Hello,

I'm glad to contact you, acting on request of the ripe dns working group which, during the last RIPE meeting in Amsterdam, discussed about DNS failures and made a proposal as stated in the following excerpt from the minutes:

{...} Some people do not watch their name servers: it happens that some name servers are left unattended and fail without anyone noticing. This has an impact on the performance and reliability of the overall name service.

People should watch their name servers and their zones on their primary and secondaries. At least the 'host' command can be used with the '-C' option to do this at regular intervals.

During the plenary session someone remembered the existance of RFC1713 A. Romao, "Tools for DNS debugging", which is usually referred to as the guide for DNS administrators and suggested to ask the author to include such recommendation.

[ACTION on ABB] {...}

I was planning to write an updated version of the RFC some time next year (since it's also an FYI I'm supposed to update it regularly). Among other things I'm waiting for BIND-4.9.3 final to be released, and there seems to be a lot of new tools available, so I have to take a look at them. I appreciate your comments, they fit well in the new scheme I'm thinking about. Of course, if anyone has any other suggestions, they're very welcome, too. Thanks for your input. Regards, .artur -- ======== ____ ==== Artur Romao ======= / / / ___ ___ /_ ===== PUUG - EUnet Portugal ====== /---- / / / / /___/ / ====== Qta Torre 2825 Mte Caparica ===== /____ /___/ / / /___ /_ ======= http://www.Portugal.EU.net/ ==== ======== mailto:Artur.Romao@puug.pt