Moved from the "NetBSD SPARC list" under thread "Seeking a laptop
scsi disk...", which became a bashing for a person who was blocking
e-mails that a reverse DNS lookup couldn't be made on.  I sympathize
with that person because the battle against spam is so costly in
terms of time (study, maintenance, implementation).  The only reason
I don't do it myself is that few people where I live can afford the
"luxury" of a reverse DNS record.  So while this is not related to
NetBSD directly, many NetBSD users could be helped if someone in the
community has ideas on a within-financial-reach solution.

On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 03:36:48PM +0000, Christian Smith wrote:
> Lets keep the discussion objective, please. ... ..... has a net positive 
> contribution to the BSD world, noone one would be better for his loss.
> 
> My 2c.

That's worth INFINITELY more than 2c.  I only hope my post can be as
worthwhile to the NetBSD community.

Background: since having to move my physical location, I had to change
providers.  Previously I was on cable, and the ISP used tcp/ip.  They
did NAT to give me a fixed IP, i.e., I was _within_ their firewall, and
they also allowed me to relay through their mail server.  I could send
private mail to someone blocking on the basis of reverse DNS lookups.

The new provider uses pppoe, and people with fixed IPs are not allowed
to use their mail servers, even though we pay ca. $40/mo. for the fixed
IP.  It's reasonable, actually, because we are not on their internal VLAN,
and they would have to make holes for us to get through.  So now the only
way (that I know of) to get a reverse DNS record is to contract to use
their DNS servers.  That service costs another $25/mo. in addition to the
initial transfer of the zone files which costs $100+.  It was the straw that
broke the camel's back so to speak.  Already I pay over US$1200/year to the
ISP; and that REALLY strains the budget.  (My wife used to give me a
weekly allowance, but that ended. :)

Here comes the question.  Presently I use the _free_ DNS service of
the people who do my domain registration (which, btw, is MUCH less
than the annual cost of registering through my ISP).  With this service
you write your own zone files to upload.  There is no way to upload
the reverse DNS files, whatever you call them (in-arpa files?).

So does anyone know of a way to get around this without going broke?
(No, the ISP will not change the reverse record on their name servers
unless you contract to use their expensive DNS service.  And, no, changing
ISPs is not an option, either.)

Thanks everyone.

-- 
henry nelson
  WWW_HOME=http://yuba(dot)ne(dot)jp/(tilde)home/