Refresh: 28800
Retry: 7200
Expire: 3600000
Default TTL: 86400
PASS NS agreement on SOA serial # OK. All your nameservers agree that your SOA serial number is 2004012101. That means that all your nameservers are using the same data (unless you have different sets of data with the same serial number, which would be very bad)! Note that the DNS Report only checks the NS records listed at the parent servers (not any stealth servers).
PASS SOA MNAME Check OK. Your SOA (Start of Authority) record states that your master (primary) name server is: ns1.viceinternet.com.. That server is listed at the parent servers, which is correct.
PASS SOA RNAME Check OK. Your SOA (Start of Authority) record states that your DNS contact E-mail address is:
[email protected]. (techie note: we have changed the initial '.' to an '@' for display purposes).
PASS SOA Serial Number OK. Your SOA serial number is: 2004012101. This appears to be in the recommended format of YYYYMMDDnn, where 'nn' is the revision. So this indicates that your DNS was last updated on 21 Jan 2004 (and was revision #1). This number must be incremented every time you make a DNS change.
PASS SOA REFRESH value OK. Your SOA REFRESH interval is : 28800 seconds. This seems normal (about 3600-7200 seconds is good if not using DNS NOTIFY; RFC1912 2.2 recommends a value between 1200 to 43200 seconds (20 minutes to 12 hours)). This value determines how often secondary/slave nameservers check with the master for updates.
PASS SOA RETRY value OK. Your SOA RETRY interval is : 7200 seconds. This seems normal (about 120-7200 seconds is good). The retry value is the amount of time your secondary/slave nameservers will wait to contact the master nameserver again if the last attempt failed.
WARN SOA EXPIRE value WARNING: Your SOA EXPIRE time is : 3600000 seconds. This seems a bit high. You should consider decreasing this value to about 1209600 to 2419200 seconds (2 to 4 weeks). RFC1912 suggests 2-4 weeks. This is how long a secondary/slave nameserver will wait before considering its DNS data stale if it can't reach the primary nameserver.
PASS SOA MINIMUM TTL value OK. Your SOA MINIMUM TTL is: 86400 seconds. This seems normal (about 3,600 to 86400 seconds or 1-24 hours is good). RFC2308 suggests a value of 1-3 hours. This value used to determine the default (technically, minimum) TTL (time-to-live) for DNS entries, but now is used for negative caching.
MX INFO MX Record Your 1 MX record is:
0 dirk.xxxx.com. [TTL=14400] IP=64.34.200.176 [TTL=14400] [US]
PASS Low port test OK. Our local DNS server that uses a low port number can get your MX record. Some DNS servers are behind firewalls that block low port numbers. This does not guarantee that your DNS server does not block low ports (this specific lookup must be cached), but is a good indication that it does not.
PASS Invalid characters OK. All of your MX records appear to use valid hostnames, without any invalid characters.
PASS All MX IPs public OK. All of your MX records appear to use public IPs. If there were any private IPs, they would not be reachable, causing slight mail delays, extra resource usage, and possibly bounced mail.
PASS MX records are not CNAMEs OK. Looking up your MX record did not just return a CNAME. If an MX record query returns a CNAME, extra processing is required, and some mail servers may not be able to handle it.
PASS MX A lookups have no CNAMEs OK. There appear to be no CNAMEs returned for A records lookups from your MX records (CNAMEs are prohibited in MX records, according to RFC974, RFC1034 3.6.2, RFC1912 2.4, and RFC2181 10.3).
PASS MX is host name, not IP OK. All of your MX records are host names (as opposed to IP addresses, which are not allowed in MX records).
INFO Multiple MX records NOTE: You only have 1 MX record. If your primary mail server is down or unreachable, there is a chance that mail may have troubles reaching you. In the past, mailservers would usually re-try E-mail for up to 48 hours. But many now only re-try for a couple of hours. If your primary mailserver is very reliable (or can be fixed quickly if it goes down), having just one mailserver may be acceptable.
PASS Differing MX-A records OK. I did not detect differing IPs for your MX records (this would happen if your DNS servers return different IPs than the DNS servers that are authoritative for the hostname in your MX records).
PASS Duplicate MX records OK. You do not have any duplicate MX records (pointing to the same IP). Although technically valid, duplicate MX records can cause a lot of confusion, and waste resources.
FAIL Reverse DNS entries for MX records ERROR: The IP of one or more of your mail server(s) have no reverse DNS (PTR) entries (if you see "Timeout" below, it may mean that your DNS servers did not respond fast enough). RFC1912 2.1 says you should have a reverse DNS for all your mail servers. It is strongly urged that you have them, as many mailservers will not accept mail from mailservers with no reverse DNS entry. You can double-check using the 'Reverse DNS Lookup' tool at the DNSstuff site (it contacts your servers in real time; the reverse DNS lookups in the DNS report use our local caching DNS server). The problem MX records are:
176.200.34.64.in-addr.arpa [No reverse DNS entry (rcode: 3 ancount: 0) (check it)]
Mail PASS Connect to mail servers OK: I was able to connect to all of your mailservers.
WARN Mail server host name in greeting WARNING: One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is (the SMTP greeting should be a 3-digit code, followed by a space or a dash, then the host name). If your mailserver sends out E-mail using this domain in its EHLO or HELO, your E-mail might get blocked by anti-spam software. This is also a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 (and RFC2821 4.3.1). Note that the hostname given in the SMTP greeting should have an A record pointing back to the same server. Note that this one test may use a cached DNS record.
dirk.xxxx.com claims to be invalid hostname 'XXXX':
220 XXXX ESMTP
PASS Acceptance of NULL <> sender OK: All of your mailservers accept mail from "<>". You are required (RFC1123 5.2.9) to receive this type of mail (which includes reject/bounce messages and return receipts).
PASS Acceptance of postmaster address OK: All of your mailservers accept mail to
[email protected] (as required by RFC822 6.3, RFC1123 5.2.7, and RFC2821 4.5.1).
PASS Acceptance of abuse address OK: All of your mailservers accept mail to
[email protected].
PASS Acceptance of domain literals OK: All of your mailservers accept mail in the domain literal format (user@[64.34.200.176]).
PASS Open relay test OK: All of your mailservers appear to be closed to relaying. This is not a thorough check, you can get a thorough one here.
dirk.xxxx.com OK: 554 <Not.abuse.see.www.DNSreport.
[email protected]>: Relay access denied
WARN SPF record Your domain does not have an SPF record. This means that spammers can easily send out E-mail that looks like it came from your domain, which can make your domain look bad (if the recipient thinks you really sent it), and can cost you money (when people complain to you, rather than the spammer). You may want to add an SPF record ASAP, as 01 Oct 2004 was the target date for domains to have SPF records in place (Hotmail, for example, started checking SPF records on 01 Oct 2004).
WWW
INFO WWW Record Your
www.xxxx.com A record is:
www.xxxx.com. CNAME xxxx.com. [TTL=14400]
xxxx.com. A 66.98.204.10 [TTL=14400] [US]
PASS All WWW IPs public OK. All of your WWW IPs appear to be public IPs. If there were any private IPs, they would not be reachable, causing problems reaching your web site.
PASS CNAME Lookup OK. You do have a CNAME record for
www.xxxx.com, which can cause some confusion. However, this is legal. Your CNAME entry also returns the A record for the CNAME entry, which is good -- otherwise, it would require an extra DNS lookup, which slightly delays the initial access to the website and use extra bandwidth. Note that if the CNAME points to another CNAME, it will likely cause problems.
Legend:
* Rows with a FAIL indicate a problem that in most cases really should be fixed.
* Rows with a WARN indicate a possible minor problem, which often is not worth pursuing.
* Note that all information is accessed in real-time (except where noted), so this is the freshest information about your domain.
* Note that automated usage is not tolerated; please only view the DNS report directly with your web browser.
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