Re: [dnssd] When does MDNS/DNS-SD use IPv6?

[Stuart Cheshire <[e-mail]>]

On 17 Jan 2017, at 19:58, Christian Huitema <[e-mail]> wrote:

> I am writing a small implementation of MDNS and DNS-SD to test the privacy
> and pairing drafts, and I am puzzled by the IPv4 vs. IPv6 issues. The MDNS
> spec mentions that queries can be sent to "multicast address 224.0.0.251 or
> its IPv6 equivalent FF02::FB". That's nice, but it is wonderfully
> underspecified. Or maybe I am just a bit slow these days, and I just need
> help... Given a query for some record type in the ".local" namespace, should
> the implementation:
> 
> 1) Send queries to both 224.0.0.251 and FF02::FB and merge the results?
> 2) Send queries only to 224.0.0.251?
> 3) Send queries only to FF02::FB?
> 4) Send to 224.0.0.251 and then try FF02::FB if no response come after a
> timeout?
> 5) Or vice versa?
> 6) Perform some guesswork as to whether the local network prefers IPv4 or
> IPv6?
> 7) Do different things if the query is for an A record versus AAAA?
> 
> Also, is there a different recommendation for one-shot queries and
continuous queries? 

The Apple open source mDNSResponder implementation sends both queries in parallel.

There are no timeouts in the mDNSResponder APIs. There are no operations that fail, only operations that haven’t succeeded yet. The reason the printer doesn’t show up might be that it’s turned off — which is a situation the user can remedy. The client keeps patiently sending queries (with exponential backoff) until the device gets turned on and responds, or the user decides to cancel.

> And did we decide on purpose to not document that in the RFC?

Just an oversight, I think. Or perhaps we were optimistically looking forwards to a future world of all IPv6-only devices where the question wouldn’t apply.

Stuart Cheshire