dkg's blog

i've been on an IPv6 kick recently, getting dual-stack systems up and working for a bunch of folks.

I'd like to make some of these services reachable by IPv6-only clients. this suggests that i need a range of details sorted out, but i think the one piece left for me is the glue records for the nameservice. i use in-bailiwick nameservers for DNS where possible, which means i want mandatory glue records. that is, the primary namserver for example.org is probably something like ns0.example.org, which means that the org nameservers themselves need to store not only the NS record, but an A record that corresponds to the name pointed to by the NS.

But for IPv6-only clients that do their own name resolution, i need AAAA glue records, and i haven't yet found a registrar that will push AAAA glue records for the same names as the existing A glue into the org zone.

Do you know of a registrar that will do this?

I've tried:

dotster

Dotster seems to only allow IPv4 glue to be entered on their Register Nameserver config page (needs a dotster login to see it). They haven't yet yet responded to my query through their support web form about submitting AAAA glue

gandi

gandi at least offers the opportunity to enter AAAA glue, but apparently can't let me have both AAAA and A glue for the same name. A note to their support team got me a response that this is planned “for Q1 or Q2 of 2011”.

Any suggestions for reasonable registrars that offer this today?

Am i being silly in wanting AAAA and A glue for the same names? i note that the root zone and the org zone both offer A and AAAA records for each of their dual-stack nameservers. You can check for yourself:

 dig @a.root-servers.net ns org dig @a.root-servers.net ns .

if i don't go for dual records, i could instead use gandi and go with distinct names for the v6 and v4 servers, like this:

;; QUESTION SECTION:;example.org.             IN  NS;; AUTHORITY SECTION:example.org.      172800    IN  NS  a.ns.example.org.example.org.      172800    IN  NS  b.ns.example.org.example.org.      172800    IN  NS  c.ns.example.org.example.org.      172800    IN  NS  d.ns.example.org.;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:a.ns.example.org. 172800    IN  A   192.0.2.3b.ns.example.org. 172800    IN  A   192.0.2.4c.ns.example.org. 172800    IN  AAAAA   2001:db8::3d.ns.example.org. 172800  IN  AAAAA   2001:db8::4

But of course what i really want is this:

;; QUESTION SECTION:;example.org.                IN  NS;; AUTHORITY SECTION:example.org.      172800    IN  NS  a.ns.example.org.example.org.      172800    IN  NS  b.ns.example.org.;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:a.ns.example.org. 172800    IN  A   192.0.2.3a.ns.example.org. 172800    IN  AAAAA   2001:db8::3b.ns.example.org. 172800  IN  A   192.0.2.4b.ns.example.org. 172800    IN  AAAAA   2001:db8::4

My concern about this is if some IPv4-only system gets a list like the first one, and decides to use c.ns.example.org or d.ns.example.org, which doesn't have an A record at all. That would be a silly implementation, of course. but uh, we have a lot of silly implementations of things out there.

Feedback welcome!

Tags: dns, ipv6