Re: [DNSOP] Another attempt at consensus on the bailiwick discussion

["Wessels, Duane" <[e-mail]>]

Despite what the subject line says, I’d like to follow up on the discussion about glue from today’s interim meeting.

First, I think the definition of glue given in RFC 2181 is problematic in a number of ways.  It is overly broad (e.g., "any record ... that is not properly part of that zone” and "any other stray data that might appear”).  It essentially says that all non-authoritative data is glue, including NS, which is wrong IMO.

If we can ignore what 2181 says, then the question is whether or not glue is limited only to addresses.  Historically it has only meant addresses, since those address RRs were required for zones with in-domain name servers.  There are some new proposals in DPRIVE to publish more record types in parent zones and have them considered as glue.  This has obvious implications server behavior given the glue-is-not-optional draft.

On one hand I think it would be a lot simpler to just say that only address records can be glue.  But I’m not sure that is defendable given the directions things are going.  Here’s a definition of glue that I came up with:

Glue is non-authoritative data in a zone that is transmitted in the additional section of a referral response on the basis that the data might be necessary for resolution to proceed at the referred name servers.

I also feel like we might be heading in a direction where there would need to be a registry or some standardization of which RR types can be treated as glue.

DW