Queries of type NS have answers in Authority Section

[Barry Margolin]

I've been trying to troubleshoot a problem that one of my customers is 
having resolving a .gov domain.  I noticed that when you query the 
authoritative servers for .gov for the NS records of a 2nd-level domain, 
it puts the answers in the Authority section rather than the Answer 
section:

$ dig whitehouse.gov ns @a.gov.zoneedit.com +norec

; <<>> DiG 9.2.2 <<>> whitehouse.gov ns @a.gov.zoneedit.com +norec
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 29041
;; flags: qr; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 3, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;whitehouse.gov.        IN NS

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
whitehouse.gov.      10800 IN NS NS1-AUTH.SPRINTLINK.NET.
whitehouse.gov.      10800 IN NS NS2-AUTH.SPRINTLINK.NET.
whitehouse.gov.      10800 IN NS NS3-AUTH.SPRINTLINK.NET.

I'm not sure yet if this is what is actually causing my customer's 
problem, but it also confuses dnsreport.com.  I've had to depend on this 
site lately because at work I'm behind firewalls that make it difficult 
for me to do direct DNS queries out to the Internet (I've got to take 
this up with my management -- my DNS expertise is one of the reasons 
they hired me).

-- 
Barry Margolin, barmar at alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***