Re: [dnsext] Practical question about backwards compatibility and new proposals

[Andras Gustafsson <[e-mail]>]

Brian Dickson wrote:
> RFC 3597 is about "handling" unknown RR types, but I presume that to be
> rather narrow, in that the new RR type/class is the qtype/class, not
> something that shows up in an answer as "extra stuff" in the answer, or in
> the "additional" section.
> 
> Is this (caching of new RR types in answer to questions that *aren't* the
> new RR type) something that is specified, one way or the other, anywhere
> yet?

There was some discussion related to this last year, starting with

  http://www.ops.ietf.org/lists/namedroppers/namedroppers.2009/msg02683.html

To reiterate what I said then, I think the concepts of "RRs of unknown
type" and "unexpected RRs appearing in some section of a message"
should be treated as orthogonal.  For example, a type MX record
occurring in the answer section of a response to a type A query is an
unexpected RR, but it is not of unknown type.

RFC 3597 deals with unknown types, but I don't think the treatment
of unexpected RRs is currently specified anywhere.  Existing
implementations tend to ignore them when they occur in the answer
section of a response, and may or may not cache them when they occur
in the additional section depending on spoofing defense strategy.

If we end up specifying the treatment of unexpected/unsolicited RRs,
I think whatever treatment we specify should be the same whether the
type is known or unknown.
-- 
Andreas Gustafsson, [e-mail]