Getting hold of serial numbers

[Barry Margolin]

In article <cpsont$cq3$1 at sf1.isc.org>, Bill Larson <bind9 at comcast.net> 
wrote:

> On Dec 16, 2004, at 5:43 AM, Johnathan Long wrote:
> 
> > In article <cpqprj$29cb$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
> >  Barry Margolin <barmar at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> If you ever see a difference between WHOIS and a delegation, it's 
> >> either
> >> because you caught it during a change window (the WHOIS database has
> >> updated, but the changes haven't propagated to the GTLD servers) or
> >> something is broken in the process of feeding data from registrar to
> >> registry to DNS.
> >
> > Yes, and that condition is far more common than one would hope.
> 
> There is also another issue here that is being missed.  The list of 
> delegated name servers for a zone comes from the server itself, not the 
> parent.  This means that the administrator of a zone can delegate more 
> servers for a zone than the parent knows of.

Strictly speaking, "delegation" refers to the list in the parent zone.  
While the zone itself may list additional (or, as in many broken 
configurations, different) servers, they are not part of the delegation.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***