Subject: [DNSOP] Comments on draft-ietf-dnsop-alt-tld-05

From: Federico Santandrea <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2016 08:24:22 +0200

All,

I have read, and I support this draft in its current form.

I propose these two additions to it:

1)  applications may query for "alt." for some RR. If the
    resolver is not "alt-tld aware", or alt-tld functionality
    has been disabled, then the request will return NXDOMAIN;
    if instead the mechanism is supported, it would return
    NOERROR with an empty answer. Note that this is backwards
    compatible with non-alt-aware implementations since they
    would leak in DNS and NXDOMAIN will be returned by some
    other server.

2a) applications may also query for "<something>.alt" in the
    same way as above, to determine whether an handler for
    that particular namespace is available or not.

-- or alternatively --

2b) as above, but it might be specified that the query is
     to be done on a TXT RR specifically and that, instead
     of the empty answer, a record might be returned with
     contents that can be used to in some way ascertain that
     the handler is actually for the implementation we expect
     it to be (for example a software name or version, or
     protocol "UUID"?)

This allows applications to determine both if the alt mechanism
is generally supported and if the particular namespace is
supported (for example, to choose between showing instructions
suggestions to download a plugin and to upgrade the underlying
software platform). Also it avoids everyone choosing "magic"
values to check whether handlers for their namespace have
been installed or not.

Just a rough idea... of course if you find it useful I would
I would need to fix it in form and language.

Let me know what you think about this.

-- 
Federico

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From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Oct 2016 17:36:34 -0000

>    would leak in DNS and NXDOMAIN will be returned by some

OK.

>     it to be (for example a software name or version, or

I fear we are tumbling down the slippery slope into a tar pit here.

There is absolutely no standardization or commonality in the protocol
switches that people use for non-DNS names.  For .local it's in
library routines like gethostbyname() that map names to IP addresses,
for .onion it's in a SOCKS proxy that opens a connection to a remote
host and for those of us old enough to remember .uucp and .bitnet, it
was in a switch table in the mail configuration that determined what
program to call to do the next hop.  It's not much use providing an IP
address lookup handler for something that doesn't use IP addresses.

I hate to bring this up, but we might want to reconsider whether .alt
is still the best name for this hack.  For us old nerds, .alt reminds
us of usenet and uucp of yore, but in American politics it's some
unpleasant fringe groups with which I would not want to be associated
even a little bit.  Keeping in mind that we want to encourage people
to use .alt, I'd rather find something with no political (or other)
connotations.

I would suggest .app except that Google paid ICANN $25M for it last year.

R's,
John

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From: Federico Santandrea <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2016 07:59:15 +0200

>address lookup handler for something that doesn't use IP addresses.

Right. In the light of that the only useful feature would be the first
part of 1 - which is already in the draft. I should have known
better.

>to use .alt, I'd rather find something with no political (or other)

This I tend to agree with, didn't bring up the issue in my message
because it wouldn't add to my point and would make for less
clarity.

-- 
Federico

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From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2016 16:34:37 +0200

On Sun, Oct 09, 2016 at 05:36:34PM -0000,
 John Levine <[email-masked]> wrote 
 a message of 47 lines which said:

> is still the best name for this hack.

May be the author of the I-D should change every occurrence of .alt by
TODO-NAME-TO-BE-DISCUSSED-LATER so we can focus on the idea and avoid
discussions about the name?

---

From: "John R Levine" <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Oct 2016 10:46:13 -0400

> discussions about the name?

I'd think we could just note that the name is TBD in discussions about 
whether anyone would actually use a generic not-DNS TLD.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly