"no data known" vrs "host not found"

[admjcd]

The problem does not exist for all of our sites. Only for two of our DNS server at one site.  And every other DNS server I queried is fine when ours is having the problem. I want these Dns servers to work like most of the others on the net? It also just does not happen to army.mil.  Even if their setup is "weird" it still works for most others and I don't have time to call these other domains and ask them to fix their DNS servers. Our users forward mail to third party domains to get it delivered when the problem occurs. We can also always send to these domains through hotmail and yahoo 100% of the time. I can not believe that there is not a way to fix our DNS servers without calling the other side??      
  
In article <a7g931$kmf at pub3.rc.vix.com>, admjcd  <admjcd at VOLPE.DOT.GOV> wrote:
>>When ever we send mail we get back these NDRs when ever the domain is
>>not correct. Sometimes we get them when the domain is correct. Both 
>>types are "host unknown".  One says  "no data known" and the others 
>>say "host not found" .  What is the difference between these two and 
>>why should we get the "no data known" intermittenly message when the 
>>domain does exist?

Barry Margolin <barmar at genuity.net> replied:

>Something very weird is going on with the army.mil entries that result
>in "no data known" messages.  They have MX records, but if you perform 
>an ANY query (as sendmail does), the MX record appears in the Authority 
>section instead of the Answer section.  And its TTL decreases on each 
>query, implying that the MX record is in the cache, not the 
>authoritative data for the zone.  You should probably let the Army 
>hostmaster know that there's a problem with their server.

I have seen this problem with the Army's DNS for a long time (Dec 2000). I even posted the problem here May 30, 2001.  I have not gotten a reply from army.mil since my initial queries in 2000, and obviously the problem has not been corrected.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Barry S. Finkel
Electronics and Computing Technologies Division
Argonne National Laboratory          Phone:    +1 (630) 252-7277
9700 South Cass Avenue               Facsimile:+1 (630) 252-4601
Building 222, Room D209              Internet: BSFinkel at anl.gov
Argonne, IL   60439-4828             IBMMAIL:  I1004994