Re: [dnsext] loads of TXT records for fun and profit

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

The syntax of the record is an editor war.

There are arguments to be made in favor of a compact representation but the
IETF has traditionally favored verbose text headers over compact
representations for anything above the application layer.

If the WG wants to influence design choices then they have to provide an
infrastructure that supports the requirements that the applications area
people assert. Instead the interaction with this group has been that apps
area people say that they need X and this group tells them that they are
wrong. And that is not a productive way to go forward.

What it really comes down to is what the DNS server maintainers are willing
to support. Adding new RR types to my code is easy as I generate all the
code for parsing/emitting the RR data. The same is not true for BIND and
the other servers.


But for most applications, packing/unpacking binary DNS records really does
not help at all unless there is 1024-2048 bits worth of opaque binary data
involved. Which means that the only records for which binary format really
makes a difference tend to be records that involve PKI in some way.



On Fri, May 3, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> wrote:

>  On May 3, 2013, at 9:57 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]
> > wrote:
>
> Now what could make the whole process a lot easier would be to allocate a
> band of DNS RR codes for records that would all have TXT syntax. That would
> allow BIND etc. to make one change to support the new syntax. Alternatively
> we could extend the handling of unknown RR syntax so that there was a
> string presentation option.
>
>
> I see some benefit in that if in fact TXT is the right format for storing
> the things that would get stored in these records.   However, the point has
> been made with respect to SPF that it would have been better had it not
> been just a text record.   I don't know whether this argument is correct or
> not, but if it is correct, making it easy to put in TXT records and hard to
> put in anything else is probably going to make things worse, not better.
>
>


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Website: http://hallambaker.com/