Re: [DNSOP] Working Group Last Call on draft-ietf-dnsop-terminology-bis

[Dick Franks <[e-mail]>]

The document appears to be in good shape.

However, I have some difficulty with the wording of these two paragraphs in
section 2.

      The basic wire format for names in the global DNS is a list of
      labels ordered by decreasing distance from the root, with the root
      label last.  Each label is preceded by a length octet.  [RFC1035]
      also defines a compression scheme that modifies this format.

      The presentation format for names in the global DNS is a list of
      labels ordered by decreasing distance from the root, encoded as
      ASCII, with a "." character between each label.  In presentation
      format, a fully-qualified domain name includes the root label and
      the associated separator dot.  For example, in presentation
      format, a fully-qualified domain name with two non-root labels is
      always shown as "example.tld." instead of "example.tld".
      [RFC1035] defines a method for showing octets that do not display
      in ASCII.

The character encoding of "presentation format" depends on the context in
which it is used. The protocol mandates ASCII encoding of labels on the
wire.
It cannot say anything about the internal character encoding conventions of
application programs or related master files, which can, in the general
case,
be different.

Consider the following perl fragment:

    use Net::DNS 1.11;

    my $resolver = new Net::DNS::Resolver();

    my ($rr) = $resolver->query( 'www.example.com.', 'A' )->answer;

    $rr->print;
    print unpack( 'H*', $rr->string ), "\n";

executed in an ASCII-based environment:

  www.example.com.    600    IN    A    93.184.216.34

7777772e6578616d706c652e636f6d2e0936303009494e09410939332e3138342e3231362e3334

in an OS390 EBCDIC environment:

  www.example.com.    600    IN    A    93.184.216.34

a6a6a64b85a781949793854b8396944b05f6f0f005c9d505c105f9f34bf1f8f44bf2f1f64bf3f4

(output converted to ASCII to preserve your sanity)


Suggested replacement text:

      The basic wire format for names in the global DNS is a list of
      labels ordered by decreasing distance from the root, with the root
      label last.  Each label is ASCII encoded and preceded by a single
length octet.  [RFC1035]
      also defines a compression scheme that modifies this format.

      The presentation format for names in the global DNS is a list of
      labels ordered by decreasing distance from the root, represented by
      printable characters from the ASCII repertoire, irrespective of the
local
      character encoding used to represent them.
      The component labels are separated by a single "." character.
      In presentation format, a fully-qualified domain name includes the
root label and
      the associated separator dot.  For example, in presentation
      format, a fully-qualified domain name with two non-root labels is
      always shown as "example.tld." instead of "example.tld".
      [RFC1035] defines a numerical representation that may be used to
display
      octets for which there is no corresponding ASCII printable character.





Dick Franks
________________________


On 22 June 2018 at 21:01, Suzanne Woolf <[e-mail]> wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
> This begins the working group last call for draft-ietf-dnsop-terminology-bis-10,
> "DNS Terminology”. The document has gotten significant feedback and the
> editors have worked hard to document current terminology usage, both among
> practitioners and for broader audiences; we’d like to advance it.
>
> We’re seeking consensus to advance it to the IESG with an intended status
> of Best Current Practice. Note that it’s intended to obsolete RFC 7719 (
> the earlier “DNS Terminology” document).
>
> If you support it, please say so. If you don’t, please say why.
>
> The current version is at: https://datatracker.ietf.org/
> doc/draft-ietf-dnsop-terminology-bis/
>
> Last Call will run for two weeks, closing on Friday July 6. This will
> allow for discussion of any major outstanding issues at IETF 102.
>
>
> thanks,
> Suzanne, Tim, & Benno
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