Who is authoritative?

[Bruce D. Meyer]

I am frustrating over a getting my dns (8.x) to be perfect. (ISP) Our zones
come from our upstream, Bellsouth.net.

I have this mishmash of IP blocks:
205.152.63.65-73
207.203.142.1-64
208.60.126.128-255
209.149.176.1-255
216.77.134.1-128

I have everything from ascends, portmaster, servers, workstations, etc on
these blocks.

My question is, what is the correct way of naming my zone files?

currently, I have :176.149.209.rev
134.77.216.rev
142.203.207.rev

type names.

Bellsouth's DNS admin, tells me I am claiming to be authoritative for my
zones.
She says that until I allow her DNS servers to be authoritative, she can't
do zone updates etc. (One of her servers is about 5-6 months out of date
with mine, but oddly the rest are usually in sync...) She sent me an example
once, telling me to rename my zone files as such:
 0.176.149.209.in-addr.arpa
0.134.77.216.in-addr.arpa
0.142.203.207.in-addr.arpa

to be exact, I am quoting her text to me. (We user *.rev files)
When you get the idea, scroll to the end for what happened:

-----x-snip -x--------------
These are the entries in your named.conf file that need to be
>>replaced:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "142.203.207.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "207.203.142.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "134.77.216.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "216.77.134.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "63.152.205.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "205.152.63.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "126.60.208.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "208.60.126.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>They should be replaced with the following:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "0.142.203.207.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "207.203.142.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "0.134.77.216.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "216.77.134.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "64.63.152.205.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "205.152.63.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>zone "128.126.60.208.in-addr.arpa" {
>>>>>>>> type master;
>>>>>>>> file "208.60.126.rev";
>>>>>>>>};
>>>>>>>>

When I implemented her fix, everything on our network came to a screeching
halt. I put things back, and the worked again..

I am not interested in having a battle, I would truly like to learn the
error of my dns ways, and fix things. It's been almost two months, and I
still cannot find an example of how she is telling me to implement this on
the net on deja, mr Dns,  http://www.intac.com/~cdp/cptd-faq/, in the
O'Reilly DNS & Bind book, etc. I have tried DNS Expert (Real useful, but
can't afford it) and I use dnswalk everyday. (real nice)

And the final question is:

Who IS supposed to be authoritative?

her original response to this is:
>In response to your request below, I've delegated authority over
>your IP block 208.60.126.128/25 to your primary DNS server and our
>secondary DNS servers. However, we are unable to perform zone transfers for
this IP block
>because
>the primary DNS server believes itself to be authoritative for the
>entire class C rather than the smaller block thereof.

So, both sides of the loooong story.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
At this point, flames might even be useful....

Bruce Meyer
RocSoft, Inc.