Summary

  • Terry Manderson's prop-038 made APNIC's lame reverse-DNS test depend on a valid SOA reply from a delegated nameserver with the authoritative-answer bit set.
  • APNIC 22 called the amendment editorial and adopted it by consensus. The policy was implemented on 1 January 2007; APNIC's published process allows withdrawal only after persistent failure and contact attempts.

An address holder can list a nameserver for its reverse zone. APNIC delegates the zone; it does not run the holder's server. When that server stops answering properly, the bad listing can slow lookups for everyone else. APNIC already had a policy for removing lame delegations. Terry Manderson's prop-038, dated 7 August 2006, sharpened the question that precedes removal: does the delegated server return a valid Start of Authority record for this domain, and does its reply claim authority with the AA bit?

Those are two small checks with a large administrative consequence. Manderson explicitly left one kind of inconsistency outside the test: APNIC would not compare SOA serials across nameservers. A server could therefore pass this narrow lameness test while its zone copy lagged another's. The proposal called for UDP queries, confirmation of failure and reasonable attempts to reach domain contacts before taking a delegation out of the parent zone. A removed delegation could be re-enabled only by an authorized resource holder. The draft did not prescribe an instant deletion after one unanswered packet.

The APNIC 22 Policy SIG minutes described this as an “editorial change” to an existing policy. No questions were recorded, and the chair found consensus. That label is revealing: the amendment did not invent APNIC's withdrawal power, but it defined the evidence APNIC would use before exercising it. The proposal history records final call, EC endorsement on 15 December 2006 and implementation on 1 January 2007.

The published test explanation describes repeated checks over 15 days before treating a nameserver as lame. APNIC's current procedure adds email and phone contact attempts and at least 45 days of persistent lameness before an administrative block withdraws the delegation. A holder can remove the marker through normal Whois procedures. These published operational timings describe the procedure today; prop-038 itself changed the definition. The distinction keeps an “editorial” amendment from swallowing the whole machinery around it.

The records here give no historical count of delegations withdrawn under prop-038. A dated APNIC action log would show how often this precise test led to removal. What the documents do show is the power split: the holder must run an authoritative server, while APNIC decides whether the parent zone continues to point at it.

Portrait identity reference: IETF's named photograph of Terry Manderson.