[Doh] a tad confused on response sizes

bert hubert <bert.hubert@powerdns.com> Tue, 05 June 2018 12:05 UTC

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Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2018 14:05:10 +0200
From: bert hubert <bert.hubert@powerdns.com>
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Subject: [Doh] a tad confused on response sizes
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Dear DOH-people,

As I'm implementing DOH in dnsdist (expect something you can try later this
week), I am a bit confused.

The question is what maximum response size I should send in the absence of
an EDNS buffer size.  So let's say a query comes in without EDNS for
www.whitehouse.gov, but the answer exceeds 512 bytes.  Should I truncate?

I have read the draft and previous discussion, which has led to:

	Also note that while [RFC1035] says "Messages carried by UDP are
	restricted to 512 bytes", that was later updated by [RFC6891].  This
	protocol allows DNS on-the-wire format payloads of any size."

This is not explicit on what an implementation should do, only what the
protocol could support. Some further text:

	A DNS API server is allowed to answer queries with any valid DNS
	response.  For example, a valid DNS response might have the TC
	(truncation) bit set in the DNS header to indicate that the server
	was not able to retrieve a full answer for the query but is
	providing the best answer it could get.  A DNS API server can reply
	to queries with an HTTP error for queries that it cannot fulfill. 
	In this same example, a DNS API server could use an HTTP error
	instead of a non- error response that has the TC bit set.

This seems says sending a TC response is some kind of error, which implies
a DNS API server should be willing to send 65 kilobyte answers.

I think for the new usecases, this would be a fine default. However, there
might be UDP-to-DOH bridges which would then need to put explicit EDNS
buffersize of 512 in there if they get non-EDNS adorned UDP queries.

If the '65 kilobyte' interpretation is correct, I can supply text that will
hopefully make this explicit and unconfuse future implementers.

	Bert