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Hi,

On Wed, Oct 20, 1999 at 05:11:40PM +0200, Jason Hoffman (EUS) wrote:
> I have the same problem.   My DNS resolves eli.elilabs.com but not www.elilabs.com <http://www.elilabs.com> .  I know it's been that way for a couple of weeks now. 

Same here:

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ host www.elilabs.com
Host not found.
gert@greenie:/u/gert$ host eli.elilabs.com
eli.elilabs.com has address 204.248.49.62

(btw: there's an MX record missing here)

OK, so let's look at the problem's source...

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ dig @eli.elilabs.com elilabs.com soa
...
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 1
...
elilabs.com.            1D IN SOA       elilabs.com. root.elilabs.com. (
                                        991020          ; serial
...
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
elilabs.com.            1D IN NS        eli.elilabs.com.

ok, so "eli" thinks it's authoritative name server (and the only one,
which is ugly in itself) for "elilabs.com".


Querying "eli" for "www.elilabs.com" gives the following:

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ dig @eli.elilabs.com www.elilabs.com any
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.elilabs.com.        1D IN CNAME     eli.elilabs.com.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
elilabs.com.            1D IN NS        eli.elilabs.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
eli.elilabs.com.        1D IN A         204.248.49.62


So, it seems that my DNS queries go to the wrong host.  So what has
Internic to say about this?

$ whois -h whois.internic.net elilabs.com
   Domain Name: ELILABS.COM

   Administrative Contact:
      Brown, Robert  (RB6319)  postmaster@ELILABS.COM
      (847) 705-0424 (FAX) (847) 705-3976
...
   Domain servers in listed order:

   NS1.XNET.COM                 198.147.221.34
   NS2.XNET.COM                 198.147.221.35


... which isn't really the same set of name servers...  Now, let's query
ns1.xnet.com (which is what my DNS client will do):

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ dig @ns2.xnet.com www.elilabs.com
...
;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.elilabs.com.        1D IN CNAME     eli.elilabs.com.
eli.elilabs.com.        1D IN A         204.248.49.62

Hmmm.  Those *do* have the correct answer.  Nevertheless:

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ host www.elilabs.com
Host not found.

OK.  Now let's go the hard way: ask the root name servers, and go step by
step...

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ dig @a.root-servers.net elilabs.com ns
[..]
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
COM.                    1D IN SOA       A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET.  hostmaster.internic.NET. (
[..]

Now this is interesting.  This name server (a.root-servers.net) is *the*
authoritative server for .COM, but it claims "there are no NS records for
elilabs.com".  So it seems that elilabs.com isn't properly delegated to
ns1.xnet.com / ns2.xnet.com at all, but instead, the stuff is contained in
the .COM zone itself:

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ dig @a.root-servers.net eli.elilabs.com any
[..]
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 12, ADDITIONAL: 12
;; QUERY SECTION:
;;      eli.elilabs.com, type = ANY, class = IN

;; ANSWER SECTION:
eli.elilabs.com.        2D IN A         204.248.49.62

And indeed, that seems to be the case.  Internic has put the "eli"
record into the .com zone itself, and not delegated elilabs.com properly
to the nameservers they list in their own databse.  Ugh.

And now, for the last test...

gert@greenie:/u/gert$ dig @a.root-servers.net www.elilabs.com any
[..]
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 10
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUERY SECTION:
;;      www.elilabs.com, type = ANY, class = IN

this means "I am authoritative for this question (aa), it's NOT delegated 
to a different set of nameserver, and there is NO such entry (NXDOMAIN)".



Sooo... what this lengthy posting means is that either InterNIC or the ISP
that manages the elilabs.com domain for you has goofed massively, and "the
world" has a completely different view of elilabs.com than your system and
the XNET.COM name servers.

(In addition, the zone isn't setup too well - the NS records do not 
match the actual set of name servers, the MX records are missing, the
contact information in the SOA looks unhealthy, 192.168.x addresses
shouldn't be visible world-wide.  But that's off-topic for the mgetty 
list - it's just my business hat speaking...).

gert
-- 
USENET is *not* the non-clickable part of WWW!
                                                           //www.muc.de/~gert/
Gert Doering - Munich, Germany                             gert@greenie.muc.de
fax: +49-89-35655025                        gert.doering@physik.tu-muenchen.de