[DNSOP] Why no more meta-queries? (Was: More work for DNSOP :-)

Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr> Mon, 09 March 2015 14:29 UTC

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Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2015 15:28:44 +0100
From: Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@nic.fr>
To: Evan Hunt <each@isc.org>
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References: <20150306145217.GA8959@nic.fr> <54F9C29E.9040408@jive.com> <54F9F90D.1020806@redbarn.org> <54F9FCD3.7010204@jive.com> <54F9FDFA.2030405@redbarn.org> <F25411A6-2CBD-4A76-949C-6E236FA87863@isoc.org> <20150306205920.GA17567@isc.org>
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Subject: [DNSOP] Why no more meta-queries? (Was: More work for DNSOP :-)
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On Fri, Mar 06, 2015 at 08:59:20PM +0000,
 Evan Hunt <each@isc.org> wrote 
 a message of 28 lines which said:

> (As an aside: I've often wondered why the DNS doesn't have *more*
> meta-query types, less extensive than ANY, such as a single type
> covering A and AAAA.

Probably for the same reason that makes QTYPE=ANY queries very
difficult to understand for the beginner and counter-intuitive:
because it is hard to specify the semantics. Imagine there is an ADDR
meta-query covering A and AAAA. You send QTYPE=ADDR and you get only A
record(s). Can you be *sure* (and can you validate with DNSSEC) that
there was no AAAA? Think of the various cases, RD=0, RD=1, caches,
forwarders, etc.

Same question if IETF invents IPv12 and we have AAAAAAAA records. At
first, some servers will ignore them. What is the meaning of ADDR if
you do not know if the servers handle AAAAAAAA?