Re: [dbound] draft-brotman-rdbd

[Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]>]

Hiya,

Thanks for the good comments.

On 28/02/2019 10:59, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Since this is the place, I read draft-brotman-rdbd-00 and have a few
> observations.
> 
> I'm slightly concerned at the way this is being conceived, because I
> think it has a conceptual separation in it that is troublesome.  It's
> found here:
> 
>    RDBD is intended to demonstrate a relationship between registered
>    domains, not individual hostnames.  That is to say that the
>    relationship should exist between "example.com" and "dept-
>    example.com", not "foo.example.com" and "bar.dept-example.com".
> 
> The problem, of course, is that foo.example.com, bar.dept-example.com,
> and really.long.set.of.labels.example.com are all _perfectly good_
> domains.  Now, maybe what the above intends to communicate is that
> RDBD is intended to demonstrate a relationship between the owner name
> at an apex and all the subsidiary names in that zone (i.e. up until
> any subordinate zone cut), and the owner name at an apex and all the
> subsidiary names in _that_ zone.  Alternatively, maybe what the above
> intends to communicate is that RDBD is intended to demonstrate a
> relationship between owner names immediately below a so-called public
> suffix.  I can imagine use cases for either, though I am not sure
> they're as general purpose as people might think.

I think that's Alex's text so I'll leave it to him to
explain:-) From my POV though, see my answer to Paul
Wouters on the (lack of;-) semantics here. (That was
on a different list but is at [1].) Not sure if that'll
clarify or muddy the waters though, so it may be easier
to chat about this f2f in Prague if we get a chance.

   [1] https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/art/DaqhhnrNRSrIePbQTWDLCDuaw6k

> I am more than a little worried about the parent/secondary split.
> (Also, both of these are already well-used terms in the DNS, so I
> really strongly urge some other terms.  We have enough trouble with
> overloading DNS terms without doing so with two of the most frequently
> used terms in DNS operations, particularly when this mixes terms from
> delegation and from zone transfers.)  

Fair point. Better terms welcome. If we don't get handed
some, we'll try invent a couple.

I've noted this and a couple of other issues raised in the
editor's version on github. [2] (And btw, if there're other
things from these mail threads I ought note there, anyone
can just ping me to add such.)

   [2]
https://github.com/abrotman/related-domains-by-dns/blob/master/rdbd.txt

> It isn't clear to me, from the
> discussion, that it is obviously true in most of the use cases people
> have that one of the domains people want to talk about is "the main
> one".  More importantly, it is quite likely that someone trying to
> query this will have a different idea about which is "main" than the
> domain operator, so if this isn't a fully bidirectional operation
> (which it's not in -00) there could easily be problems in use.  (This
> is part of why SOPA was proposed to be two-way.)

But if this stays unidirectional, one could always do the trick
twice I think. So I'm not sure I get why that'd be a problem?
(Assuming the syntax continues to allow that.)

I'm also not sure if always-being-bidirectional is the right
design myself, (see above wrt lack of semantics) but if it were
and didn't add a lot of complexity, I'd be ok with it.

> If you're going to do this with TXT records, then you definitely need
> an underscore label, or the apex name is going to be a mess.  But that
> will mean that this won't work for DNAME.  That consideration is part
> of why SOPA defined a new RRTYPE and put the RR at the name that was
> supposed to be related.

Yep, fair enough. Personally I think a new RRTYPE is fine and
will get a couple of issues off the table so is likely the right
thing to do. I think Alex is also ok with that, in which case,
we'll see about whacking out a -01 along those lines before the
I-D cutoff. (And if not, we'll continue to be rightly beaten up
for yet more abuse of TXT:-)

> I hope these comments are useful.  I have limited cycles to spend on
> IETF stuff these days, but this was always a topic close to my heart
> (and I'm super annoyed the DBOUND WG failed), so I'll try to keep up.

Excellent!

Cheers,
S.


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