Hi Chris/Alan,

I have a question on AXFR (zone-transfer) records.

All my domains in the past have disallowed AXFR lookups.

Example:
$ dig @ns1.telstra.net abc.net.au axfr

But after moving my DNS to a stock Ubuntu server, it seems to be a default to allow AXFR lookups for anyone. I also noticed the default for this is disallowed on Debian 6.

What I want to know is how important is it to restrict AXFR lookups.
Should they be allowed to be public since DNS should be public anyway?
If so then why do so many DNS hosts out there have this disabled by default?

Thanks for your time.

Regards
Simon, Australia