MX Record on a wildcard zone

Jim Reid jim at rfc1035.com
Wed Jul 17 16:08:29 UTC 2002


>>>>> "Kevin" == Kevin Darcy <kcd at daimlerchrysler.com> writes:

    >> And by introducing wildcard MX records, you'd pretty much shift
    >> the configuration hassles to the name servers. For instance:
    >> possibly doing something to every name server whenever a new
    >> TLD is introduced on the internet.

    Kevin> Why would something need to be done to every nameserver? 

Note I said "possibly". Who knows what sort of nonsense -- weird
per-zone forwarding policies, internal resolution of some external
names/TLDs the typical wildcarder gets up to?

    >> Or when the company opens/closes a pipe to the net of a
    >> business partner or supplier.

    Kevin> I'm not sure I quite understand this part. Yes, if you want
    Kevin> "special" routing for a trading partner, and your mail
    Kevin> infrastructure relies completely on MX records, you'll have
    Kevin> to do some DNS tricks to facilitate this "special"
    Kevin> routing. But, again, you probably only have to do this in
    Kevin> one place. How is this any worse than making config changes
    Kevin> in sendmail.cf, mailertables, or whatever, and then having
    Kevin> to push that out to all of your mail servers, including to
    Kevin> every new mail server that comes on line?

See above.

    Kevin> Bottom line is that I prefer to control mail routing
    Kevin> centrally in my DNS database via MX records, than try to
    Kevin> constantly keep up with the configs of our hundreds of mail
    Kevin> servers, which have a high rate of turnover (we typically
    Kevin> only lease our servers for 2 years).

Fine. You have a clue about what you're doing. The typical (ab)user of
wildcard RRs does not. If you recall, the OP "fixed" his broken mail
system by misconfiguring the DNS with wildcards. 


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