PTR and A record must match?

Posted by somecallmemike on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by somecallmemike
Published on 2012-09-07T18:34:26Z Indexed on 2012/09/07 21:40 UTC
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RFC 1912 Section 2.1 states the following:

Make sure your PTR and A records match. For every IP address, there should be a matching PTR record in the in-addr.arpa domain. If a host is multi-homed, (more than one IP address) make sure that all IP addresses have a corresponding PTR record (not just the first one). Failure to have matching PTR and A records can cause loss of Internet services similar to not being registered in the DNS at all. Also, PTR records must point back to a valid A record, not a alias defined by a CNAME. It is highly recommended that you use some software which automates this checking, or generate your DNS data from a database which automatically creates consistent data.

This does not make any sense to me, should an ISP keep matching A records for every PTR record? It seems to me that it's only important if the IP address that the PTR record describes is hosting a service that is sensitive to DNS being mismatched (such as email hosting). In that case the forward zone would be configured under a domain name (examples follow the format 'zone -> record'):

domain.tld -> mail IN A 1.2.3.4

And the PTR record would be configured to match:

3.2.1.in-addr.arpa -> 4 IN PTR mail.domain.tld.

Would there be any reason for the ISP to host a forward lookup for an IP address on their network like this?:

ispdomain.tld -> broadband-ip-1 IN A 1.2.3.4

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