[apnic-talk] Errors in the APNIC WHOIS data base
Recently I've been looking at records relating to reverse DNS delegation,
as present (and where present) in the WHOIS data bases of the various RIRs,
including APNIC.
I was rather horrified to find that due to what seems to have been a
small software slip-up, there are, at present, a number of cases (40)
within the AFRINIC WHOIS data base where the same single subdomain
of the .in-addr.arpa domain actually has two different and conflicting
records present in the data base.
This self-evident consistancy error appears to have crept into the
AFRINIC WHOIS data base due to an inadvertant lack of proper format
checking of the full name of the particular .in-addr.arpa subdomain
in question. More specifically, it seems that AFRINIC allowed into
their data base an entry for -both- "<something>.in-addr.arpa" and
also a parallel one for "<something>.in-addr.arpa.", the only difference
being the presence or absence of a trailing period.
I wrote a small Perl script to detect these cases in the AFRINIC data
base and I have reported all such cases to AFRINIC for remediation.
Anyway, I have just run that exact same script also on a very recently
fetched copy of the APNIC WHOIS data base, and it has found that this
same syndrome has also infected the APNIC WHOIS data base, but to a
substantially lesser degree.
As the examples below illustrate, there are two cases in the current
APNIC WHOIS data base where the same single reverse DNS delegation is
represented by two or more conflicting records, and where the reason
these cases were not already detected as duplicates is mostly likely
that one record includes a trailing period in the name of the in-addr.arpa
subdomain while the other record does not.
I would like to respectfully suggest that the APNIC hostmaster take steps
to immediately remediate these obvious conflicts and errors in the WHOIS
data base, and also, that programming changes be made so as to prevent
this same sort of error from creeping back into the data base in the future.
Case #1)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
domain: 76.145.203.in-addr.arpa.
descr: Customer use mobile IP subnet
country: HK
admin-c: FC509-AP
tech-c: FC509-AP
zone-c: FC509-AP
nserver: red.hutchcity.com
nserver: brown.hutchcity.com
mnt-by: MAINT-HK-HUTCHMOBILE
last-modified: 2010-07-21T00:27:45Z
source: APNIC
domain: 76.145.203.in-addr.arpa
descr: Reverse zone for 203.145.76.0/24
admin-c: FC509-AP
tech-c: FC509-AP
zone-c: FC509-AP
nserver: dnshost1.on-nets.com
nserver: dnshost2.on-nets.com
mnt-by: MAINT-HK-HUTCHMOBILE
last-modified: 2018-10-31T04:06:13Z
source: APNIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Case #2)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
domain: 77.145.203.in-addr.arpa.
descr: Customer use mobile IP subnet
country: HK
admin-c: FC509-AP
tech-c: FC509-AP
zone-c: FC509-AP
nserver: red.hutchcity.com
nserver: brown.hutchcity.com
mnt-by: MAINT-HK-HUTCHMOBILE
last-modified: 2010-07-21T00:31:45Z
source: APNIC
domain: 77.145.203.in-addr.arpa
descr: Reverse zone for 203.145.77.0/24
admin-c: FC509-AP
tech-c: FC509-AP
zone-c: FC509-AP
nserver: dnshost1.on-nets.com
nserver: dnshost2.on-nets.com
mnt-by: MAINT-HK-HUTCHMOBILE
last-modified: 2018-10-26T10:37:37Z
source: APNIC
--------------------------------------------------------------------