

Both solutions work, and i favoured the latter for not having any static
hostnames in our config.
(As people are redirected to wwwn.mxstream.nl automatically, they are
more easily changed and thus more likely to change over time, the range
might be expanded, etc etc). The nameservers won't change any time soon.

But maybe there are other nifty things we might do to solve this problem
without having the need of forwarding? (Maybe i could tell bind that it
has to forward queries for *.mxstream.nl to their servers and do the
rest on its own? Or something the like?)

Regards,

rolek

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