Authoritative Answer bit, SOA and NS

[Barry Margolin]

In article <a40s7d$91t at pub3.rc.vix.com>,
Sebastian Castro  <secastro at nic.cl> wrote:
>[:~] dig ns cl. @ns.nic.cl +noadditional
>
>; <<>> DiG 9.2.0 <<>> ns cl. @ns.nic.cl +noadditional
>;; global options:  printcmd
>;; Got answer:
>;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 8998
>;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 12, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 9
>                                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>Authority is zero, why?

That's not the Authoritative Answer bit, that's the number of records in
the Authority Section of the response.  And as you can see, there's nothing
in that section -- all the NS records are in the Answer Section.

>;; QUESTION SECTION:
>;cl.                            IN      NS
>
>;; ANSWER SECTION:
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.rdc.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      uchile.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.UU.NET.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.EU.NET.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      terminus.reuna.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.cec.uchile.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      dns.ripe.NET.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      antonia.webhost.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns2.gisc.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns-ext.vix.com.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.nic.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      sunsite.dcc.uchile.cl.
>
>;; Query time: 1 msec
>;; SERVER: 216.72.164.132#53(ns.nic.cl)
>;; WHEN: Fri Feb  8 12:43:45 2002
>;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 450
>=================================
>
>
>When I asked for SOA, I got
>
>=================================
>[ReQuiN en rivendel.agustinas.nic.cl:~] dig soa cl. @ns.nic.cl
>+noadditional
>
>; <<>> DiG 9.2.0 <<>> soa cl. @ns.nic.cl +noadditional
>;; global options:  printcmd
>;; Got answer:
>;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 55523
>;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 12, ADDITIONAL: 9
>                                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>---> Here Authority is non zero, why the difference?

This time, you didn't ask for NS records, so they were put in the Authority
Section of the response rather than the Answer Section.  There are 12 NS
records listed there, aren't there?

>;; QUESTION SECTION:
>;cl.                            IN      SOA
>
>;; ANSWER SECTION:
>cl.                     86400   IN      SOA     ns.nic.cl. info.nic.cl.
>2002020805 21600 7200 2592000 86400
>
>;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.nic.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      sunsite.dcc.uchile.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.rdc.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      uchile.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.UU.NET.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.EU.NET.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      terminus.reuna.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns.cec.uchile.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      dns.ripe.NET.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      antonia.webhost.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns2.gisc.cl.
>cl.                     86400   IN      NS      ns-ext.vix.com.
>
>;; Query time: 8 msec
>;; SERVER: 200.27.126.126#53(ns.nic.cl)
>;; WHEN: Fri Feb  8 12:45:02 2002
>;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 491
>=================================

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at genuity.net
Genuity, Woburn, MA
*** DON'T SEND TECHNICAL QUESTIONS DIRECTLY TO ME, post them to newsgroups.
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