Splitting Authority For Forward and Reverse DNS

[Clifford Seifer]

Here's a problem that's becoming increasingly common.  I wonder if anyone
else runs into this and what they do to get around in.

I work for an ISP and we often have customers who want their domains
hosted here with web services hosted elsewhere.  We've always had a very
strict policy against splitting forward and reverse DNS and to get around
this we've either delegated a subdomain for the web services or CNAMEd web
services to a host with valid forward and reverse definition on the other
end.  e.g.,:

www.example.com.	IN	NS	ns1.remoteprovidor.com.
			IN	NS	ns2.remoteprovidor.com.

				or

www.example.com.	IN	CNAME	www.example.remoteprovidor.com.

Unfortunately, we are running into more and more cases where the remote
providor is willing to co-operate and insists on our simply setting up
split forward and reverse DNS like this:

www.example.com.	IN	A	xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is an IP for which we are not authoritative.

So the question is, is there a non-bogus way to achieve this end without
the remote providor's co-operation?  Are we being overly rigid or is our
policy sound?

Thanks in advance for any insight,

Cliff Seifer
SoVerNet
PO Box 495, 5 Rockingham St
Bellows Falls, Vermont 05101-0495
Tel: (802)463-2111
Fax: (802)463-2110