Public DNS

[Vernon Brown_1]

I registered two domain names and need now to get the names pointed to the IP address.

I tried the free Public DNS service and filled out the form. After about two days of fixing errors and retrying I'm down to the error: RP TXT Record Missing

I can't figure out what that is for two days now.

Anybody Know ??

IP and domain names are:

24.216.209.131 photonhorse.com
24.216.209.131 photonhorse.net

[Tim Malnati]

For grins I did a reverse lookup on your ip address and came up with 24-216-209-131.hsacorp.net. HSACorp.net appears to be a cable modem ISP. I'm not sure what type of arrangement you may have with them but it would appear that they think they have ownership of this address instead and DNS appears to be pointing to them. I would first try to contact them and attempt to determine what is happening. I found the following contact info:

Western Corporate Office

High Speed Access Corp.
10901 West Toller Drive
Littleton, CO 80127

T: 720.922.2500 or 888.947.2638
F: 720.922.2501

Eastern Corporate Office

High Speed Access Corp.
10300 Ormsby Park Place, Suite 405
Louisville, KY 40223

T: 502.420.7200 or 800.569.0565
F: 502.420.7201

[Vernon Brown_1]

Tim

Yes it is a Cable Modem. Hsacorp.net is my ISP. When I talked to them about putting a server on they said they would allow it but would not support it, meaning I guess that they wouldn't be the primary DNS for it.

That left me two options: Do my own DNS or register with a public DNS. I'm trying both ways. I'm not sure my own name server is running; haven't yet figured out how to determine if it is.

I have no problem doing it the right way; but I can't get a direct hookup out here in the boonies (Cabot Arkansas) for less than about $1500 a month.

[Tim Malnati]

Hey, at least you have cable modem service! Here in Connecticut only 20 cities and towns have DSL access and only a handful of cable systems have cable modem access. Everything in this state is political which suggests that the 'appropriate' campaign contibutions didn't happen.

I did a whois on your domain and found that you don't have any name servers designated as yet. The RFC requirement is that you have at least two nameservers defined and that they must have different ip addresses to be valid. It sounds like you have only one ip address coming in, so some sort of outside service is going to be needed. The exception is if your ISP has allocated a block of ip addresses to you. Most of the inexpensive NAT routers will not pass inbound DNS traffic to a specific server anyway if you ever choose to use this technology. That's not to say that you can't have a DNS server on your local network (I do it myself); it just can't be served out to the world.

It's too bad that your ISP won't handle this for you. A public DNS service can do the job but there are some issues. First, a reverse lookup will never work if your ISP never defines your domain it in their DNS. What this means is that a variety of security based protocols for things like credit card verification will not work.

I took a quick look at the Tucows/opensrs.org website and noticed that they don't provide DNS services, only DNS server registration. You didn't mention what public DNS service you intend to use, but how their DNS entry interface works is particular to the OS they are running and the software interface they have. BTW... The outside world will not be able to find you until the DNS server registration happens that I mentioned. There is some delay involved here where the root servers need to be updated with your domain name and DNS server info. If I recall correctly, the root system updates itself twice a day. Additionally, many larger organizations regularly download the DNS domain tables from internic in order to cut down on network traffic to the root servers. In theory this should not be a problem where this domain is new, but many of them don't always pass new inquirys to the root servers either.

Hope this helps.

[Vernon Brown_1]

Thanks for the info Tim.

I may not be able to get it to work at all. I think email does reverse lookups as well and as you say this will always resolve to the cable company. veb@24-216-209-131.hsacorp.net does work and goes directly to my Linux server's email.

I still would still like to try the Public DNS just to see how much closer we can get.

I found the public DNS by searching Yahoo with the keywords Public DNS. Two listings returned; the top one was granitecanion or something like that. I can't figure out how to complete their form. It won't let me submit because I can't clear the errors. I'm down to one error.

It complains that there is no "TXT" entry and I've tried every TXT thing I can come up with.

[Vernon Brown_1]

The public DNS I'm trying is:

http://soa.granitecanyon.com/

The error message is:

"The following errors occurred. Go back and fix them"

nscheck: RP TXT field is missing !

They have an example of a completed form but it contains lots of stuff that is probably not necessary. If I could just clear that one error the submission might work.