The following is mostly taken from http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2317 but it is so good I wanted to share it here. Basically this allows for DNS delegation of the reverse zone for address spaces covering fewer than 256 addresses. Let us assume we have assigned the address spaces to three different parties as follows:
192.0.2.0/25 to organization A 192.0.2.128/26 to organization B 192.0.2.192/26 to organization C
In the classical approach, this would lead to a single zone like this:
$ORIGIN 2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. ; 1 PTR host1.A.domain. 2 PTR host2.A.domain. 3 PTR host3.A.domain. ; 129 PTR host1.B.domain. 130 PTR host2.B.domain. 131 PTR host3.B.domain. ; 193 PTR host1.C.domain. 194 PTR host2.C.domain. 195 PTR host3.C.domain.
The administration of this zone is problematic. Authority for this zone can only be delegated once, and this usually translates into "this zone can only be administered by one organization." The other organizations with address space that corresponds to entries in this zone would thus have to depend on another organization for their address to name translation. With the proposed method, this potential problem can be avoided. Since a single zone can only be delegated once, we need more points to do delegation on to solve the problem above. These extra points of delegation can be introduced by extending the IN-ADDR.ARPA tree downwards, e.g. by using the first address or the first address and the network mask length (as shown below) in the corresponding address space to form the the first component in the name for the zones. The following four zone files show how the problem in the motivation section could be solved using this method.:
$ORIGIN 2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. @ IN SOA my-ns.my.domain. hostmaster.my.domain. (...) ;... ; <<0-127>> /25 0/25 NS ns.A.domain. 0/25 NS some.other.name.server. ; 1 CNAME 1.0/25.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 2 CNAME 2.0/25.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 3 CNAME 3.0/25.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. ; ; <<128-191>> /26 128/26 NS ns.B.domain. 128/26 NS some.other.name.server.too. ; 129 CNAME 129.128/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 130 CNAME 130.128/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 131 CNAME 131.128/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. ; ; <<192-255>> /26 192/26 NS ns.C.domain. 192/26 NS some.other.third.name.server. ; 193 CNAME 193.192/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 194 CNAME 194.192/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. 195 CNAME 195.192/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. $ORIGIN 0/25.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. @ IN SOA ns.A.domain. hostmaster.A.domain. (...) @ NS ns.A.domain. @ NS some.other.name.server. ; 1 PTR host1.A.domain. 2 PTR host2.A.domain. 3 PTR host3.A.domain. $ORIGIN 128/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. @ IN SOA ns.B.domain. hostmaster.B.domain. (...) @ NS ns.B.domain. @ NS some.other.name.server.too. ; 129 PTR host1.B.domain. 130 PTR host2.B.domain. 131 PTR host3.B.domain. $ORIGIN 192/26.2.0.192.in-addr.arpa. @ IN SOA ns.C.domain. hostmaster.C.domain. (...) @ NS ns.C.domain. @ NS some.other.third.name.server. ; 193 PTR host1.C.domain. 194 PTR host2.C.domain. 195 PTR host3.C.domain.