Deleting obsolete name servers

[Barry Margolin]

In article <9oa8iv$cdb at pub3.rc.vix.com>, Lou Hevly <lou at visca.com> wrote:
>
>A few months ago I assigned ns2.visca-server.com to 216.216.32.171. Now
>I wish to assign another name server to this IP; I will no longer be
>using ns2.visca-server.com for anything.  When I asked my registrar
>(Dotster) about this, I simply got a response saying "The name server is
>now deleted."  So is emailing the registrar and asking that an obsolete
>name server be deleted the only way to "free up" an IP address?

If the nameserver is registered with a registrar, they create a glue record
on the GTLD servers for it.  So you need to go through them to unregister
it, so that the glue record will be deleted.

>Also, if a badguy happens to know an IP address range for a competitor,
>what stops him from assigning ns1-255.badguy.com to all these IP's?
>Sure, they won't do him any good and the IP's that are already assigned
>to other name servers won't be affected.  But it seems he would thus
>prevent the victim from using any of his unused IP's as name servers.

You should be able to convince the registrar that the address range belongs
to you, by referring them to the ARIN registration that your ISP made when
they assigned the address range to you.  This should be enough to allow you
to request that the host registration be deleted.

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