On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Marco Botros wrote:

 > Domain glitch halts .gov.au sites
 > http://email.ni.com.au/Click?q=9f-o7CMQ1JnLHdtrVNYlFjHyIlQ
 > 
 > hmm???.
 
Interesting.  To quote a bit of that - noting the author's own "?" ..

-=-=-=-
"Because of the extensive redundancy in the domain name system ? the
 impact to all second-level domains under AusRegistry management was
 negligible," he said.
[..]
Mr Kinderis said investigations into the cause of the problem were
 continuing. He said the reason .gov.au sites were particularly affected
 "is yet to be fully diagnosed".
-=-=-=-

So I had a dig (well, I find nslookup's format more useful for quoting) 
and after feeling quite reassured that .gov.au's secondary servers were
indeed widely distributed (see below), I was more than a bit surprised
to see the (at least apparent?) lack of DNS server site redundancy for
the subdomains nsw.gov.au and vic.gov.au, the only two that I checked.

To be sure, I queried these from two of the secondaries for .gov.au
itself, as well as from ns1.ausregistry.net.  Check for yourself, but
here are my results.  Are all the authoritative servers for *(?).gov.au
really not redundant outside ausregistry's scope?  It seems that one of
these four servers is likely to be on a different network, but hmmm? 

Below that, the list of authoritative servers for .gov.au itself, which
looks fine, on the face of it.  Am I missing something obvious?

=======

> set type=any
> nsw.gov.au.
Server:  au2ld.csiro.au
Address:  130.116.2.21

Authoritative answers can be found from:
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns4.ausregistry.net
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns1.ausregistry.net
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns2.ausregistry.net
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns3.ausregistry.net

(same result for vic.gov.au)

=======

> nsw.gov.au.
Server:  ns1.ausregistry.net
Address:  203.18.56.41

nsw.gov.au
        origin = ns1.ausregistry.net
        mail addr = dns.ausregistry.net.au
        serial = 2002075820
        refresh = 14400 (4 hours)
        retry   = 3600 (1 hour)
        expire  = 3600000 (41 days 16 hours)
        minimum ttl = 86400 (1 day)
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns2.ausregistry.net
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns3.ausregistry.net
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns4.ausregistry.net
nsw.gov.au      nameserver = ns1.ausregistry.net
ns1.ausregistry.net     internet address = 203.18.56.41
ns2.ausregistry.net     internet address = 203.18.56.42
ns3.ausregistry.net     internet address = 203.18.56.43
ns4.ausregistry.net     internet address = 210.8.15.253

(same result for vic.gov.au)

=======

> gov.au.
Server:  ns1.ausregistry.net
Address:  203.18.56.41

gov.au
        origin = ns1.ausregistry.net
        mail addr = dns.ausregistry.net.au
        serial = 2002076367
        refresh = 14400 (4 hours)
        retry   = 3600 (1 hour)
        expire  = 3600000 (41 days 16 hours)
        minimum ttl = 86400 (1 day)
gov.au  nameserver = ns2.ausregistry.net
gov.au  nameserver = ns3.ausregistry.net
gov.au  nameserver = ns3.melbourneit.com
gov.au  nameserver = ns4.ausregistry.net
gov.au  nameserver = box2.aunic.net
gov.au  nameserver = dns1.telstra.net
gov.au  nameserver = au2ld.csiro.au
gov.au  nameserver = audns01.syd.optus.net
gov.au  nameserver = ns1.ausregistry.net
ns1.ausregistry.net     internet address = 203.18.56.41
ns2.ausregistry.net     internet address = 203.18.56.42
ns3.ausregistry.net     internet address = 203.18.56.43
ns3.melbourneit.com     internet address = 203.27.227.10
ns4.ausregistry.net     internet address = 210.8.15.253
box2.aunic.net          internet address = 203.202.150.20
dns1.telstra.net        internet address = 203.50.5.200
au2ld.csiro.au          internet address = 130.116.2.21
audns01.syd.optus.net   internet address = 210.49.20.208

(same result from au2ld.csiro.au)

=====

Cheers, Ian