[DNSOP] Re: [dtn] Re: Re: IPN and CLA RRTYPEs to support Bundle Protocol RFC9171

[Paul Vixie <[e-mail]>]

Mark Andrews wrote on 2024-06-26 16:02:
> 
> 
>> ...
> 
> Adding a new RRTYPE requires zero infrastructure upgrades.  It’s a database entry at IANA.  Every DNS server on the planet should handle these transparently.  That was required by RFC 1034 and RFC 1035.  You can even add them to zones before the parsing software is updated using unknown type representation (RFC 3597) which was one thing that was missing from RFC 1035 that would have made adding new types easier.  Nameservers and stub resolvers were always required to treat unknown records as opaque objects.

in terms of dns infrastructure this is true. while the open source 
implementations are fastest to adopt and deploy new rr types, even 
proprietary dns implementations are rarely more than a year behind.

but there's infrastructural middleware for which this is not true. 
registries and registrars and things like "webmin" are usually five to 
ten years behind on adding support for new rr types. thus, the SPF 
debacle in which the application had to back off and go with TXT. and 
thus the tendency today to use an existing rr type and a well-known 
subdomain beginning with an "_" as a way to deploy more or less immediately.

dns itself is not the problem. but there is a real problem here about 
which the dns technical community can do precisely nothing.

> This doesn’t mean that there weren’t mis-implementations of the standards which failed to handle unknown types correctly but there have been 78 types added since RFC 1034 and RFC 1035.  That’s 2-3 per year.  Nameserver developers know how to add new record types quickly.

agreed, but that's not the point being argued.

-- 
P Vixie