Larry Blunk wrote the following on 11/3/2011 12:47 PM:
On 11/02/2011 05:57 PM, Matt Chung wrote:
I work for a regional ISP and very recently there has been an influx of calls reporting "slowness" when accessing certain websites (i.e google.com/voice/b) via HTTP. After performing a tcpdump and analyzing the session, I have been able to pinpoint the latency at the application layer. After the tcp session has been established, it takes up to 15-20 seconds before the application begins sending data. The root of the problem was that the PTR record for our customer(s) address does not exist. As soon as the record is created, latency from the application is eliminated. This is analogous to latency when accessing a server over SSH when no PTR is available.
A seperate packet capture from another customer exhibiting similar performance behavior showed many TCP retransmissions. At first glance, I assumed this was network related however this correlates with the application not responding and inducing retransmissions at the TCP layer (different symptoms, same problem).
Historically, there was no compelling reason to create PTR records for our CPE however more and more applications seem to be dependent on it. Although we will be assigning a record for each address, my question is why is the application (specifically HTTP) dependent on a reverse record ? What is the purpose?
Hope this is helpful as well
We recently encountered a similar issue with a customer. The sites that had slowness issues were configured to use the traditional Google Analytics javascript instead of the newer asynchronous code. The problem was not the lack of a PTR record, but rather the in-addr delegation was pointing to lame servers that were no longer responding (hence the long timeouts as the Google servers attempted to perform reverse lookups on the client IP's). As others have pointed out, as long as there's a valid nameserver responding, a lack of PTR record would not cause issues as an NXDOMAIN record would be sent back immediately and the Google Analytics server will move on.
-Larry Blunk Merit
Larry, you're absolutely correct. One has to wonder what the continued debate is about. The Op likely had a DNS loop, misconfiguration, or lame servers. Correcting that issue should resolve any "slowness". The issue then is whether the application requires a valid PTR (or subsequent matching forward record) such as SMTP. BTW, ARIN requires valid IN-ADDR.ARPA domain records. The specific record may be NXDOMAIN (non-existant), but the server cannot be lame - https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#seven1 I believe just about all of us on this list have agreed to this policy. However, my experience tells me that many people choose to ignore it. This thread is evidence of such. --Blake