MacOS 9 Dynamic DNS Update

[Barry Finkel]

The topic of MacOS 9 dynamic DNS update was raised earlier this week.
I have decoded some dynamic DNS traffic between a MacOS 9 system and one
of our DNS machines.  The MacOS 9 system is

     146.139.224.239 [dhcp-4-239.cmt.anl.gov]

There were five records in the sniffer trace.

1) cmt->dns0 ICMP Echo
2) cmt->dns0 Register -- In the cmt.anl.gov domain, for entry dhcp-4-239, 
             add a TXT record with the following text of length 24:
                   <ETB>swip://146.139.224.239/

             Note that the first character is X'17' (End of Transmission Block).
3) dns0->cmt Port 49155 unreachable
4) cmt->dns0 Register -- In the cmt.anl.gov domain, for entry dhcp-4-239, 
             add a TXT record with the following text of length 61:
                   =<afp://146.139.224.239/?NAME=Conner_PPC_G3_300&ZONE=CMT%20205
5) dns0->cmt Port 49158 unreachable

We normally do not have TXT records in our DNS zones; I am not sure
why MacOS 9 is trying to add these TXT strings to DNS.

Note that the responses from dns0 back to cmt are not deliverable,
as the destination port is unreachable.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry S. Finkel
Electronics and Computing Technologies Division
Argonne National Laboratory          Phone:    +1 (630) 252-7277
9700 South Cass Avenue               Facsimile:+1 (630) 252-9689
Building 221, Room B236              Internet: BSFinkel at anl.gov
Argonne, IL   60439-4844             IBMMAIL:  I1004994