probably simple question

[Stefan Probst]

At 18:54 04.08.00 -0500, Jason Timmons wrote:
-------------------------
> 
> Here's my situation.  I imagine this is dealt with every day, there
> must be something I am missing about the whole DNS deal.
> 
> Let's say I own whatever.com.  I run the primary DNS server for
> whatever.com.  I can add a records all day long for this.whatever.com
> or that.whatever.com, and they resolve, and their hosts can be pinged
> and telnetted to, etc.  What if I just want to be able to
> ping/telnet/etc.  whatever.com.  I want anyone on the net to be able
> to type 
> 
> telnet whatever.com
> 
> and reach a host.  Now, per my understanding of DNS and delegation,
> etc., the authority that holds the record for .com should have an a
> record somewhere with an IP for the host 'whatever' in the zone .com.

Not really.
They have only an NS record pointing to your authoritatives name servers,
and the accompanying glue records (A records pointing to that name
servers), if necessary. They don't say anything about a host
"whatever.com".

> This authority in my case would be NSI.  Now, I've never heard of
> anyone doing that, but I know very well that there are many hosts with
> only one name left of the .com (or .org, etc) that can be reached this
> way.  Any ISP, for example.  So, there must be some aliasing going on.

No. You just add an A record in the zone files of your master name server.
Something like:
whatever.com.  IN A  x.x.x.x
or - more elegant:
@              IN A  x.x.x.x

> You can't just make an a record with a blank hostname, and no dots are
> allowed in the a record either.  Does it have something to do with
> CNAME?
> 
> I've read the whole O'Reilly DNS book, but have not found this answer.
> I am assuming its right there in front of me, and I've just missed it.
> 
> TIA
> 
> -jason timmons
> 


HTH
Stefan