DNS help at RIPE
DNS stands for Domain Name Servers, RIPE stands for Registrar of the IP address space in Europe (title is in French, thus abbreviation does not fit the name). Whenever you ask your computer to present you with webpage, once you enter the address (www.example.com) your computer contacts DNS server delegated to it, and sends it a DNS query (asking literally – what IP is behind the www.example.com).
RIPE takes care of what goes around in Europe, and more importantly – does it go at all, to whom does it go, how it gets routed, and more. They also maintain a portion of the root Name Servers. If any company wants to become a provider, no matter how much well they configure their technical equipment and everything, before everything, they need to be allowed connectivity, issued a set of unique IP addresses, and plan their connections with others. In other words, for pretty much anything related to ISP business in Europe, RIPE is the place to start at. RIPE also takes care of European Domain Names, maintaining some of mentioned root servers, as well as delegating all other TLD (Top Level Domain) queries to the relevant country servers. Also, RIPE takes care of maintaining and updating service to the DNS – rDNS, or – reverse DNS lookup; you send a query “what name does ip 123.45.67.89 has?” and – DNS server answers with something like “www.example.com”. This service is mostly useful to Internet Engineers and similar nerds. End user does not know about this service but it makes their life easier.
All this being said hopefully brings you closer to understanding the importance of the Domain Name resolution services, “forward” and “reverse” DNS lookup, etc. It endlessly simplifies your and mine lives – imagine what kind of a hell would it be if you had to memorize IP addresses instead of domain names, so facebook.com would be 69.63.181.11, google.com would be 74.125.39.99, etc. This hell is partially prevented by RIPE and others, by them maintaining root DNS servers who are “granddaddies” of all other DNS servers (by implementation, DNS as a service has somewhat vertical hierarchy, meaning that all other servers can question higher authority of service and if they do not know the answer – they will ask other server “older” than them…)
Anyways – all this talk came as an intro to an information – RIPE freaking NS server ain’t workin :) And I am not talking K-root server(s) but I am talking referent server – one that REALLY replies :) Also, this server is one used by scripts to check automation of webupdates sent to RIPE. Dead, non-existant domain name, referred by the RIPE dns servers and their Name Server, is – dns-help.ripe.net.
That IS weird.
If my story got you going, check this out – real map showing physical positions for the root name servers. Please bear in mind that “single root server” is represented by domain and title, but in reality, there have been clusters behind those addresses for many years now; it was really decades ago when those were just a single machines standing in someones rack. Check the ROOT servers WORLD map here.
nice post. thanks.
For all of you that do not believe this shit;
do a reverse query for non-existing (or non-declared) IPv6 address space at google dns; you will get an answer for authority section that declares two name servers; ns-pri and dns-help, with domain ripe.net. Do a query than for dns-help – you will get NXDOMAIN as a reply.
luciano@biggie:~$ dig @8.8.8.8 -x 2a02:2260:1200::1; < <>> DiG 9.7.0-P1 < <>> @8.8.8.8 -x 2a02:2260:1200::1
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER< <- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 30678
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;1.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.2.1.0.6.2.2.2.0.a.2.ip6.arpa. IN PTR
;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
0.a.2.ip6.arpa. 7200 IN SOA ns-pri.ripe.net. dns-help.ripe.net. 2010082451 3600 7200 1209600 7200
;; Query time: 52 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Tue Aug 24 13:36:18 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 150
luciano@biggie:~$ dig @8.8.8.8 dns-help.ripe.net any
; <<>> DiG 9.7.0-P1 < <>> @8.8.8.8 dns-help.ripe.net any
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER< <- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 45492
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
Vrucijane li Vrucijane, bas neces to da pustis ;)
To sto si napisao je totalno pogresno
dns-help.ripe.net je u stvari e-mail adresa dns-help@ripe.net samo sto se u SOA one pisu s tackom
Isjecak s RFC1912 (prvi koji mi je naletio), druga strana, prvi pasus poslije medjunaslova 2.2 SOA records kaze:
In the SOA record of every zone, remember to fill in the e-mail
address that will get to the person who maintains the DNS at your
site (commonly referred to as “hostmaster”). The `@’ in the e-mail
must be replaced by a `.’ first. Do not try to put an `@’ sign in
this address. If the local part of the address already contains a
`.’ (e.g., John.Smith@widget.xx), then you need to quote the `.’ by
preceding it with `\’ character. (e.g., to become
grijesis djecace, taj dio SOA recorda je u stvari e-mail adresa
to su oni silni hostmasteri po zonskim fajlama :-)
evo ti npr. RFC1912 (prvi koji mi je naletio pod ruku) kaze na svojoj drugoj strani ovo:
2.2 SOA records
In the SOA record of every zone, remember to fill in the e-mail
address that will get to the person who maintains the DNS at your
site (commonly referred to as “hostmaster”). The `@’ in the e-mail
must be replaced by a `.’ first. Do not try to put an `@’ sign in
this address. If the local part of the address already contains a
`.’ (e.g., John.Smith@widget.xx), then you need to quote the `.’ by
preceding it with `\’ character. (e.g., to become
John\.Smith.widget.xx) Alternately (and preferred), you can just use
the generic name `hostmaster’, and use a mail alias to redirect it to
the appropriate persons. There exists software which uses this field
to automatically generate the e-mail address for the zone contact.
This software will break if this field is improperly formatted. It
is imperative that this address get to one or more real persons,
because it is often used for everything from reporting bad DNS data
to reporting security incidents.
jebo te komentari, pojave se pola sata poslije, pa nisam ni kontao da pisem X puta, a jos se potrudio… ccc :D
hahahhahah whatta retard i am, true true,
so – ssbljk got me back onto the right track – hahahha, to make long story short, second line in answer is actually a mailbox, i fucked up and forgot that :)