SCOUG-Programming Mailing List Archives

Date:	Mon, 27 Dec 1999 13:23:08 PST
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
To:	scoug-programming@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Programming: Another Y2K issue - DNS servers

Content Type: text/plain

At the last Programmers SIG meeting we discussed some possible Y2K
problems.

Here's another.

A secondary Domain Name Server "occasionally" checks in with its primary
Domain Name Server to see if there have been any updates. The handshake
is simple: The primary DNS updates a "serial number" whenever there's a
modification, and the secondary DNS compares the last serial number it
received against the current serial number.

Here's the glitch: Some DNS administrators apparently use the current
date as the serial number.

If the serial number is updated with software that encodes the date with
a 2-digit year, then the serial number could change from, say, 991231 to
101 (000101). If the secondary DNS compares with "less than" rather
than "not equal to", it won't update.

The RFC (which I've glanced through but haven't read) with "proper" DNS
update methods is RFC 1912:

ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1912.txt

and, for any RFC searches, go to:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfcsearch.html

My reference for this Y2K problem is columnist Michael Dillon's "Ask The
Infra Expert" in the March 8, 1999 issue of Internet World.

- Peter

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