Re: [DNSOP] WGLC for draft-ietf-dnsop-let-localhost-be-localhost-02

[Paul Vixie <[e-mail]>]

as a general principle, any time you have to reach outside of a 
connectivity boundary in order to learn how to reach inside of a 
connectivity boundary, it's a sign of bad design.

needing to talk to a root name server in order to reach a cctld name 
server so that you can talk to people inside your own country, is an 
example of this -- and adding root name servers in that country, or on 
the loopback interface, is a workaround for a bad design, and does not 
make the design good.

the same is true for needing to reach outside your own virtual cloud, or 
your laptop, or your house or office or campus or enterprise, to find 
the "delegation data" that will let you talk to inside servers in order 
to get the information you need to talk to other inside servers. many of 
us use "stub zones" to work around this bad design, but DNS itself is 
crippled by many things, and this is one of them.

needing to talk to an rdns server to figure out that localhost means ::1 
(or 127.0.0.1 on the legacy internet) is also a bad design.

a hard transition, where all RDNS servers stop answering for localhost 
as soon as possible, is what would be in my opinion the best way to 
escape the long-armed clutches of bad design.

however, RDNS operators might be worried about complaints from their end 
users, and may want to either work through a gentle transition, or more 
likely, leave all the "tough love" for their successors to implement, 
and simply never remove this, because it's not causing them any 
problems, whereas removing it definitely could cause them problems.

vixie