[26521] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: mail does bounce (was: Customers down?)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Sun Jan 2 15:24:02 2000
Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 12:22:41 -0800
From: owen@dixon.delong.sj.ca.us (Owen DeLong)
Message-Id: <200001022022.MAA24068@irkutsk.delong.sj.ca.us>
To: sthaug@nethelp.no, rmeyer@mhsc.com
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
>
> > > I think I like it better that way. Just because both nameservers are
> > > temporarily down doesn't mean the domain doesn't exist. :P
> >
> > Seems to me you're talking past one another. If all nameservers for a
> > domain are down there *is* no nameserver which can say that the domain
> > is authoritatively non-existent. (OK, you could get a negative caching
> > answer from one of the authoritative servers on the level above, but
> > that's a different issue...)
> >
> > I agree with Greg Woods - if a domain is authoritatively non-existent,
> > I'd expect a sane mailer to bounce the message.
>
> I'm glad that you don't write code, especially sendmail code.
>
>
I'm hoping that some clarification of terms will kill this thread...
There is a difference between the following terms:
Authoritatively Non-existant domain:
A domain for which the servers authoritative for the parent
zone report that the domain does not exist.
Unreachable Authoritative Servers:
A domain which exists and posesses a delegation in it's
parent servers, but which authoritative servers are
currently not reachable.
The former is regarded as a permanent error and mail is immediately
bounced by every mailer I know of.
The latter is a transient error and is treated as such by sendmail.
I would hope it would be treated as such by other mailers.
Owen
