advantages/disadvantages of hidden vs. real primary (on a 1 MBit link)

Tom Diehl tdiehl at rogueind.com
Tue Nov 13 18:33:49 UTC 2001


On Tue, 13 Nov 2001, Frank Joerdens wrote:

> 
> Greetings. I've been running a hidden primary on a 1 MBit link for 3
> years, and so far, up until very recently that is, it's worked pretty
> well - for our purposes anyway. Now our provider's gone belly-up and it
> turns out that in this special case, it can be a real drag. While the
> physical link is still operational and reasonably stable, their
> nameservers have become really unstable since they filed for bankruptcy
> (presumably because many of the tech people have already left the
> sinking ship). Now that we're switching to the new provider, I am
> wondering whether not just to have a real primary. The arguments against
> it are a) traffic which may bog down the 1 MBit link and b) availability
> (we don't have an autonomous system). The argument for it is ease of
> configuration (the tech person at the new provider's I talked to today
> didn't really know what it was, had to admit that he was out of his
> depth and that he would have to ask a more knowledgeable colleague; the
> old provider never manged to get classless in-addr-arpa delegation to
> work although I did point them to the relevant RFC). Hence my questions
> are: Do these arguments really hold any water, and, are there any
> others? What's the current wisdom on this matter?

I am by no means an expert here but for some of the reasons you site
we set things up so that we are the primary and the isp is the slave.
That way we control the zone files and all they have to do is get the
zone xfer stuff right. Getting the reverse delegation set up in my
experience is a little harder but once they get their end up and
running again you are in control (assuming they leave their end alone).

HTH,

-- 
......Tom		Dysfunction The Only Consistent Feature of All
tdiehl at rogueind.com	of Your Dissatisfying Relationships is You.



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