[Wylug-discuss] OT: DNS WHOIS Nameserver entries

[Peter Corlett]

James Holden (WYLUG) <wylug at jamesholden.net> wrote:
[...]
> Can somebody explain how it is possible to have ns1.mydomain1.com and
> ns2.mydomain1.com authoritative for mydomain1.com? Surely
> ns1.mydomain1.com or ns2.mydomain1.com would need to be reached in order
> to resolve their own IP addresses to answer any queries. It isn't valid to
> specify raw IP addresses as nameservers in the domain records, AFAIK.

The secret is to put the IP addresses into the .com zone:

$ORIGIN com.

ns1.mydomain1	IN	A	123.45.67.89
ns2.mydomain1	IN	A	98.76.54.32
mydomain1	IN	NS	ns1.mydomain1
		IN	NS	ns2.mydomain1

Now, when the .com nameservers are queried for the NS records, the A records
are also returned. These are called "glue records" and any good DNS book or
reference would have told you about them. I recommend reading ORA's Cricket
Book ("DNS and BIND").

You'll find that when you register or modify a domain, there'll be an option
to include glue records. The name "glue record" might not be mentioned,
instead they'll just ask for the both the hostname and IP address of your
nameserver, and decide whether to create a glue record from that.

For Nominet domains, you can specify them in the template like this:

key: cabal.org.uk
nserver: ns0.cabal.org.uk 217.169.21.18
nserver: ns1.cabal.org.uk 217.169.21.30
nserver: ns0.mooli.org.uk
nserver: ns1.mooli.org.uk

Note that you *have* to provide IP addresses for those nameservers within
the domain (aka "in balliwick" if you like DJB terminology). Note also that
I did not specify the IP addresses for those *outside* the domain.

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