question about in-addr.arpa

[Michael Dillon]

On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Stephen Satchell wrote:

> Jerry, the subject is out of bounds when we're told that ARIN does *not*
> maintain the IN-ADDR.ARPA name space.

ARIN will not maintain the IN-ADDR.ARPA name space. ARIN will allocate IP
address blocks to providers. When a provider is allocated an IP address
block, they will set up their own nameserevers to serve up the
IN-ADDR.ARPA name space for those IP address blocks, either directly or by
delegating to other nameservers. However, there needs to be a top level
nameserver for the IN-ADDR.ARPA domain that points to the nameservers
operated by those who have received IP address blocks. The natural entity
to operate this top level nameserver is ARIN since the entries in this top
level nameserver will need to change in sync with the IP address
allocations that ARIN makes. 


> Part of the rationale for the need
> for high connectivity and boudacious computing power is to serve this
> domain -- and I just don't see it myself.

IN-ADDR.ARPA is an absolutely essential and crucial part of the Internet
infrastructure. There need to be multiple redundant nameservers serving up
this top level and they need to be colocated at high bandwidth exchange
points to minimize the turnaround time for queries. The servers themselves
don't need to be too fancy. The average server grade Pentium running BSD
will do just fine. So I don't expect this to be a significant cost item
and I don't expect any ISP's to complain about this since tey are the ones
who take the flak when things run slow or break.

> If they don't (and the discussion to date
> says not) then this part of the proposal needs work, in my view.

We all know this. That's why there is a website and why this mailing list
exists. No doubt people are chewing over the latest proposal trying to
figure out how best to *IMPROVE* the parts that they think are weak.
There's no hurry, might as well take some time and get it done right.

Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-250-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com