Subject: Re: TXT records and what not to use them for

From: Jerry Scharf <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 07:39:20 -0700 (PDT)

Thomas,

I just want to underscore the effort to get an RR out into nameservers.
The discussion of how to allow people to extend the capability of DNS
to store new record types without having to add explcit parsing and
wire format definition is a much more fruitful one, IMO. At this point,
TXT records are the hammer we have and they work if used carefully.

jerry

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From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 12:11:14 -0400

> TXT records are the hammer we have and they work if used carefully.

I agree with Jerry.  We have used them for many purposes over the years
from providing a literal to an application to providing location within
a network.  These are not expected to interoperate with other vendors or
be standard they are a means for an entity to use them to do things
which are not for use with other entities.  Also in all cases they were
for a specific Intranet and not used on an Internet server available to
the general public.  One case I know of it was a customer idea.  

I don't really see what the issue is here or why this is eating up
precious namedropper mail threads?

Thomas are you trying to redefine what a TXT record does via the IETF
and limit the good things we are doing now with them as vendors?  

If so I think your headed for a major battle.

thanks
/jim

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From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 11:18:08 -0700 (PDT)

> and limit the good things we are doing now with them as vendors?  

for our edification and some concrete examples, what *vendors* are doing what
with them now?

randy

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From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 14:32:31 -0400

Randy,

> for our edification and some concrete examples, what *vendors* are doing
> what with them now?

I was only speaking of the former Digital company and they were used to
solve customer problems.  I told you as much as I can in my previous
mail and all I can be is generic.

ALso my mail must not have been clear.  My point was that these
solutions I referenced were not for a multivendor environment but a hack
for a specific network site for a specific customer with specific code
to make it useful, by the company I worked for then.

But the point is the TXT records were useful and we have heard others
say there useful.

But why do we care about this.  I have seen no one propose we use TXT
records for anything for multivendor interoperability on the Internet to
solve a problem. 

I "think" I have heard that we can use this as a tool for custom
solutions.

Now I have a question again.  What caused us to worry about what is done
with TXT records?  Is it someone just decided I should put this up on
namedroppers because now that they understand TXT records (after them being
around for many years and one of the solutions I am referencing was back
in 1988) they are worried someone will do evil with them?  

Or is someone trying to use them now to solve a DNS problem on the
Internet in a spec, which would cause us to have to respond?

Its not like we all need to go find work we have plenty.

/jim

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From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Jul 1999 10:41:45 -0400

Jim,

> But the point is the TXT records were useful and we have heard others

I do not dispute that.

> But why do we care about this.  I have seen no one propose we use
> TXT records for anything for multivendor interoperability on the
> Internet to solve a problem.

I started this thread because from time-to-time people do propose
using TXT records for putting stuff in the DNS. The intent was to get
a sense of what the community thought in general about this approach
and whether new RRs should be encouraged as opposed to encouraging
folks to put yet more info into TXT records.

Thomas

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From: Jim Bound <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 02:08:31 -0400

>folks to put yet more info into TXT records.

This is a wise thing to do.  Just a bit paranoid some of us who do
proprietary things once in awhile which can be useful to paying
customers will get burned.

thanks
/jim