Find reverse lookup servers

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2001 at 11:25:31AM +1100, Jon Booth wrote:
> How do I work out what the primary and secondary servers are for an
> in-adddr.arpa domain?

There is nothing special about in-addr.arpa domains.  They work exactly
like any other domains.  You find out what the peer name servers are by

	dig ns NNN.NNN.NNN.in-addr.arpa
	nslookup -type=ns NNN.NNN.NNN.in-addr.arpa

depending on which tool you're more comfortable with and what your
further needs are.

As far as "primary" and "secondary" [now called "master" and "slave"],
there is no useful distinction as far as the resolver is concerned.
That is why I stress the term peer server.  When you query for name
servers, you get ALL of the peer servers.  There is no indication
whether any of them are masters or any of them are slaves.

In fact, it is possible that none are masters, and it is also possible
that none are slaves.

HOWEVER, having said that, if you want to find the name of the primary
master server, it should be in the SOA record for the domain:

	dig soa NNN.NNN.NNN.in-addr.arpa
	nslookup -type=soa NNN.NNN.NNN.in-addr.arpa

There is no guarantee, though, because not everyone does this right.

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at center.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
OSIS Center Systems Support					EMT-B
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