From: sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne)
Subject: Re: registration -vs- forwarder policy
Organization: Wimsey Information Services
Distribution: can
Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 22:10:47 GMT

In article <davecb.725998930@yorku.ca> davecb@nexus.yorku.ca (David Collier-Brown) writes:
>In article <C07r77.4ut@uunet.ca> smd@uunet.ca (Sean Doran) writes:
>>CA does a number of things right, notably the assurance of proper
>>nameservice for anything that has a cooperative Internet forwarder,
>>X.400 routing, and a listing in the UUCP maps.  All of these have been
>>good political decisions.
>
>sl@wimsey.bc.ca (Stuart Lynne) writes: 
>| Well I wouldn't agree with that. There is currently (unlike the .us
>| or standard NIC domains) no requirement for having an Internet Domain
>| Name Server to support your domain. Down south it *is* required. You
>| can't get registered in .com or .us unless someone is willing to
>| support an MX for you.

As Sean pointed out in another followup to this thread. Registration in
.com only requires an SOA record. Registration in .us does seem to require 
a MX record.

I just went back and re-read the relavent section in RFC-1386. It's actually
a bit cryptic. The only place it say's an MX is required is in the section 
dealing with UUCP hosts. I've sent off an email query to the RFC authors to
see if they can clarify this point.

>  Ok, here's a factual disagreement and a policy question.  Lets put the
>policy question up for debate...
>
>  As I understand it, and organization with a discontinuous net (ie,
>no internet mail forwarder) in Canada can register a domain name.  In
>the United States this is untrue.  There you can have an IP network
>number allocated, but you cannot have a domain name without a mail
>forwarder (and someone to hold your MX records, as a practicality
>issue).
>
>  The U.S. position has been criticized because a company cannot
>``reserve'' their domain name.  The Canadian position has been
>criticized because the domain is unreachable.
>
>  Is this an either-or situation?  Is there a middle ground?  Is there
>a necessary relationship with the allocation of an IP address?
>  Does the .ca domain registrar actually place the domain entry into a
>DNS server without any A or MX records? What effect does this have on
>email?

It would seem that NIC position of requiring only a Start of Authority
record is the middle ground. It get's you into the DNS without actually
doing much other than saying that you exist and who is maintaining the
record.

For example nslookup -type=soa questor.org.

  Server:  vanbc.wimsey.com
  Address:  0.0.0.0

  questor.org
	  origin = van-bc.Wimsey.BC.CA
	  mail addr = root.Wimsey.BC.CA
	  serial = 1992111302
	  refresh = 900 ( 15 mins)
	  retry   = 300 ( 5 mins)
	  expire  = 1209600 (14 days)
	  minimum ttl = 600 ( 10 mins)

Now nslookup -type=soa gov.coquitlam.bc.ca.

    *** vanbc.wimsey.com can't find gov.coquitlam.bc.ca.: Non-existent domain
    Server:  vanbc.wimsey.com
    Address:  0.0.0.0

Questor actually does have an MX with us. But it is not required.

-- 
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