Re: [DNSOP] Current DNS standards, drafts & charter

["Paul Hoffman" <[e-mail]>]

On 27 Mar 2018, at 9:02, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 05:46:45PM +0200, bert hubert wrote:
>> So my first suggested action is: could we write a document that has a 
>> core
>> introduction of DNS and then provides a recommended (not) reading 
>> list.
>
> Maybe we could, but we failed at that once before.

Oh, there you go again with that operational history lesson. :-)

> After the DNSSEC work wound down, around IETF 68, DNSEXT went
> "dormant".  But it was apparent that the DNS protocol was complicated
> and difficult to understand, so the WG was rechartered partly to try
> to get some clarity to the standards.  The document the WG hung its
> efforts on was
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsext-dns-protocol-profile-01.
>
> The problem, of course, was that nobody had the time required to
> complete this.

We hope that someone does, but rarely can we find someone whose boss 
will give them the (literally) hundreds of hours that would take to do 
this right.

> I have no idea how the SMTP crowd at the IETF managed
> to get the cycles to update 821/822 several times, but we were unable
> to get this energy.

OK, my turn. I ran the Internet Mail Consortium during the timeframe of 
that work, and helped shepherd some of the discussions and the interop 
testing. It was grueling even though that was a group of people where 
pretty much everyone liked each other and listened politely.

> The last update to that draft came in January
> 2008, and by IETF 72 (in July of '08) Olafur and I concluded that, if
> we couldn't get any activity, then we'd try to focus the WG on places
> where it could make progress.  We took that decision in the fall of
> 2008.
>
> Now, I don't think that the work was bad or wrong, and I think that
> draft remains a useful place to start if people want to pick up that
> work again.  But I'm not super convinced that this or any other WG
> really will have the desire to undertake it.  Maintenance is no fun,
> and inventing new stuff is more entertaining.
>
> But, by all means, if people want to revisit that effort, I think it
> would be a fine thing.  I think, however, that someone should contact
> a friendly neighbourhood AD to try to determine where the work should
> be chartered.  I do _not_ think it is operations and management work.

 From the SMTP work above, I would also say "...and unless you have an 
author who can commit a lot of time over the course of two years".

> One thing that would be interesting to explore in taking that effort
> up is whether DNS should really be considered INT or ART.  DNS lives
> squarely in the application layer and isn't really like the other
> things that fit in INT.  OTOH, it's more a service to other parts of
> the network than it is an application the way ordinary application
> layer things are.  The misfit of the model to the world strikes again!

This was another area where the SMTP work had an advantage: we got good 
help from others in the Apps Area at the time.

--Paul Hoffman