[DNSOP] special names process & context Re: More complete review of draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p2p-names-01

[Suzanne Woolf <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

(chair hat on, not sure it fits right quite yet….)

Thanks Andrew for the thorough review on this draft, and everyone for substantive followups.

To put the topic of this draft, and "special names" generally, into some context: 

The "special names" registry is established in RFC 6761, which specifies "standards action or IESG approval" as the threshold for adding names. It also specifies in some detail what an RFC justifying such registrations needs to cover. (Section 4, 'If it is determined that special handling of a name is required in order to implement some desired new functionality, then an IETF "Standards Action" or "IESG Approval" specification [RFC5226] MUST be published describing the new functionality.' See also the registry at http://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain-names/special-use-domain-names.xhtml).

Accordingly, the outcome of a discussion of this draft, or any special names request, in DNSOP should be any advice or insight we have as DNS experts for the IESG. 
The WG has no specific role in the process except as we can help the IESG decide whether to approve this set of additions to the registry.

Ted Lemon has participated here in earlier discussion of this draft, and I hope other IESG members will also feel free to step in and speak for themselves on their concerns. But earlier discussion, here and elsewhere, suggests that the most helpful input would be along a couple of lines:

1. The primary concern is on the specifics of whether this draft complies with RFC 6761 adequately to allow DNS implementors and operators to treat the proposed names consistently and interoperably, without unacceptable side effects. 

2. It may also be useful to consider any concerns on the scalability or architectural implications of special names: Andrew's comments in his review on the "deep and extremely confusing path of mixing the domain name system and other namespaces," the possibility that such requests will not remain rare events, etc. This goes to the question of how high the barrier to approval for new special names should be, as the p2p draft is the first invocation of RFC 6761 since its publication and seems likely to be taken as precedent.


best,
Suzanne

Re:
On Dec 30, 2013, at 7:04 PM, Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> 
> I made some remarks in the earlier discussion of
> draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p2p-names-00.  In this message, I
> attempt to review draft-grothoff-iesg-special-use-p2p-names-01
> completely.  I hope these remarks are useful.
> 
> Overall
> =======
> 
> I remain extremely concerned that this effort represents another step
> along a deep and extremely confusing path of mixing the domain name
> system and other name spaces.  I think the IETF needs to figure out
> whether we're going to accept that, historically, we had multiple name
> spaces but that now we're going to have one big one; or whether we're
> going to continue pretending that every other name space doesn't end
> up wandering into the DNS anyway.  (If there are additional
> alternatives, I am unable to think of them.)  I think a pragmatic
> answer is to accept that, given the number of places we expose domain
> name slots, anything that uses a name is going to end up having to be
> somehow compatible with domain name slots.  But I think that is a
> wide-ranging discussion that almost certainly needs to be tackled
> #separately from the consideration of this particular draft.
>