Correctness of DNSStuff.com for .ca lookups?

[Barry Margolin]

In article <bl9o58$2ro2$1 at sf1.isc.org>,
Cris Fuhrman <filmore at bigfoot.com> wrote:
>Hi there,
>
>I'm trying to help my IT folks diagnose some messes in the DNS at
>work. It seems to go way up the line to our ISP(s). I realize the
>problem could be misconfigurations here as well. Garbage up, garbage
>down...
>
>I'm using DNSStuff.com, namely 
>
>http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/lookup.ch?name=ens.etsmtl.ca&type=MX&server=&detail=2
>
>(sorry if this wraps) to do MX lookups. 
>
>Once the [a-?].root-servers.net pass on the lookups, it goes anywhere
>and everywhere. The mess appears to begin in Canada :-) I'm not a DNS
>professional, but when I see how stanford.edu's MX resolves, it's
>seems to be a lot cleaner!

I didn't see any problems.  It just walked its way down the hierarchy in
the expected way:

Searching for MX record for ens.etsmtl.ca at c.root-servers.net:  Got referral to CA06.CIRA.ca. [took 119 ms]
Searching for MX record for ens.etsmtl.ca at CA06.CIRA.ca.:  Got referral to rubis.etsmtl.ca. [took 60 ms]
Searching for MX record for ens.etsmtl.ca at rubis.etsmtl.ca.:  Reports amnesix.uqss.uquebec.ca. [took 120 ms]

CA06.CIRA.CA is one of the servers for the CA top-level domain, and
rubis.etsmtl.ca is one of the servers for the etsmtl.ca domain.

>Without asking people to diagnose my own school's (our perhaps its
>country's) DNS problems, I wanted to only ask if DNSStuff.com's
>diagnostics are generally reliable for domains outside the US?

I've usually found them pretty reliable.

-- 
Barry Margolin, barry.margolin at level3.com
Level(3), Woburn, MA
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