Ah that makes sense. I am not going to worry about the inconstancy then. Thanks to everyone that replied!! -Grant On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 10:30 AM, Doug Barton <dougb@dougbarton.us> wrote:
On 12/3/14 10:07 AM, Grant Ridder wrote:
Did more digging and found the RFC regarding ANY queries:
3.2.3 - * 255 A request for all records https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1035.txt
When listing URLs for RFCs it's better to use the tools site, as it gives a much better experience:
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1035
Meanwhile, the text is correct, but what you're missing is the nuance of authoritative vs. recursive. If you send an ANY query to an authoritative server it is naturally going to send you all of the related records, since it has them all.
A recursive (or iterative if you prefer) server only has what it has in the cache, but it will send you "all records" that it has. What this does not imply is that the recursive server will go out and do its own ANY query for the RR you're asking about, unless there is nothing in the cache to start with.
There are any number of explanations for why some of the recursive servers you're querying have more records than others. None of them are bugs. :)
However Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DNS_record_types)
lists this as a request for "All cached records" instead of "A request for all records" per the RFC.
Wikipedia is good for a lot of things, but standards work is not one of them. :) The text above is a good example of why.
Doug