I would like to know if anyone else has ever had this happen. I have a domain whose DNS is hosted with rackspace. When I configured the TXT (SPF) record, I never include quotes for the descriptive text -- most hosts don't allow you to enter them anyway. Here's an example of a string that I entered when configuring an SPF record on rackspace:
v=spf1 mx a include:_spf.google.com ~all
But when I query rackspace's DNS servers directly, I get the following result:
host -t txt example.tld
example.tld descriptive text "v=spf1 mx a include:_spf.google.com " "~all"
If I query the TXT record of another domain, whose DNS is hosted by Network Solutions, and whose SPF info was entered in the exact same way, I get the following result:
host -t txt example.tld
example.tld descriptive text "v=spf1 mx a include:_spf.google.com ~all"
Notice, the descriptive text is one continuous string, not two as in the result before it.
I get the same results with dig. I haven't yet been able to confirm whether this is causing any problems (yet), but it is the first time I've seen the descriptive text broken into two separate double-quoted strings. I've asked rackspace tech support about it and they have confirmed that they're seeing the same thing, but they couldn't explain why. Furthermore, this wasn't happening just a few days ago -- I know because I had to paste some TXT query results from one of the rackspace hosted domains into an e-mail. I pasted them verbatim. Before posting this, I checked the message in my sent mail to confirm whether it wasn't happening then, or it was but I simply didn't notice -- it wasn't.
Has anyone else ever seen this? Does it even matter? Thanks in advance.
If the spf record is greater than 255 characters, it shows as two strings.
These strings get concatenated at the spf verifier to form the single spf record.
The limit of 255 characters is a part of the standard for spf records.
Ref: https://kb.isc.org/article/AA-00356/0/Can-I-have-a-TXT-or-SPF-record-longer-than-255-characters.html