[DNSOP] abandoning ANAME and standardizing CNAME at apex

Petr Špaček <petr.spacek@nic.cz> Tue, 19 June 2018 13:18 UTC

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To: "dnsop@ietf.org WG" <dnsop@ietf.org>
From: Petr Špaček <petr.spacek@nic.cz>
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Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2018 15:18:22 +0200
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Subject: [DNSOP] abandoning ANAME and standardizing CNAME at apex
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Hello dnsop,

beware, material in this e-mail might cause your head to explode :-)

This proposal is based on following observations:
- It seems that DNS protocol police lost battle about CNAME at apex,
   is is deployed on the Internet.
- Major DNS resolvers like BIND, Unbound, PowerDNS Recursor, dnsmasq
   already have code to cope with the "impossible" case of CNAME at the
   apex and deal with it in ways which do not break stuff on resolver
   side.
- Authoritative servers of vendors named above refuse to serve CNAME at
   apex.
- There are CDNs etc. which allow users to create CNAME at apex
   no matter what the standards and "normal" servers say and do.
(We have found out this because Knot Resolver is missing hacks for CNAME
at apex and users complain that "it works with every other resolver".)


Take a deep breath!


Given that resolver side somehow works already ...
could we standardize this obvious violation of RFC 1035?

It is very clear violation of the standard, but almost everyone found
his way around it using different hacks. These hacks are not going away
because all the CDNs just don't care about standards so we will have
to maintain this code no matter what a great solution we will invent for 
future. I.e. adding ANAME will just increase complexity because CNAME at 
apex will be there for a long time (if not forever).

I personally do not like this but it seems better to think though
corner cases in code we already have in production (i.e. think through 
current hacks for CNAME at apex) instead of inventing new things like 
ANAME (or whatever else).

Opinions? Tomatoes? Can it work? If not, why not?

-- 
Petr Špacek  @  CZ.NIC