On Sat, 23 Nov 1996, Jim Fleming wrote:
When history is made on the Internet, it is important to briefly pause to recognize the event, and then move forward. Recently, one of the first TRUE Root Name Servers was put into service by John Palmer of The American Global Network, Inc. (AGN.NET)
Yeah, right. When I asked 199.5.157.5 about records for ".", it returned an "authoritative" answer containing the following bogus information: ;; ANSWERS: . 86400 SOA MX.ALTERNIC.NET. ROOT.ARAGORN.ALTERNIC.NET. ( 1996110715 ; serial 10800 ; refresh (3 hours) 900 ; retry (15 mins) 604800 ; expire (7 days) 86400 ) ; minimum (1 day) . 518400 NS ALTER.NIC. . 518400 NS MX.ALTERNIC.NET. . 518400 NS ROOT-NS.MCS.NET. . 518400 NS TORONTO.ALTERNIC.NET. . 518400 NS ARAGORN.ALTERNIC.NET. ;; AUTHORITY RECORDS: . 518400 NS ALTER.NIC. . 518400 NS MX.ALTERNIC.NET. . 518400 NS ROOT-NS.MCS.NET. . 518400 NS TORONTO.ALTERNIC.NET. . 518400 NS ARAGORN.ALTERNIC.NET. ;; ADDITIONAL RECORDS: ALTER.NIC. 86400 A 204.94.42.5 MX.ALTERNIC.NET. 86400 A 204.94.42.1 ROOT-NS.MCS.NET. 518400 A 192.160.127.86 TORONTO.ALTERNIC.NET. 86400 A 207.107.232.106 ARAGORN.ALTERNIC.NET. 86400 A 204.94.42.2 Astute readers will notice that the list of alleged root servers in the answer from 199.5.157.5 does not include 199.5.157.5 itself. Astute readers will further notice that the Internet's real root servers a.root-servers.net, b.root-servers.net, etc., are not mentioned in the answer from the bogus "root server" 199.5.157.5. --apb (Alan Barrett)