Re: [DNSOP] WGLC for draft-ietf-dnsop-let-localhost-be-localhost-02

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2018 at 08:46:01PM -0500, Joe Abley wrote:
> 
> Can we take a brief pause to acknowledge that "the DNS" as a phrase is highly ambiguous

Yes.

> and think about whether we mean the protocol,

I mean this and 

> any particular installation or the namespace (and if so, which one, since there are many, even if our context is a single Root Server System serving a single Root Zone, note capitals, which I think it should be).

this but

> any particular implementation, 
> 

not this.

That is, I think that localhost is a DNS name in the context of the
Internet DNS root zone.  I think that because RFC 2606 and RFC 6761
say so, and because I was under the impression that the Internet root
zone operated by IANA still conforms to RFCs.  It's apparent now to
me, however, that the Internet root does not actually answer for
localhost.  I find this surprising and wrong.  It is also possibly
part of the reason for the complaint that people can't rely on the
name "localhost", since a query to the root for that name will get a
cacheable response saying authoritatively that the name does not
exist.  I don't know whether that _is_ part of the problem, of course.
I note that SAC045 observes that localhost was in the top 10 "invalid
TLDs" queried between 2006 and 2009.  (I realise now that when that
came out I didn't check to see whether the root was responding as RFC
6761 said it should.  This was plainly a mistake on my part.)

As Mark says elsewhere in this thread, localhost is not a protocol
switch.  It's a name in the context of the global, Internet DNS;
respoding authoritatively with NXDOMAIN is therefore wrong.

Best regards,

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[e-mail]