bad referral

[Bill Moseley]

I'm trying to learn by other peoples mistakes here.

  bad referral (AMAZON.com !< www.amazon.com)

I know this is a rather common question on this list, but I'm trying to
figure out exactly what's wrong with amazon's setup to cause this -- and in
the process gain a better understanding of bind.

After spending a while looking at dig and nslookup queries I'm a bit confused.

I'm not great at using the dig tool, but:

dig www.amazon.com. ns @AUTH00.NS.UU.NET.

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.amazon.com.         1D IN NS        ns-20.amazon.com.
www.amazon.com.         1D IN NS        ns-10.amazon.com.

Ok, it says look at ns-20.amazon.com.  But then:

dig www.amazon.com. ns @ns-20.amazon.com.
;; got answer:
;; ns_initparse: Message too long

I'm not sure what the answer is I'm getting.  What's "Message too long" mean?

Is it that they have delegated www.amazon.com to ns-20, yet ns-20 has no NS
record for the zone?

Hell, the more I try to look at this the more confused I get.  Anyone
willing to step me through this?  I'd like to see how to use dig to find
out what's going on, and understand what amazon is doing to cause this.

Thanks,

Bill Moseley
mailto:moseley at hank.org