DNS query with no domain

[Kent Shuey]

It is good to understand the brokenness of the design, as well as the 
constraints which are driving it.

Kevin rightly points out that the "fake mms zone" solution will only 
work within the bounded space of a network whose DNS servers are under 
common management.  That is a tall order, but let us assume that you 
have such a network, you control of all the necessary DNS servers on it, 
and that the handsets will never roam off of it or use other DNS 
servers.  Then there is another issue to consider.

You may have heard that ICANN is considering opening up new TLD 
registrations.  The proposed solution will work only as long as no one 
ever creates a TLD called "mms."  If this TLD is ever created, and any 
of your handsets ever needs to query for resources named in it, at that 
point those handsets are broken. 

You should go back to those who asked you to "make it happen" and ask 
them to consider using the proposed new ICANN process to register the 
"mms" TLD.  If they are unwilling to make that happen, then they must 
contend with the possibility of having this rug yanked out from under 
them sometime in the future.  Hopefully that will cause your askers to 
reconsider the wisdom of their request.

By adding a dot and a few more characters registered in a suitable TLD, 
you should be able to construct a FQDN which will be both short enough 
and viable for the long term.

- KS


Prabhat Rana wrote:
> Thanks to Matt and Mark for suggestions and notes. I completely understand the idea of having perform resolution for a absolute hostname is a broken design. However we have been asked to make this happen. Apparently shortening the URL size that handset queries is a part of effort on shortening the packet size from the handset. And by reducing the packet size to less than 140 or less byte characters the packet will not be segmented and makes the data calls significantly faster.
> And mms in the only one that handsets 
> Prabhat.
>
>   
Kevin Darcy wrote:
> Do you understand what Matthew is proposing here?
>
> You need to define and maintain a fake "mms" zone on *every* nameserver 
> instance to which these devices will be talking in order to resolve DNS.
>
> Are you willing to do that?
>
> If you're willing to swallow that bitter pill, then you have essentially 
> created a whole separate (albeit small) namespace that is independent of 
> whatever else your nameserver instances may resolve. No further 
> configuration is necessary, since you're not impacting any other 
> resolution besides that of "mms".
>
>                                                                          
>             - Kevin