17.2.2.4.2. A Reverse Name Resolution Zone File

A reverse name resolution zone file is used to translate an IP address in a particular namespace into an fully qualified domain name (FQDN). It looks very similar to a standard zone file, except that the PTR resource records are used to link the IP addresses to a fully qualified domain name as shown in Example 17.16, “A reverse name resolution zone file”.

Example 17.16. A reverse name resolution zone file

$ORIGIN 1.0.10.in-addr.arpa.
$TTL 86400
@  IN  SOA  dns1.example.com.  hostmaster.example.com. (
       2001062501  ; serial
       21600       ; refresh after 6 hours
       3600        ; retry after 1 hour
       604800      ; expire after 1 week
       86400 )     ; minimum TTL of 1 day
;
@  IN  NS   dns1.example.com.
;
1  IN  PTR  dns1.example.com.
2  IN  PTR  dns2.example.com.
;
5  IN  PTR  server1.example.com.
6  IN  PTR  server2.example.com.
;
3  IN  PTR  ftp.example.com.
4  IN  PTR  ftp.example.com.
In this example, IP addresses 10.0.1.1 through 10.0.1.6 are pointed to the corresponding fully qualified domain name.
This zone file would be called into service with a zone statement in the /etc/named.conf file similar to the following:
zone "1.0.10.in-addr.arpa" IN {
  type master;
  file "example.com.rr.zone";
  allow-update { none; };
};
There is very little difference between this example and a standard zone statement, except for the zone name. Note that a reverse name resolution zone requires the first three blocks of the IP address reversed followed by .in-addr.arpa. This allows the single block of IP numbers used in the reverse name resolution zone file to be associated with the zone.