[Apologies for duplicate emails] Dear colleagues, Following on from the removal of the forward DOMAIN objects from the RIPE Database, all DOMAIN objects are now used for either reverse DNS or ENUM delegations. For both these cases, the "nserver:" attribute is required. Currently this attribute is optional and there are many objects in the RIPE Database that do not have any "nserver:" attributes. These objects are ignored by the DNS provisioning service, because they have no operational value. The RIPE NCC proposes to make the "nserver:" attribute mandatory in DOMAIN objects and delete any objects from the RIPE Database that do not have this attribute. To simplify the parsing of DOMAIN objects, the RIPE NCC also proposes to deprecate the list option on the "nserver:" attribute (a list, when used in combination with end-of-line comments and continuation lines, is very complex to parse). This means adding multiple name servers to a single attribute will no longer be allowed. For example, an attribute currently formatted as: nserver: ns1.example.com ns2.example.net will have to be rewritten as: nserver: ns1.example.com nserver: ns2.example.net If glue records are required, they would be written like this: nserver: ns1.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa 192.0.2.1 nserver: ns1.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa 2001:db8::1 nserver: ns2.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa 192.0.2.2 nserver: ns2.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa 2001:db8::2 There are a number of domain objects in the RIPE Database which use the list feature, and list multiple name servers in a single "nserver:" attribute. As part of this syntax change, we would update these objects to use the new syntax. This would not affect DNS delegation in any way. This message has been sent to both the DNS and Database working groups, but we ask that discussion of this matter be kept on the DNS WG mailing list. Regards, Anand Buddhdev RIPE NCC