5. Technical checks¶
The system allows to check the technical state of name servers and report results to administrators of the name servers or registrars.
Technical checks are performed periodically and/or on demand from registrars.
A technical check consists of one or more individual tests with graded severity which are applied to a name server within a name-server set in a certain order. Some tests focus on the basic functionality of a name server and others on greater details which, if not satisfied, do not actually jeopardise domain delegation.
Note
The tests are only informative, they do not affect inclusion/exclusion of a domain in/from a zone.
Each test has a unique name that describes the name-server property to be tested. Test severity indicates the significance of failure of a given test. Severity is represented by an integer number on the scale from 0 to 10. The lower the number, the higher the severity of a test.
Only if a test of higher severity passed, then a test of lower severity is performed.
The test result is one of the following:
Test passed
Test failed
Unknown result
The unknown result represents a situation in which the test ended in an unexpected error or unexpected circumstance that prevented achievement of a passed/failed result.
Each nsset may contain information about the severity level that should be
tested for it (the report level attribute) but this can be overridden
when a check is being requested by a registrar via the EPP interface.
If neither provides this information, the default level is tested
(FRED’s default: 3, configurable).
Currently, there are no level-0 tests and the highest level in use is 6.
Test name |
Severity |
Depends on |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
Glue_OK |
1 |
Tests whether there is a glue record when required for a given DNS server and domains. |
|
Existence |
1 |
Glue_OK |
Tests whether the DNS server is running. |
Presence |
2 |
Glue_OK, Existence |
Tests the presence of the record of the domain on the DNS server. |
Authoritative |
3 |
Glue_OK, Existence, Presence |
Tests whether the DNS server’s response to a particular domain is authoritative. |
NotRecursive |
4 |
Glue_OK, Existence |
Tests whether the DNS server is recursive based on what the DNS server says about itself. |
NotRecursive4all |
4 |
Glue_OK, Existence |
Tests whether the DNS server is recursive based on a practical test. |
Autonomous |
5 |
Glue_OK, Existence |
At least two of the DNS servers must be in different autonomous systems. |
Heterogeneous |
6 |
Glue_OK, Existence |
At least two DNS servers with different software. |
If a check is requested by a registrar via EPP, the results are delivered to the registrar in a EPP poll message.
If a periodic check fails, technical contacts of an nsset are notified by email which informs also about the cause of the failure.
