Re: [DNSOP] DNS Terminology: Glue

[Patrik Wallström <[e-mail]>]

On 12 Mar 2015, at 16:27, Paul Hoffman <[e-mail]> wrote:

> On Mar 12, 2015, at 5:07 AM, Niall O'Reilly <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> In http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-hoffman-dns-terminology-02.txt,
>> "glue" is defined as follows.
>> 
>>  Glue records -- Resource records which are not part of the
>>  authoritative data, and are address resource records for the servers
>>  listed in the message.  They contain data that allows access to name
>>  servers for subzones.  (Definition from RFC 1034, section 4.2.1)
>> 
>> Reference to "the message" seems to be a distraction here.  The
>> cited source defines (and motivates) glue records, in a section
>> which specifies "[t]he data that describes a zone", as follows
>> 
>>  [...] a zone contains "glue" RRs which are not
>>  part of the authoritative data, and are address RRs for the servers.
>>  These RRs are only necessary if the name server's name is "below" the
>>  cut, and are only used as part of a referral response.
>> 
>> I think that placing the definition of glue in the scope of "the
>> message" rather than in that of the zone data is likely to lead to
>> confusion.
> 
> Quite right. We'll fix this in the next draft.

While working on the Zonemaster test specifications we decided to go even further in order to differentiate between names and addresses, calling those “glue address records” and “glue name records”:

Glue Name Records are defined as all NS records pertaining to the child domain that are delivered by the nameservers for the parent domain.

Glue Address Records are all A or AAAA records pertaining to the child domain that are delivered by the nameservers for the parent domain

These terms are then later used to describe what kind of DNS data we are actually testing.

https://github.com/dotse/zonemaster/blob/master/docs/specifications/tests/MasterTestPlan.md#definitions-of-terms