Re: [DNSOP] Status of draft-ietf-dnsop-terminology-bis

["Paul Hoffman" <[e-mail]>]

On 19 Mar 2018, at 5:21, Matthijs Mekking wrote:

> Negative response:
>
> I and some others have been using the term 'Negative response' to 
> indicate that the response does not contain any records in the Answer 
> section. Current definition seems to imply that this is only the case 
> if the RCODE is NXDOMAIN, NOERROR, SERVFAIL or if there was a timeout 
> (unreachable). The definition I have been using includes responses 
> with other RCODEs too, for example FORMERR or REFUSED.
>
> I wonder if this is just me and my bubble or if others also a slightly 
> different meaning of 'Negative response' as it is defined now. If 
> there are others, is it worth spending a line or two about this here?

Some implementations put things in the Answer section even when it seems 
like they are saying negative things. This does not appear to be 
prohibited by RFC 1035 or updates, but I could be wrong.

> RRsets:
>
> Raised by a discussion I had at the Hackathon, I think it would be 
> useful to add some clarification about RRSIGs and their role with 
> respect to RRsets. Perhaps a quote from RFC4035 will do:
>
>    An RRset MAY have multiple RRSIG RRs associated with it.  Note that
>    as RRSIG RRs are closely tied to the RRsets whose signatures they
>    contain, RRSIG RRs, unlike all other DNS RR types, do not form
>    RRsets.  In particular, the TTL values among RRSIG RRs with a 
> common
>    owner name do not follow the RRset rules described in [RFC2181].

Great suggestion. I only remember that last bit some of the time when I 
(incorrectly) say "all records in an RRset have the same TTL".

> Last, I don't fully understand the meaning of the cryptic comment 
> about QTYPE=ANY that is under the RRset definition:
>
>    (This definition is definitely not the same as "the
>    response one gets to a query for QTYPE=ANY", which is an
>    unfortunate misunderstanding.)
>
> Can you explain why this comment is here?

Um, no. :-( I'll remove it.

--Paul Hoffman