Re: [DNSOP] BCP on rrset ordering for round-robin? Also head's up on bind 9.12 bug (sorting rrsets by default)

[Paul Vixie <[e-mail]>]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Paul Vixie:
>
>> in other words we should re-order rrsets by default, so that very few
>> people or agents are ever prone to think their order is stable. the spec
>> says they are unordered, but human nature says, expect more of what
>> you're seeing.
>
> But the client has to sort them again based on shared prefix length
> with its own address.

happy eyeballs says so, but some clients won't implement anything like 
that, or will have local knowledge (access to a routing table via an API 
of some kind) that gives them even better information. the question of 
what a client should do, and whether a given client can or should, is 
clearly independent of what order the response comes to them in.

> I think we should fix that as well, otherwise the overall protocol
> disadvantages new entrants who cannot get a contiguous prefix in
> which they can place all their load balancer endoints, so that they
> are immune from that mandatory client sorting.

i have no strongly held view on whether clients should sort. but i'm 
sure a client will have better information to base such sorting on than 
the dns servers will have. therefore i'd like to pursue a simple rule 
whereby the server perturbs the order somehow. simplistic clients, and 
clients who aren't nearby any shard of a load balanced service, should 
see some kind of chaos in the ordering, not just know it can be there.

-- 
P Vixie