nslookup fails after a time

[Barry Margolin]

In article <94knq4$4rg at pub3.rc.vix.com>,
Veatch, David <David.Veatch at eScout.com> wrote:
>
>> Often this is due to problems with NS records for the domain. 
>>  If you said
>> what domain it is, maybe we could tell what's wrong.
>
>If done some digging (using, appropriately enough, dig), and I think it is
>something on their end...  I'm not terribly comfortable with dig, so I'm not
>sure what would matter and what wouldn't.
>
>ourtownusa.net is the domain in question...
>
>They have four registered name servers:
>   NS1.OURTOWNUSA.NET           198.243.53.2
>   NS2.OURTOWNUSA.NET           198.243.53.7
>   NS1.QWEST.NET                216.111.65.217
>   NS2.QWEST.NET                205.171.16.250
>
>I'd give the results of my digs, but they're inconsistent.  Sometimes a
>given request against a given name server works, other times it doesn't.
>The same results are had from different servers on different networks, both
>internal and external.

ns1.ourtownusa.net is authoritative for the zone, the others are not.  So
either the other servers are not configured as slaves, or
ns1.ourtownusa.net is blocking zone transfers to them.  If this is a big
problem for you, you should notify their DNS administrator.

>That tells me the problem is on their end.  However, it doesn't tell me why
>one of my boxes (internal, doesn't get any external hits to it, ever) ALWAYS
>works, and the other (external, is hit from various places for various
>reasons) is inconsistent.

Just random luck.  Maybe the internal server never needs to look things up
on the qwest.net servers, so it doesn't know their response times and
doesn't use them.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Burlington, MA
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