Subject: RE: Alternative to TXT or new RR was: Comments on draft-ietf-marid-core-01 xml use

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 14:24:50 -0700

> Edward Lewis wrote:
> ISC's DHCP implementation is one thing that uses the
> TXT RR (and as far as I know, not spec'd by a std).

As it appears their implementation is not compliant with RFC1464 (I did
not see any attributes nor equal sign), I would say it's ISC's problem.

> I know of other experimental uses of the TXT RR, for one,
> opportunistic encryption. There is an RFC in preparation to
> document that. So, MARID can't claim the TXT for it's own
> - others already use it.

If they are using a well-known set of attributes, I don't see why. Part
of the spec could be acknowledging the other attributes already in use.

> And the fact that one of these of the TXT RR is spec'd
> in any IETF document (so far as I have been able to tell),
> reliance on TXT in a proposed standard chancy - in my opinion.

I'm with you here.
However, if who uses what (as far as attributes are concerned) is
documented, this might change. My original text was:

>  i) The TXT RR is now reserved for SPFID and you can't put
>     anything you want in it anymore; anything that would go
>     into the TXT record needs to be cleared by MARID first.

This is too strong; what I meant is that we should have a list of known
attributes for the TXT record. Anyone wanting to use an attribute should
register it. Would this make the TXT record palatable for PS if
attributes were reserved for SPFID?

Michel.

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From: Andrew Newton <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 17:52:41 -0400

> not see any attributes nor equal sign), I would say it's ISC's problem.

RFC 1464 clearly says "Experimental".
TXT is defined RFC 1035 (or so says RFC 1464).

-andy

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From: Markus Stumpf <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 23:57:53 +0200

> not see any attributes nor equal sign), I would say it's ISC's problem.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status of this Memo
   This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
   community.  Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
   This paper describes a simple means to associate arbitrary string
   information (ASCII text) with attributes that have not been defined
   by the DNS.  It uses DNS TXT resource records to store the
   information.  It requires no change to current DNS implementations.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nowhere in that document is anything that tell me I am REQUIRED to
use key=value pairs for TXT records.

> If they are using a well-known set of attributes

There is no such thing as that as there is no registry.

> attributes were reserved for SPFID?

Believe me, you don't want to do a query for all TXT records of a entity
and then parse the 750 records and select the one that fits. And with
TXT records it's either all or nothing, just with any other RR type, too.

I really don't see the problem querying for
    ( _marid.example.com. , TXT )
    ( _marid._smtp._tcp._srv.example.com. , TXT )
And all those records have to exists for every host that is using its
name in an email address. So if you webserver is sending via script as
[email-masked], www.example.com has to carry the records and
if your mailserver is sending bounces as  [email-masked]
mail.example.com has to carry the records, ...

Ok, I see a lot of problems, but that is another thread.

	\Maex

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From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 10:13:34 -0400

>TXT is defined RFC 1035 (or so says RFC 1464).

Yeah - for that reason, it's not a "problem" for ISC.  It's not 
really a problem for MARID either in that it's unlikely that there'd 
ever be a conflict.  I raised it only as an example that MARID would 
have a hard time "co-opting" the TXT RR for it's use because there 
are prior uses of it by others - and in unregistered but 
RFC-compliant ways.
-- 
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Edward Lewis                                            +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer

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