On Sat, 13 Sep 2003, Tony Owen wrote:

 > At one stage seol.net.au were authoritive for a group of sa.gov.au domains
 > including for example robe.sa.gov.au

It still IS authoritative, digging from here:

; <<>> DiG 2.2 <<>> robe.sa.gov.au soa
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 6
;; flags: qr rd ra; Ques: 1, Ans: 1, Auth: 2, Addit: 1
;; QUESTIONS:
;;      robe.sa.gov.au, type = SOA, class = IN

;; ANSWERS:
robe.sa.gov.au. 3600    SOA     ns2. admin. (
                        13      ; serial
                        900     ; refresh (15 mins)
                        600     ; retry (10 mins)
                        86400   ; expire (1 day)
                        3600 )  ; minimum (1 hour)

;; AUTHORITY RECORDS:
robe.sa.gov.au. 86387   NS      ns2.seol.net.au.
robe.sa.gov.au. 86387   NS      ns.seol.net.au.

;; ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
ns2.seol.net.au.        2010    A       203.220.28.8

;; Total query time: 219 msec
;; FROM: gaia.nimnet.asn.au to SERVER: default -- 203.41.52.131
;; WHEN: Sat Sep 13 17:21:43 2003
;; MSG SIZE  sent: 32  rcvd: 136

I get the same result from: # dig &#167;ns2.seol.net.au robe.sa.gov.au soa ie
querying your ns2 server directly, so it seems that the DNS in general
agrees with your zone file, which is authoritative.

 > As we were SOA, I obviously hosted the records for these domains. Every few
 > months we run a whois against the domains we host to ensure that we only
 > have records for domains we are SOA for. On deleting the records we found
 > although we are not SOA, the servers listed in a whois must "Proxy" requests
 > back to us, as in doing so caused the domains to no longer resolve.

I'm not sure what you mean regarding 'proxy' with respect to this ..

 > Does anyone know if this is considered an ok practice ?

.. so I can't comment on that.

 > I have just relocated our nameservers and decided to drop ns.seol.net.au in
 > favour of ns1.seol.net.au and ns2.seol.net.au.

Dropping nameservers while they're listed for any domains is fraught :)

 > As from what I guess the "proxy" setup in place at internode has a hardcoded
 > reference to ns.seol.net.au for forwarding requests to, this has caused me
 > to have to bring up ns.seol.net.au again (on a dialup as we now use use the
 > c-class it once resided on for dialup customers)

Dunno about being hardcoded elsewhere, when your own zone file for (eg) 
robe.sa.gov.au appears to list ns.seol.net.au as secondary?

Also, as mentioned some weeks ago in private mail, your zone files are
non-standard in some respects that may cause you some woe.  SOA records
should specify FQDNs for both the SOA server and the email address, and
if you've ever used a higher numerical value than 13 updates won't work.

It's pretty hard to go past Paul Vixie's BOG (Bind Operations Guide,
ono); well it worked for me.  Watch out for missing trailing dots ..

 > Domain Name: mountgambier.sa.gov.au

[..]

 > Tech ID: C0922354-AR
 > Tech Name: Internode Professional Access
 > Tech Email: aunic&#167;internode.com.au
 > 
 > 
 > Name Server: ns.adelaide.edu.au
 > Name Server IP: 129.127.40.3
 > Name Server: ns1.on.net
 > Name Server: ns2.on.net
 > Name Server: ns3.on.net
 > Name Server: arnie.systems.sa.gov.au
 > Name Server IP: 203.26.120.3

Not according to the DNS today, neither from here or your ns2:

;; QUESTIONS:
;;      mountgambier.sa.gov.au, type = SOA, class = IN

;; ANSWERS:
mountgambier.sa.gov.au. 3600    SOA     ns2. admin. (
                        12      ; serial
                        900     ; refresh (15 mins)
                        600     ; retry (10 mins)
                        86400   ; expire (1 day)
                        3600 )  ; minimum (1 hour)

;; AUTHORITY RECORDS:
mountgambier.sa.gov.au. 37838   NS      ns.seol.net.au.
mountgambier.sa.gov.au. 37838   NS      ns2.seol.net.au.

;; ADDITIONAL RECORDS:
ns2.seol.net.au.        2225    A       203.220.28.8

Cheers, Ian