An IANA Registry for DNS TXT RDATA (I-D Action: draft-klensin-iana-txt-rr-registry-00.txt)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Hi.

Inspired by part of the SPF discussion but separate from it,
Patrik, Andrew, and I discovered a shortage of registries for
assorted DNS RDATA elements.  We have posted a draft to
establish one for TXT RDATA.  If this requires significant
discussion, we seek guidance from relevant ADs as to where they
would like that discussion to occur.

Three notes:

* As the draft indicates, while RFC 5507 and other documents
explain why subtypes are usually a bad idea, the registry
definition tries to be fairly neutral on the subject -- the idea
is to identify and register what is being done, not to pass
judgment. 

* While the use of special labels (in the language of 5507,
prefixes and suffixes) mitigates many of the issues with
specialized use of RDATA fields, they do not eliminate the
desirability of a registry (especially for debugging and
analysis purposes).

* While examining the DNS-related registries that exist today,
we discovered that some other registries seemed to be missing
and that the organization of the registries seemed to be
sub-optimal.  We considered attempting a "fix everything" I-D,
but concluded that the TXT RDATA registry was the most important
need and that it would be unwise to get its establishment bogged
down with other issue.  The I-D now contains a temporary
appendix that outlines the other issues we identified.  IMO,
thinking through the issues in that appendix, generating the
relevant I-D(s), and moving them through the system would be a
good exercise for someone who has little experience in the IETF
and who is interested in IANA registries and/or DNS details.  I
am unlikely to find time to do the work myself but would be
happy to work with a volunteer on pulling things together.

    best,
      john


---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: Friday, August 30, 2013 05:52 -0700
From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: I-D Action: draft-klensin-iana-txt-rr-registry-00.txt


A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line
Internet-Drafts directories.


	Title           : An IANA Registry for Protocol Uses of Data
with the DNS TXT RRTYPE 	Author(s)       : John C Klensin
                          Andrew Sullivan
                          Patrik Faltstrom
	Filename        : draft-klensin-iana-txt-rr-registry-00.txt
	Pages           : 8
	Date            : 2013-08-30

Abstract:
   Some protocols use the RDATA field of the DNS TXT RRTYPE for
holding    data to be parsed, rather than for unstructured free
text.  This    document specifies the creation of an IANA
registry for protocol-    specific structured data to minimize
the risk of conflicting or    inconsistent uses of that RRTYPE
and data field.


The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klensin-iana-txt-rr-registry

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