Subject: Re: draft-iab-dns-choices-02.txt comments

From: "Olaf M. Kolkman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 16:21:25 +0200

Dear Colleagues.

One of the arguments that is currently being used against trying to "design" 
a new RR for use with ones application, is that it is apparently difficult to get
one's specification reviewed, processed and the typecode assigned.

This should not be an argument.

The DNSEXT working group has the following statement in its charter:

     The lifetime of the group is set by the work items above but while
     these are ongoing the working group has additional tasks:

         o Reviewing and providing recommendations about the
           specification, by other working groups, of RR types that do not
           require any special processing and that do not require any
           special naming conventions.

It is the intentention that the DNSEXT WG will review that:

         o The proposed RR does _not_ need special processing by DNS
           servers or clients.

         o Your RR does not use name compression for the domain names
           in the RDATA section.

         o Your RDATA specification is correct and unambiguous.

         o Your specification does not make unreasonable assumptions
           about the working of the DNS

The group may give recommendations about the use of the DNS for the
protocol of application. The DNSEXT WG is not supposed to review the protocol that
uses the RR (but may sometimes be tempted).

For a well written specification this review should not take more than
a couple of weeks to a few months.

The specification then follows normal IETF process and hits IETF last
call.

We, chairs, can, in cooperation with the document editors the shepherd
the the process to speed up the review in the group and immediately
after IETF last call get an IANA type code assignment.

We hope to facilitate that the "two years get a type code" argument
will be irrelevant.

It is probably a good idea to document the process for this "fast
track" above a bit more thorough then the above 4 bullet points. The
rusulting document could update the assignment rules.

I should mention that we are already trying to practice in this
mode. Some RR specifications have passed the group and received some
recommendations and review. Examples are SSHFP, IPSECKEY. I am not
sure if the authors of these specifications are happy with the speed
and quality of the feedback they received but I do not think the
DNSEXT group was the bottle neck in getting an RR type
assigned. Currently the NFS4ID RR proposal is following this route and
deserves your review.

-- Olaf Kolkman, Olafur Gudmundsson.

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---

From: Samuel Weiler <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:22:44 -0400 (EDT)

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Olaf M. Kolkman wrote:

> One of the arguments that is currently being used against trying to
> "design"  a new RR for use with ones application, is that it is
> apparently difficult to get one's specification reviewed, processed
> and the typecode assigned.
>
...
>            special naming conventions.

Note that this charter item only applied to RRs requested "by other
working groups".  Presumably those looking for assignments in the
"specification required" part of the number space wouldn't even need
DNSEXT review.

-- Sam