What to do after getting delegation from ISP?

We have a mail server running on SBC Business DSL. We have been unable to send mail to some domains because we lack a PTR record.

I contacted SBC to create a PTR record. (mail.ppihealth.com = 66.137.139.81)

They responded back with the following:



I contacted my registrar, domainsite.com, and they said they cannot create PTR records and I would have to ask my ISP to do so.

I am at a lost as what to do now and I believe all I have left is to host my own nameservers.

Do I have any options? and if so how would I go about implementing them?

Thanks in advance,

That's pretty screwed up. SBC is doing this:

81.139.137.66.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 81.139.137.66.in-addr.ppihealth.com.
82.139.137.66.in-addr.arpa. CNAME 82.139.137.66.in-addr.ppihealth.com.
...etc...

This is a terribly non-standard solution. But if mail servers don't have any problem with it, then you need to setup a PTR record in your "ppihealth.com" master zone. Currently domainsite.com manages your ppihealth.com master zone. You have 3 choices:

1) switch domain hosts. Either host the master zone yourself, or move to a domain host that supports PTR records in your master zone. As far as I know, DollarDNS and GraniteCanyon are the only domain hosts that allows this and are free.

2) Tell SBC to not use a CNAME or delegations. Have them assign a PTR record instead to your mail server domain.

3) Tell SBC to not use a CNAME, but to delegate resolution to the server of your choice. This can be a server you host yourself, or any domain host that supports reverse zones. You can see a list of free services here:

http://www.dollardns.net/compare.html

SilentRage,

Thank you for helping. Your answer has been very helpful.

If I were to use method #1, would I create something like the following in the master zone?:

81.139.137.66.in-addr.ppihealth.com. PTR mail.ppihealth.com

Or am I way off?

If SBC is delegating in a non-standard way, I may just end up asking them to delegate resolution to another server, which allows me more control over DNS records.

Thanks again for your help.

Yes, this is the valid syntax (you left off the period on the end)

81.139.137.66.in-addr.ppihealth.com. PTR mail.ppihealth.com.

Yes, this is incredibly non-standard. As I mentioned, nobody even considers adding PTR records to a master zone. The 2 services I mentioned DOES have raw zone editing support, so at least those 2 services can accomodate you.

Also, I think I see that you've registered an account on my server and played around a bit with PTR records in a master zone. The "Zone Builder" does not support adding PTR records, but you can add them using the "Zone Editor" (raw zone editing interface) and edit/delete them using the Zone Builder.