Subject: Re: WCARD-CLARIFY ISSUE: Multi wildcard label dnames

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 23:05:13 +0700

Date:        Mon, 15 Sep 2003 09:51:47 +0200
    From:        "Olaf M. Kolkman" <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | Proposed Change
  | 
  | Modify the draft so that it states it updates 1034 (on one point) and 
  | in section 2 add the following (the text needs to be mangled in):
  | 
  | 
  | RFC1034  section 4.3.3 states:
  | 
  | #  The owner name of the wildcard RRs is of the form "*.<anydomain>",
  | #  where <anydomain> is any domain name.  <anydomain> should not contain
  | #  other * labels, and should be in the authoritative data of the zone.
  | 
  | The "should not" in the above sentence implies that the alternative
  | implementation, i.e. domain names with multiple wildcards, are
  | possible. However, there is no specification of the synthesis behavior
  | for those alternative cases.  Hence this document updates RFC1034 by
  | replacing the definition as quoted above by R2.1.

No, that's never what it meant.   Please, do remember that a label can
be anything at all (between 1 & 63 octets, inclusive), including '*'.

A '*' (in a zone file) as a leaf label is a wildcard.   A '*' occurring
anywhere else is simply a character.

The "should not" in 1034 is because it would lead to confusion, people would
have bizarre expectations on what they might expect to happen if one was
present at such a place - not because it causes any problems for the
specification of the protocol (including the wildcard parts of it) or 
for implementations.

The wildcard stuff in 1034/5 should really need no clarifications, everything
is there, nothing really needs to be added or subtracted from what it says.

The only real reason we're doing this at all is because so many people
manage to mis-interpret it - which mostly really means that they don't
read the text (carefully) at all, but simply guess.

kre

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---

From: "Olaf M. Kolkman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 09:34:42 +0200

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 23:05:13 +0700

> anywhere else is simply a character. 

I am happy with that explanation -- this document updating 1034 does
not feel good -- but I think that the clarification draft should at
least give an explanation for the quoted text since some people,
including myself, got confused by the "<anydomain> should not contain
other * labels"

So lets add something along the lines of:

  #  The owner name of the wildcard RRs is of the form "*.<anydomain>",
  #  where <anydomain> is any domain name.  <anydomain> should not contain
  #  other * labels, and should be in the authoritative data of the zone.

 The "should not contain other * labels" should be read as "Occurrences
 of the label 0x012a any where in <anydomain> must not be interpreted as
 wildcard labels but as an ordinary character sequences that do not allow
 for substitution."

I am sure this wording can be refined.

> read the text (carefully) at all, but simply guess.

Hey this sounds familiar... just let "it" refer to 'the scripture' and
we have theology ;-)

-- Olaf