problem cloning netinfo domain

I'm trying to clone a netinfo domain following the 'bring in the clones' article . . . .having trouble at the delete your existing netowrk domain command. I'm sitting at the mac i'm trying to clone onto, and after typing in that command, i get the message "nidomain: cannot connect to server smitty" (smitty is the name of the server, btw.) i tried adding a machince record for smitty to it's own local domain, but that didn't help. i also followed the directions for adding a machine record for the server i'm cloning from, but that didn't help either. the only thing I can think of that might be causing this is that our network has forward DNS entries for both of the servers involved, but not reverse. And I can't fix that until monday. Could the lack of reverse DNS entries be what's messing this up, or should I keep trying to find another cause for this problem? tia elvisizer