Complete explanation of in-bailiwick

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

Joseph S D Yao wrote:

> The idea here seems to be that you should have A records and internal
> names in your domains for all of your name servers, even - especially!
> - the ones not under your control.  The good part of this idea is that
> it prevents your name servers' names being hijacked by a TLD or lower-
> level name server gone rogue.  The bad part of this idea is that you
> aren't letting the "out-of-bailiwick" name servers' IP addresses get
> updated by their own domain masters when they change.  And what if the
> IP address that last week was a Vanderbilt U organization is this week
> some nasty site that wants to mess with you?  [Happened to me with a
> Web link.]

It's possible to delegate a zone consisting of a single hostname for 
exactly this situation. Of course, the remote site has to be willing to 
keep your delegated zone up to date, which strikes me as a bit hopeless.

> There's also some vagueness as to what constitutes your "bailiwick".
> Again, it's whatever is under your control.  But you mention delegation.
> So, do your subdomains trust you enough to have the bailiwick be
> "gwu.edu"?  Do you trust them enough to delegate bailiwicity?
> ["bailiwicity"????]

Heh....