Shaping Host Names

[JasonBAU]

Are shaping host names absolute or do they cover the sub domains

i.e will microsoft.com cover bill.microsoft.com

[Bruce]

I've always been led to believe that they cover sub domains, so microsoft.com implies *.microsoft.com also (* being a wildcard). However, I can't find any documentation to support this with regards to the MX traffic shaping rules. I'd also expect that for it to work the MX has to see the DNS request go out and the response return to be able to match the hostname to the IP address.

[Bruce · Accepted solution]

Was curious, so I tested it in my lab. And yes, microsoft.com does cover all the sub-domains too.

I set a quick traffic shaping rule that set the DSCP to CS4 for microsoft.com and did some packet captures to both www.microsoft.com and docs.microsoft.com, everything was marked as CS4. Then I changed the rule to www.microsoft.com, and only traffic to the www.microsoft.com IP address was then marked as CS4, traffic to docs.microsoft.com was back to DSCP DF.