Subject: non-complain mail system at alcatel.com

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2003 16:01:39 -0400

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Alcatel.com does not have a functional email system. It believes that
all domains must have full NS-record delegations. I.e. that my domain
"sandelman.ottawa.on.ca" must be a delegation from "ottawa.on.ca",
rather than from "ca". (The .CA namespace has a single ccTLD)

I have contacted Alcatel repeatedly by email and by phone in the
past months, and I have gotten no response to this. A major problem is that 
I think that only one of their MX's has this behaviour.

So, I'm resorting to the only other way I have - embarassment.

Specifically, it says:

The original message was received at Sat, 21 Jun 2003 14:27:27 -0400 (EDT)
from IDENT:[email-masked] [192.139.46.2]

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<[email-masked]>
    (reason: 550 sender ignored: ottawa.on.ca does not have a name server record)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to primary.alcatel.com.:
>>> MAIL From:<[email-masked]>
<<< 550 sender ignored: ottawa.on.ca does not have a name server record
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable

---

From: "vinton g. cerf" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 06:26:03 -0400

I would be interested to know whether Alcatel really believes that DNS behaves in such a way that one MUST delegate at each "dot" - as far as I know, it is NOT required to do so.

vint

At 04:01 PM 6/22/2003 -0400, Michael Richardson wrote:
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Vint Cerf
SVP Architecture & Technology
MCI
22001 Loudoun County Parkway, F2-4115
Ashburn, VA 20147
703 886 1690 (v806 1690)
703 886 0047 fax
[email-masked]
www.mci.com/cerfsup

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From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2003 08:45:06 -0700

vgc> I would be interested to know whether Alcatel really believes that DNS behaves in
vgc> such a way that one MUST delegate at each "dot" - as far as I know, it is NOT
vgc> required to do so.

It is not required.  That's the difference between a 'zone' and a
'sub-domain'.  The latter is a subset of the former.

d/
--
 Dave Crocker <mailto:[email-masked]>
 Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
 Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>

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From: Paul Vixie <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Jun 2003 17:49:51 +0000

[email-masked] ("vinton g. cerf") writes:
> I would be interested to know whether Alcatel really believes that DNS
> behaves in such a way that one MUST delegate at each "dot" - as far as I
> know, it is NOT required to do so.

it's not required to do so.  see for example

	;; QUERY SECTION:
        ;;      _kerberos._udp.vix.com, type = SRV, class = IN

        ;; ANSWER SECTION:
        _kerberos._udp.vix.com.  1H IN SRV  1 0 88 kerberos-2.vix.com.
        _kerberos._udp.vix.com.  1H IN SRV  0 1 88 kerberos-0.vix.com.
        _kerberos._udp.vix.com.  1H IN SRV  1 0 88 kerberos-1.vix.com.

        ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
        vix.com.                1H IN NS        ns1.gnac.com.
        vix.com.                1H IN NS        ns-ext.vix.com.

        ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
        ns1.gnac.com.           1d5h15m35s IN A  64.124.44.166
        ns-ext.vix.com.         1H IN AAAA      2001:4f8:0:2::13
        ns-ext.vix.com.         1H IN A         204.152.184.64

the apex of the enclosing zone is two labels above the qname and answer.
alcatel is just confused.  however, this confusion is pretty common, and
i know that a lot of domain integrity checkers get it wrong.
-- 
Paul Vixie