John C Klensin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> Suppose one has mail addressed to [EMAIL PROTECTED]  Suppose 
> further that one has
>   foo.example.com.  IN A 10.0.0.1
>                     IN A 10.0.0.2
>                     IN AAAA ....
> and no MX record.
> 
> Now what 2821bis now says includes "address record" and the old 
> rule about making an implicit MX record with preference 0 and 
> then following the rules.  So we pretend that we had
>   foo.example.com.   MX 0 foo.example.com.
> to complement the above.

   Indeed: both 2821 ande 2821bis-09 require exactly that.

   The _difference_ is that 2821 _requires_ a DNS query for an
A RR, while 2821bis-09 _requires_ querying for
" 
" either an IPv4 A RR or an IPv6 AAAA RR, or their successors

   As I read this, it requires querying for _both_ A and AAAA
whether or not the host doing the querying knows about both
IPv4 and IPv6. (And it introduces that "or their successors"
language, which I find frankly impossible to implement.)

> Interestingly enough, in that case, even if the rule were 
> "implicit MX on A RRs only", exactly the same MX record would be 
> generated.  The only time the "address record" rule that is now 
> present in 2821bis is an issue is if there is no A RR.

   Exactly. (I have been hesitating to point this out, for fear of
interrupting a perfectly good flame war.)

> Once that implicit MX record exists, there are fairly clear 
> rules about which address to use for foo.example.com.

   Alas, they're not all that clear to me. :^(

> To be a little more precise, while the rules are clear, they
> pretty much leave it up to the sending host

   (That's what I mean by not so clear...)

   Please excuse me for snipping the rest of John K's wisdom on
this diversion. I'd be _very_ happy to discuss it under a different
Subject heading.

> If a receiving host wants to specify a priority for which of 
> IPv6 or IPv4 it prefers to receive traffic over, it must have 
> two names, one for its IPv4 interface(s) and one for its IPv6 
> one(s) and then put in an explicit set of MX records that bind 
> separate priorities to those two names.

   Or, it might have two MX RRs with the same priority...

> So again no issue with whether a host looks for an AAAA record
> if it cannot find an MX.

   In this particular case: yes, substituting the 2821bis language
has no effect on the outcome -- the only effect being requiring
more DNS traffic.

   There are, of course, other cases where the different language
_would_ lead to different results -- the most obvious being an
IPv6-only domain.

   This whole flame-war seems a lot like many other IPv6 flame-wars
I've observed: one side saying that differences between IPv4 and
IPv6 should be prohibited, with the other side saying differences
should be respected and used.

   Frankly, I have no use for the "differences prohibited" side
(so I don't usually reply). I'd much prefer to be talking about
_how_ to best respect the differences.

--
John Leslie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

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