Re: [DNSOP] Some distinctions and a request - Have some class?

[Evan Hunt <[e-mail]>]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2015 at 10:01:55PM -0400, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> Since the RDATA for a CNAME or DNAME is another point in the tree, the
> above convention would suggest in fact that you _can't_ point to a
> different alias (or else, we'd get a very unusual meaning of the terms
> "parallel" and "same").

The remark prefaced with "by convention" doesn't strike me as particularly
definitive.  There's no .bind TLD in class IN, yet version.bind/CHAOS
exists in many DNS servers, therefore the namespaces aren't actually
parallel or the same, whatever the authors may have expected to happen
at the time 1034 was written.

> If all we want is a convention for instructing the local resolver,
> repurposing classes seems like a lot of work.  After all, apparently
> Bonjour and Tor -- and for that matter, DKIM -- are able to figure
> this out by grovelling through magic labels in the owner name.  It's
> filthy, but the code all shiped ages ago.

Point taken, but the problem we're facing is magic special-purpose labels
potentially being repurposed in the global DNS and thus becoming ambiguous.
Allocating class ONION, class MDNS, etc, for things like this may actually
turn out to be less trouble in the long run than ensuring that ICANN never
sells anybody a TLD called .onion.

-- 
Evan Hunt -- [e-mail]
Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.