Re: [DNSOP] [Ext] order of records in DNAME responses

[Olafur Gudmundsson <[e-mail]>]

> On Feb 24, 2017, at 12:35 PM, Evan Hunt <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2017 at 02:46:28PM +0000, Edward Lewis wrote:
>> The reason I point this out is that the order of records in a section has
>> been famously undefined, with the convention of supporting round robin
>> (an undocumented feature of the protocol) hanging around, for all of
>> eternity.  I can see an implementation recommendation note because it
>> makes sense, but, if we use the old rule of "for interoperability" I
>> don't see specifying the order of records as necessary.
> 
> The order of RR's within an RRset is undefined and needs to remain so, but
> can there be constraints on the order of RRsets within a section?

While I would love to say Yes to above, that can not be any stronger than “SHOULD” 
The old RFC’s are much less prescriptive than modern ones. 
If we ever do a RFC2181-bis or followup work then this should be one of the topics 
There are basically two ways to handle it 
-  Prescribe order 
- Dicate that whole section must be consumed and “ordered” before processing.

One corner case that I seen on couple of occasions is CNAME chain out of order, 
I have no idea how that can happen … 

> 
>> I also think that goats have already left the burning barn on this.
>> Going forward code might put the DNAME ahead of the CNAME, but if past
>> code doesn't, going forward code must account for that.
> 
> It took us a very long time to encounter the first server that did
> CNAME-first.  Most are going to do DNAME-first because it's simpler to
> code that way: it's easier to append to a message than insert something
> into the middle.
> 
> IMHO the problem is now big enough to see, but still small enough
> to step on by declaring we didn't mean for it to be legal.
> 
I was around the time DNAME was defined, and my recollection was that
CNAME after DNAME was so obvious that no-one thought is was needed to specify. 

>> Not to mention the difficulties in writing so-called clarification
>> documents.  They aren't all that pleasant...
> 
> Well, that's why I started with an email thread…

Thank you for bringing real issue to WG

Olafur