...

The tools that transfer these zonelets rely on this extra piece of information in the TXT record for consistency checks.

Hmmm. This smells like a bug. Why are the DNS provisioning tools for e164.arpa generating data that isn't needed and inserting that data into the DNS?

What else is new? Look for 'VRSN-END-OF-ZONE-MARKER-DUMMY-RECORD' in . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrsn-end-of-zone-marker-dummy-record.root There is one in the .arpa zone as well: http://www.robert.net/ccTLD/ARPA/ (okay I agree, this domain name is a little bit longer than just 'ripe') -- Marco