How good is BIND?

[Von Alt, William]

Hey guys and gals!  Here is an interesting one:

Delegating a new domain to be called gjo.doe.gov.  The organization's
current domain is doegjpo.com, and they wish to gradually move to the new
one.  Their nameservers are ernest.doegjpo.com and eagle.doegjpo.com, and
mine are fulcrum.doe.gov and foxbat.doe.gov.

They have A records for ernest.gjo.doe.gov and eagle.gjo.doe.gov that point
to the same IP as ernest.doegjpo.com and eagle.doegjpo.com, respectively.

On my nameservers, if I delegate the gjo.doe.gov domain to the two
doegjpo.com nameservers, everything works fine, but it's not the config. I
want.  If I delegate the domain to the two gjo.doe.gov nameservers (same
machines, just different A records), my config. doesn't work.  [nslookup and
dig "hangs" when queried for anything about the domain, e.g. SOA records for
gjo.doe.gov]

I can't figure out what the difference is between using the doegjpo.com and
the gjo.doe.gov domains if the IPs are the same in their files.  Any hints
on what I'm missing?  Thanks in advance!

-William Von Alt
 Verizon
 301.903.2710