Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-09 Thread Bill Manning
On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 02:34:59PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
 On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 05:11:35PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
  And vanity TLDs are going to be much more attractive if people think 
  they can get single-label host names out of them.
 
 Of your concerns (which I don't have the relevant experience to comment
 on in detail), this seems to be fairly small and speculative to me.
 
 Time will tell.
 
 -- 
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it is possible to have a host name also be a domain name.
myself, i look forward to sending email to

[EMAIL PROTECTED]


-- 
--bill

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-09 Thread Joe Touch



Mark Andrews wrote:
...

hk is not a legal fully qualified host name.

Agreed. hk., however, is.


	No, it is not a legal hostname. 


RFC 952 explicitly excludes trailing periods.


RFC 952 is not a standard.

Joe



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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-09 Thread Ted Faber
On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 12:54:24PM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
  I don't want anything in this space.  I don't care if the root's
  unchanged or as wide as .com.
 
   There was a clear decision to move from a single label
   hostnames to multiple label hostnames (RFC 921).  You are
   attempting to reverse that decision.

I've said everything I want to say about this topic, but I'd like to
reiterate that I'm not attempting to reverse any decision.  I have no
hidden agenda and I am not advocating a policy position based on
technical and conceptual feasibility (or anything else).

I don't care which one the community picks here.  I've now asserted it
twice.

I don't care which one the community picks here.  Now it's true.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread John C Klensin


--On Monday, 07 July, 2008 18:14 -0700 Dave Crocker
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 
 John C Klensin wrote:
  What do
 you think would happen to that recommendation, and the
 benefits it affords, if the size of the root zone increased
 by an order of magnitude or so?  
 
 
 2 orders?  20K?
 
 No, sorry.  Think 3-4 orders of magnitude.
 
 Really.

Yes.  I choose the smaller number because various folks around
ICANN seem to be expecting a thousand applications or so.
Unless the application fee turns into much more of a deterrent
than I expect, I agree that this is likely to open the
floodgates and that your estimate is more likely.  While INAL
and this is certainly not my area of expertise, a possible issue
in the requirement to defend trademarks might act as a strong
accelerator once one starts seeing individual enterprise TLDs
(or even the suspicion of applications for them).

 Let me explain: I'm not against more TLDs.  Quite the
 opposite.  (I appointed by Postel to participate in the
 pre-ICANN committee tasked with increasing the number.)
 
 But there is a paradigmatic difference between a TLD defined
 and operated to mediate on behalf of a general and diverse
 population, versus one constrained to a narrow and controlled
 constituency, such as a single company.

Indeed, although ICANN has already opened that door by
allocating sponsored gTLDs to a few entities which have
restricted membership that is smaller than the interest group
associated with some larger companies.

 The number of the latter is quite large.  And by that I mean
 *really* large.
 
 And all of the questions I asked 10 years ago said that TLDs
 on that latter scale would be problematic to the root.

Yes.  And, for large scale, our more complicated root
environment (e.g., Anycast* and more local caching of root
copies in the presence of a root that might, worst case, end up
on the same order of magnitude in size, and with similar
volatility, to .COM) may actually make that situation worse than
it would have been in estimates of a decade ago.

 john

* I am assuming that, while Anycast reduces the load on
individual servers by making more of them, it does not reduce
the total query load on the network and increases the amount of
bandwidth used in distributing updates.  The latter is
presumably trivial as long as the refresh time for the root zone
is fairly long and updates are infrequent (or incremental push
update is used), but could get interesting if magnitudes evolved
toward the current .COM situation.  But that is clearly not an
analysis based on actual data.



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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Marshall Eubanks


On Jul 7, 2008, at 10:55 PM, Joe Abley wrote:



On 7 Jul 2008, at 21:36, James Seng wrote:

And all of the questions I asked 10 years ago said that TLDs on  
that latter

scale would be problematic to the root.


Was that pre-Anycast or post-Anycast?


There are plenty of examples of people hosting large, infrastructure- 
type zones using servers and software that are conventional,  
commodity choices. NSD and BIND9 are both quite capable of hosting  
zones with single-digit millions of delegations without needing  
special care and feeding, for example.


Whether the DNS service for a zone is anycast or not has some, but  
really not that much relevance when you're considering the risk of  
an engorged root zone. I don't read anything in the layer-9 musings  
I've seen so far to suggest that the bar to entry for new TLDs will  
be so low that we'll see widespread TLD tasting and churn, for  
example, sufficient to make far-flung anycast instances struggle to  
keep up.


It seems to me that it might be better to turn that around :

The new TLD system should not allow for widespread TLD tasting and  
churn.


I worry about depending on artificial limits imposed by fees. ICANN  
will certainly be lobbied to lower their

fees; what if the fee in 2012 is $ 100 not $ 100,000 ?

Regards
Marshall




I'm not suggesting that growth should be allowed to happen without  
considering the technical consequences. However, I believe in  
practice with the headroom in systems and network that root server  
operators generally install anyway, there's considerable room for  
growth and the general argument that growth in the root zone will  
undermine stability sounds more like hysteria than science.



Joe
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Ted Faber
On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 12:54:16PM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
   hk. is not a syntactically valid hostname (RFC 952).
   hk. is not a syntactically valid mail domain.
   Periods at the end are not legal.
 
   RFC 1035 has *nothing* to do with defining what is legal
   as a hostname.

Fair enough. 

By RFC952 standards hk is a perfectly fine hostname.

By RFC1035 standards, if you look it or any other DNS name up using the
DNS resolver, that resolver will treat the name as relative unless it
ends with a dot.   Arguing that hk is an unreliable hostname if you
look it up as a relative pathname is pretty much the same as arguing
that www.isi.deterlab.net is an unreliable hostname.  Both of them are
subject to the search path without that trailing dot.

So far, the only distinction between the two is that hk is short.

I understand the assumption that getting a collision in the search path
with a 2-letter name is higher than getting one with a 20-letter name.
I believe that the 2-letter collisions are no harder to avoid in
principle than the 20-letter ones, and no harder to create should an
admin want to do so (e.g., to create local aliases).  I think you
believe that search path collisions for short names are inherently
harder to avoid (and might rule out using the trailing dot notation in
applications to avoid them).

Is that basically what we disagree about?

-- 
Ted Faber
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore



Ted Faber wrote:

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 12:54:16PM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:

hk. is not a syntactically valid hostname (RFC 952).
hk. is not a syntactically valid mail domain.
Periods at the end are not legal.

RFC 1035 has *nothing* to do with defining what is legal
as a hostname.


Fair enough. 


By RFC952 standards hk is a perfectly fine hostname.

By RFC1035 standards, if you look it or any other DNS name up using the
DNS resolver, that resolver will treat the name as relative unless it
ends with a dot.   Arguing that hk is an unreliable hostname if you
look it up as a relative pathname is pretty much the same as arguing
that www.isi.deterlab.net is an unreliable hostname.  Both of them are
subject to the search path without that trailing dot.


RFC1035 may recognize the trailing dot, but (for better or worse) many 
applications do not recognize it, and some explicitly forbid it.



So far, the only distinction between the two is that hk is short.

I understand the assumption that getting a collision in the search path
with a 2-letter name is higher than getting one with a 20-letter name.
I believe that the 2-letter collisions are no harder to avoid in
principle than the 20-letter ones, and no harder to create should an
admin want to do so (e.g., to create local aliases).  I think you
believe that search path collisions for short names are inherently
harder to avoid (and might rule out using the trailing dot notation in
applications to avoid them).

Is that basically what we disagree about?


No.  There's more to this than just the possibility of name collisions 
caused by the lookup using a search path.


For instance, there are also applications that try to distinguish 
between an absolute DNS name and some other kind of name (DNS name 
relative to the search path, or a name in /etc/hosts, NetBIOS, NIS, ...) 
by checking to see whether the name contains a '.'.  So for instance, if 
the domain name contains a '.', the search path function might be 
turned off during name lookup.


This behavior isn't necessarily prescribed in any specification, but 
it's a useful heuristic - especially for an application (like email 
addresses or URLs) where it's important that domain names be unambiguous 
and location-independent.


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Ted Faber
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 11:28:05PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
 
 The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined not by the
 presence of dot within the name but its absence from the end. 
 
 not so.  in many contexts the trailing dot is not valid syntax.

Let me be precise.  The resolver treats those names differently because
it was handed a name that did or did not end in a dot - the resolver's
syntax for absolute vs. relative pathname.  I understand that may
conflict with application syntax.  Applications that do not support an
explicit notation for absolute domain names will not be able to look
them up when those names are masked by site-dependent resolution of
relative names.  Both hk and www.isi.deterlab.net are relative
names and subject to masking.

I understand that such maskings are more intuitive with short names like
hk, but that limitation of the application interface applies to any
relative domain name.

 
 I don't buy unreliable as a diagnosis for that state of affairs.  hk
 operates exactly as any other DNS name with respect to search path. 
 
 search path isn't the only factor here.

Understood.  It was the objection I was responding to, though.

 
 there are also protocol specifications that expect DNS names to have 
 dots in them.

One could argue that such protocols are not able to express all valid
domain names, which may be a feature. :-)

That's probably a longer discussion than I want to have though, so I
agree that this is a stumbling block.

 
 there are also software implementations that use the presence/absence of 
 a dot to distinguish a DNS name from some other kind of name.  in any 
 context where both a DNS name and something else can appear, it's useful 
 to be able to distinguish the two - and the presence/absence of a dot is 
 about the only test that works.

I'm sure that there are plenty of apps that break here, and certainly
some protocols that have been specified that way, and I feel the pain of
backward compatibility.  If I were running the website at hk, I'd
publicize the conventional DNS names and not hk.  

I really didn't intend to get as deeply into this as I did.  I was
honestly intrigued by a 2-letter hostname and wanted to see if it really
worked, as I could see no reason it wouldn't.  For me it did.

I understand that your resolver, server, and application may all prevent
it.  I also understand that using such names may sow confusion among
those who don't care to examine the workings of their DNS set-up.  And
that any confusion about computers is set upon by the unscrupulous to
gather money.  Encouraging TLD hostnames as a matter of policy is more
complex than noting that the DNS specifications allow such a thing.

But it was pretty cool. :-)

-- 
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Joe Touch

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1



Keith Moore wrote:
|
|
| Ted Faber wrote:
| On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 12:54:16PM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
| hk. is not a syntactically valid hostname (RFC 952).
| hk. is not a syntactically valid mail domain.
| Periods at the end are not legal.
|
| RFC 1035 has *nothing* to do with defining what is legal
| as a hostname.
|
| Fair enough.
| By RFC952 standards hk is a perfectly fine hostname.
|
| By RFC1035 standards, if you look it or any other DNS name up using the
| DNS resolver, that resolver will treat the name as relative unless it
| ends with a dot.   Arguing that hk is an unreliable hostname if you
| look it up as a relative pathname is pretty much the same as arguing
| that www.isi.deterlab.net is an unreliable hostname.  Both of them are
| subject to the search path without that trailing dot.
|
| RFC1035 may recognize the trailing dot, but (for better or worse) many
| applications do not recognize it, and some explicitly forbid it.

RFC1043 defines the dot. The fact that some apps don't recognize it is a
bug. Given its impact, let's not call it a feature or BCP.

Joe
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore

Ted Faber wrote:

On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 11:28:05PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:

The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined not by the
presence of dot within the name but its absence from the end. 

not so.  in many contexts the trailing dot is not valid syntax.


Let me be precise.  The resolver treats those names differently because
it was handed a name that did or did not end in a dot - the resolver's
syntax for absolute vs. relative pathname.  I understand that may
conflict with application syntax.  Applications that do not support an
explicit notation for absolute domain names will not be able to look
them up when those names are masked by site-dependent resolution of
relative names. 


It's more likely that the application (as specified) simply expects 
(implicitly or explicitly) absolute domain names.  If and when relative 
domain names work, it's either by accident or a result of sloppy coding.


Few applications are specified in such a way that relative DNS names 
make sense and there is a clear way to distinguish relative names from 
absolute DNS names.  (Note that make sense generally includes 
converting relative names to absolute names in the context of whoever 
typed in the relative name - and dealing with the potential for skew 
over time between the relative name and absolute equivalent.  in other 
words, this is not an easy thing to do well.)


The problem is worsened because most APIs for name lookup are poorly 
designed in several ways.  One of their problems is that they tend to do 
relative lookups by default even though often that's not desirable. 
Another problem is that they tend to do other kinds of lookups by 
default in addition to DNS (perhaps as a fallback) even in contexts 
where DNS lookups are required for interoperability.  Applications may 
or may not work around these API problems, and to the extent they do, 
they probably don't do so consistently from one implementation to the next.



I understand that such maskings are more intuitive with short names like
hk, but that limitation of the application interface applies to any
relative domain name.


I'm not sure what intuitive means in this context.  But the 
probability of collision is certainly larger for short names than for 
longer ones.  I suspect it's also larger for single-label names than for 
multiple-label names, where each label is assigned by a different entity.


And a higher probability of collision definitely translates to a lower 
degree of reliability.


there are also protocol specifications that expect DNS names to have 
dots in them.


One could argue that such protocols are not able to express all valid
domain names, which may be a feature. :-)


The notion of a single-label fully-qualified DNS name being valid is 
an odd one.   DNS, as far as I can tell, was always intended to be 
federated, both in assignment and lookup.  The notion of having terminal 
(basically, non NS) records at the root seems contraindicated by several 
of the DNS design goals.


For example, at the time DNS was established, single label names like 
CMUA or MIT-AI were the norm.  But those names were not incorporated 
into the root (even during a transition), nor were TLDs created for 
those zones - because DNS was not intended to work that way.  The whole 
idea was to federate the name space, not to provide another way to look 
up single-label names.  (Instead, the names were incorporated into the 
.ARPA TLD for a time, with CNAMEs pointing to the real names.)


So I persist in thinking that single-label DNS names are not valid, and 
that to the extent they work at all, they work only by accident or as a 
result of poor specification or sloppy implementation.


And given the recent interest in vanity TLDs and ICANN's apparent lack 
of willingness to run the DNS for the benefit of all, maybe it's time 
for IETF to remind people that single label TLDs are not actually 
supposed to work.


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore

RFC1043 defines the dot. The fact that some apps don't recognize it is a
bug. 


not when the application explicitly specifies that FQDNs are to be used.
in such cases the dot is superfluous.

Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore

Joe Touch wrote:


Keith Moore wrote:
| RFC1043 defines the dot. The fact that some apps don't recognize it is a
| bug.
|
| not when the application explicitly specifies that FQDNs are to be used.
| in such cases the dot is superfluous.

Superfluous is fine. Prohibited is not. If the app inputs DNS names,
then FQDNs should be valid, even if redundant.


I don't think you get to revise a couple of decades of protocol design 
and implementation by declaring that RFC 1043's authors and process 
trump everything that's  been done afterward.


face it, there are large numbers of identifiers for which relative names 
are simply not appropriate - because they cannot be made to work well 
over the time frame that those identifiers need to be valid.  email 
addresses and URLs are two obvious examples.


Keith

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Joe Touch



Keith Moore wrote:

Joe Touch wrote:


Keith Moore wrote:
| RFC1043 defines the dot. The fact that some apps don't recognize it 
is a

| bug.
|
| not when the application explicitly specifies that FQDNs are to be 
used.

| in such cases the dot is superfluous.

Superfluous is fine. Prohibited is not. If the app inputs DNS names,
then FQDNs should be valid, even if redundant.


I don't think you get to revise a couple of decades of protocol design 
and implementation by declaring that RFC 1043's authors and process 
trump everything that's  been done afterward.


I'll repeat:

some app misbehaviors are just bugs

not all app misbehaviors define new, acceptable behavior

At some point we as a group decide what to accept as BCP, and what to 
just call a bug. This, IMO, falls squarely in the 'bug' bin.


Joe



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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore

Joe Touch wrote:

I don't think you get to revise a couple of decades of protocol design 
and implementation by declaring that RFC 1043's authors and process 
trump everything that's  been done afterward.


I'll repeat:

some app misbehaviors are just bugs


not all app misbehaviors define new, acceptable behavior

At some point we as a group decide what to accept as BCP, and what to 
just call a bug. This, IMO, falls squarely in the 'bug' bin.


IMO you are broadly overgeneralizing.

For many apps (and certainly for the apps most widely used today), the 
ability to use relative names, even as an accident because the API 
allows them, is a bug.


Many, many working groups have looked at the problems associated with 
relative names and determined that they're not acceptable.  It's a bug 
that relative names are forbidden in these apps, nor that the final . 
is implicit and in many cases disallowed.  These are carefully 
considered design features.  (for instance, forbidding the final . 
makes it simpler to compare domain names for equivalence.)


Ketih
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Tony Finch
On Mon, 7 Jul 2008, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

  So who's going to explain to the Vatican that, sorry,
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] doesn't work any more?  Or will the US take
  issue when addresses @as, which is part of the US,
  don't work?  Or France about @gp and @mq, which are
  as much part of France as Hawaii is part of the US?

 I'd be very surprised if any of these work as-is, with any reliability.
 They certainly won't work for email.  The assumption that fully
 qualified domain names contain at least one '.' is widespread in both
 protocol specifications and implementations.

I've been investigating this and I have discovered an oddity that I didn't
expect: Exim on my FreeBSD workstation handles TLD MXs without a problem,
but on my SuSE mail relays it fails. This is because of different
behaviours between the resolver code in the FreeBSD and GNU C libraries.
Both of them are based on the BIND resolver code so this is rather
surprising!

Exim uses res_search() to do DNS lookups. The postmaster can control the
resolver's treatment of single-component names using Exim's qualify_single
option, which controls the resolver's RES_DEFNAMES flag.

GNU libc refuses to resolve a single component domain name unless there's
a trailing dot (which there never is for a mail domain), or RES_DEFNAMES
is set and . is on the search list. Our mail relays use Exim's own seach
logic when looking up MXs so they switch RES_DEFNAMES off; therefore TLD
MXs do not work on those machines.

FreeBSD libc will resolve single-component names without trailing dots and
without RES_DEFNAMES set, so TLD MXs would work on FreeBSD. However,
FreeBSD's behaviour has varied in the past, and I suspect the same is true
for the upstream BIND resolver code - though I haven't checked the history
in detail.

So the question of whether TLD MXs work depends on the interactions
between lot of complicated option settings and software versions, and is
likely in practice to work or fail unpredictably.

Tony.
-- 
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TYNE DOGGER: WEST 4 OR 5, OCCASIONALLY 6, BECOMING VARIABLE 3 OR 4, THEN
SOUTHEAST 4 OR 5 LATER. SLIGHT OR MODERATE. SHOWERS, RAIN LATER. MODERATE OR
GOOD.
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread John Levine

So the question of whether TLD MXs work depends on the interactions
between lot of complicated option settings and software versions, and is
likely in practice to work or fail unpredictably.


That sounds utterly reasonable.

To me the bigger question is whether this failure scenario is something 
the IETF needs to address, or is it is sufficiently localized that it's 
something that just another thing a domain owner should deal with.


Personally, I don't think that [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a major issue, 
because in recent years mail addressing has gotten rather flat, most DNS 
resolvers are configured via DHCP, and I don't get the impression that 
they have any search lists at all.  Search lists were useful 15 or 20 
years ago, but not now.  It would be interesting to hear from people 
running mail systems who were NOT running them ten years ago, to avoid the 
selection bias of people whose configuration preferences were set on the 
T1 backbone.


Regards,
John Levine, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for 
Dummies,
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor
More Wiener schnitzel, please, said Tom, revealingly.
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore


Many, many working groups have looked at the problems associated with 
relative names and determined that they're not acceptable.  It's a 
bug that relative names are forbidden in these apps, nor that the 
final . is implicit and in many cases disallowed.  These are 
carefully considered design features.  (for instance, forbidding the 
final . makes it simpler to compare domain names for equivalence.)


It's nonsensical for an application to decide that relative names are 
unacceptable, but to require users to input names as relative.


it's nonsensical for you to unilaterally declare that such names are 
relative, when well over two decades of practice indicates otherwise.


(and remember, some of these apps predate DNS and the whole notion of 
relative names)


it's almost as if the very concept of relative names in DNS is itself a 
bug - especially if you insist that handling of DNS names be absolutely 
uniform from one app to the next.  IMHO they cause far more problems 
than they're worth.


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Joe Touch



Keith Moore wrote:


Many, many working groups have looked at the problems associated with 
relative names and determined that they're not acceptable.  It's a 
bug that relative names are forbidden in these apps, nor that the 
final . is implicit and in many cases disallowed.  These are 
carefully considered design features.  (for instance, forbidding the 
final . makes it simpler to compare domain names for equivalence.)


It's nonsensical for an application to decide that relative names are 
unacceptable, but to require users to input names as relative.


it's nonsensical for you to unilaterally declare that such names are 
relative, when well over two decades of practice indicates otherwise.


I didn't declare it; 1034 did. Apps misbehaving over arbitrary periods 
of time don't make it otherwise.


(and remember, some of these apps predate DNS and the whole notion of 
relative names)


Those apps bought into the DNS spec (or started violating it) when they 
tied into the DNS - regardless of what they did with names before.


it's almost as if the very concept of relative names in DNS is itself a 
bug - especially if you insist that handling of DNS names be absolutely 
uniform from one app to the next.  IMHO they cause far more problems 
than they're worth.


I agree that relative names are probably not worth the trouble, but that 
doesn't mean that I shouldn't be allowed to type a . at the end of any 
DNS name. DNS names have a syntax; things that take DNS names as input 
and/or tie into the DNS protocol need to use that syntax, not presume to 
redefine it.


Joe



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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Ted Faber
On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 02:17:57PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
 Ted Faber wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 11:28:05PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
 there are also protocol specifications that expect DNS names to have 
 dots in them.
 
 One could argue that such protocols are not able to express all valid
 domain names, which may be a feature. :-)
 
 The notion of a single-label fully-qualified DNS name being valid is 
 an odd one.   DNS, as far as I can tell, was always intended to be 
 federated, both in assignment and lookup.  The notion of having terminal 
 (basically, non NS) records at the root seems contraindicated by several 
 of the DNS design goals.

But there are no such non-NS records at the root.  The A record for the
host hk is on the .hk servers, not the root servers.  Conceptually, the
delegee controls the namespace at the root of the delegation.

This is exactly analogous to the practice of assigning an address to the
root of a delegated domain like isi.edu.  There are NS records in edu
pointing to isi servers and the A record for isi.edu lives inside the
delegated namespace, which is entirely consistent with federation.

 And given the recent interest in vanity TLDs and ICANN's apparent lack 
 of willingness to run the DNS for the benefit of all, maybe it's time 
 for IETF to remind people that single label TLDs are not actually 
 supposed to work.

There are plenty of reasons to argue against using TLDs as hostnames,
but I don't think consistency with the federation/delegation model is
one.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore
It's nonsensical for an application to decide that relative names are 
unacceptable, but to require users to input names as relative.


it's nonsensical for you to unilaterally declare that such names are 
relative, when well over two decades of practice indicates otherwise.


I didn't declare it; 1034 did. 


Yes - but you're the one declaring that 1034 trumps decades of later 
work.  Normally the assumption would be that work can be revised as bugs 
are found or conditions change over time, and that things that had 
achieved IETF consensus since 1034 was published would be considered at 
least equal, and often superior, to earlier work.


I don't think 1034 was handed down from a mountain on stone tablets.

I believe it always was inevitable that different apps would use DNS (or 
any shared naming facility) in slightly different ways.  Yes this is 
somewhat confusing, but DNS (like the rest of the Internet) has been 
stretched far beyond its original design goals or scale.  For instance, 
we don't interpret DNS names as hostnames any more - because in the 
modern world the concept of host name is irrelevant in the vast 
majority of cases.


And maybe this provides an illustration of how difficult it is for us to 
use service protocols consistently from one application to another (it's 
not hard to find other examples).  But such difficulty is real and it 
reflects genuine differences in requirements from one app to the next. 
Arguably 1034 didn't even address the needs of apps existing at that 
time (email being one of those apps), much less apps that came later.


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Joe Touch



Keith Moore wrote:
It's nonsensical for an application to decide that relative names 
are unacceptable, but to require users to input names as relative.


it's nonsensical for you to unilaterally declare that such names are 
relative, when well over two decades of practice indicates otherwise.


I didn't declare it; 1034 did. 


Yes - but you're the one declaring that 1034 trumps decades of later 
work.  Normally the assumption would be that work can be revised as bugs 
are found or conditions change over time, and that things that had 
achieved IETF consensus since 1034 was published would be considered at 
least equal, and often superior, to earlier work.


I don't think 1034 was handed down from a mountain on stone tablets.


It was not. But when other programs started using the DNS, it was *they* 
that endorsed what the DNS as per that doc.


I believe it always was inevitable that different apps would use DNS (or 
any shared naming facility) in slightly different ways.


Yes. Some ways are compliant, others are not.

Yes this is 
somewhat confusing, but DNS (like the rest of the Internet) has been 
stretched far beyond its original design goals or scale.  For instance, 
we don't interpret DNS names as hostnames any more 


Who doesn't? If you're saying they could be more than one host, fine. If 
you're saying they're not hosts any more, I disagree.


If you're intent on saying the Internet is whatever anyone says it is 
on any given day - as the above suggests - I appreciate your confusion. 
I prefer to consider the Internet as being based on standards, and 
reliably working when - and *because* - we adhere to them.


Joe



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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore

Ted Faber wrote:

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 02:17:57PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:


The notion of a single-label fully-qualified DNS name being valid is 
an odd one.   DNS, as far as I can tell, was always intended to be 
federated, both in assignment and lookup.  The notion of having terminal 
(basically, non NS) records at the root seems contraindicated by several 
of the DNS design goals.


But there are no such non-NS records at the root.  The A record for the
host hk is on the .hk servers, not the root servers.


I should have been clearer.  I meant the root of the name space, not the 
root zone.


And given the recent interest in vanity TLDs and ICANN's apparent lack 
of willingness to run the DNS for the benefit of all, maybe it's time 
for IETF to remind people that single label TLDs are not actually 
supposed to work.


There are plenty of reasons to argue against using TLDs as hostnames,
but I don't think consistency with the federation/delegation model is
one.


I disagree.  I think this puts more pressure on the root.  It gives them 
a much larger, and more varied set of customers to deal with, when the 
root (i.e. ICANN) already has a fair amount of difficulty dealing with 
the ones it has.


There's a fairly basic (if implicit) assumption of DNS (and hierarchical 
names in general) that each delegation level has some shared interest 
with the one above it.  This shared interest helps to minimize conflicts 
and (more importantly) to keep those conflicts from affecting the rest 
of the net.


However, the assumption of shared interest breaks down at the root. 
This has traditionally been dealt with by imposing constraints on the 
root for all parties.  E.g.


(a) keep the root minimal and make changes only with great care,
(b) create TLDs that group together like interests and make it obvious 
where in the root a particular organization belongs (.COM, vs .ORG, vs .EDU)
(c) after .COM was captured (with various ill effects) - provide a small 
number of alternative TLDs (and with multiple, competing registrars) so 
that owner of a single TLD cannot impose a barrier to acquiring a domain.


Flattening the root (which is essentially what is being proposed) has 
the consequence that conflicts are more likely to affect parties not 
involved in the conflict.


And vanity TLDs are going to be much more attractive if people think 
they can get single-label host names out of them.


Keith

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Ted Faber
On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 05:11:35PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
 And vanity TLDs are going to be much more attractive if people think 
 they can get single-label host names out of them.

Of your concerns (which I don't have the relevant experience to comment
on in detail), this seems to be fairly small and speculative to me.

Time will tell.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore

I don't think 1034 was handed down from a mountain on stone tablets.


It was not. But when other programs started using the DNS, it was *they* 
that endorsed what the DNS as per that doc.


...but they also profiled it in various ways for use with that specific 
app.  Some apps define their own RRs, others use MX or SRV or TXT 
records, others restrict the syntax of allowable DNS names beyond the 
restrictions imposed by DNS itself.  And IDNs have their own subtle (and 
not-so-subtle) effects which can also vary from one app to the next.


It's really no different than a protocol specification saying (for 
example) this protocol is layered on top of TLS, but certain 
ciphersuites are not acceptable as they're not suitable for this case.


I believe it always was inevitable that different apps would use DNS 
(or any shared naming facility) in slightly different ways.


Yes. Some ways are compliant, others are not.

Yes this is somewhat confusing, but DNS (like the rest of the 
Internet) has been stretched far beyond its original design goals or 
scale.  For instance, we don't interpret DNS names as hostnames any more 


Who doesn't? If you're saying they could be more than one host, fine. If 
you're saying they're not hosts any more, I disagree.


I'm saying that the mapping between a DNS name and a set of hosts is 
more-or-less arbitrary.  It can be zero hosts, one host, many hosts. 
And with MX and SRV records, the mapping between the DNS name and the 
hosts that provide that service can differ from one application to the 
next.   That's a long way from the traditional concept of host name 
where a host was a single box with a user community and a set of 
services that were all associated with that name.  Nowdays we're much 
more likely to use a different DNS name for each service.  The 
traditional notion of host as a box that you could log into is only 
one such service, and (for most users) a fairly minor one at that.


If you're intent on saying the Internet is whatever anyone says it is 
on any given day - as the above suggests - I appreciate your confusion. 
I prefer to consider the Internet as being based on standards, and 
reliably working when - and *because* - we adhere to them.


I often find myself *wishing* the Internet worked that way.  Then we 
wouldn't have NATs, for instance.  And I long for a day when we actually 
 design protocols that use other protocols based on a careful 
consideration of well-known characteristics of those substrate protocols 
- much in the way that a structural engineer (say) designs structures 
based on the characteristics of load-bearing members and fasteners.


But I don't think we're there yet.  And even if we had been doing that 
all of these years, I doubt that we'd all be using DNS in the same way 
today.  Rather, we'd have a dozen DNS-like systems, all slightly 
different from one another, with some degree of inconsistency in name 
assignment from one to the next.  Because insisting on strict adherence 
to 1035 would not have removed the need for different protocols to use 
DNS in slightly different ways.


Keith

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore



Ted Faber wrote:

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 05:11:35PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
And vanity TLDs are going to be much more attractive if people think 
they can get single-label host names out of them.


Of your concerns (which I don't have the relevant experience to comment
on in detail), this seems to be fairly small and speculative to me.

Time will tell.


it is certainly speculative.  but I do recall considerable past interest 
in keywords and a widespread desire to have DNS support them.  I doubt 
that interest has waned.


and I'm not very business minded - but I don't think I'd have much 
trouble finding a thousand different English words that would be worth 
far more than $100K each if I could arrange for people to be able to 
type those words into a browser and reliably get back a web page of my 
choosing.  if it's a no-brainer for me, how much easier will it be for 
someone who actually cares about making lots of money and doesn't mind 
screwing up the DNS root?


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Mark Andrews

 
 --mvpLiMfbWzRoNl4x
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 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
 
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 11:28:05PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
  
  The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined not by the
  presence of dot within the name but its absence from the end.=20
 =20
  not so.  in many contexts the trailing dot is not valid syntax.
 
 Let me be precise.  The resolver treats those names differently because
 it was handed a name that did or did not end in a dot - the resolver's
 syntax for absolute vs. relative pathname.  I understand that may
 conflict with application syntax.  Applications that do not support an
 explicit notation for absolute domain names will not be able to look
 them up when those names are masked by site-dependent resolution of
 relative names.  Both hk and www.isi.deterlab.net are relative
 names and subject to masking.

The (some) resolver handles names differently if it contains a dot.

pet.com is lookup up as pet.com FIRST then pet.search-element.
pet is looked up as pet.search-element FIRST and pet LAST.

The above heuristics worked reasonably well in a IPv4 only
world where tld's weren't turning back the clock and trying
to make make single label hostnames work in a global context.

There is a good case to be made that pet should *never*
be looked up as plain pet if there is not a match on the
search list.

There is a good case to be made that pet.com should never
be looked up against the search list.

 I understand that such maskings are more intuitive with short names like
 hk, but that limitation of the application interface applies to any
 relative domain name.

The only reason to want single labels to be looked up as
is is reverse the clock and support deprecated naming
schemes.

  I don't buy unreliable as a diagnosis for that state of affairs.  hk
  operates exactly as any other DNS name with respect to search path.=20
 =20
  search path isn't the only factor here.
 
 Understood.  It was the objection I was responding to, though.
 
 =20
  there are also protocol specifications that expect DNS names to have=20
  dots in them.
 
 One could argue that such protocols are not able to express all valid
 domain names, which may be a feature. :-)
 
 That's probably a longer discussion than I want to have though, so I
 agree that this is a stumbling block.
 
 =20
  there are also software implementations that use the presence/absence of=
 =20
  a dot to distinguish a DNS name from some other kind of name.  in any=20
  context where both a DNS name and something else can appear, it's useful=
 =20
  to be able to distinguish the two - and the presence/absence of a dot is=
 =20
  about the only test that works.
 
 I'm sure that there are plenty of apps that break here, and certainly
 some protocols that have been specified that way, and I feel the pain of
 backward compatibility.  If I were running the website at hk, I'd
 publicize the conventional DNS names and not hk. =20
 
 I really didn't intend to get as deeply into this as I did.  I was
 honestly intrigued by a 2-letter hostname and wanted to see if it really
 worked, as I could see no reason it wouldn't.  For me it did.
 
 I understand that your resolver, server, and application may all prevent
 it.  I also understand that using such names may sow confusion among
 those who don't care to examine the workings of their DNS set-up.  And
 that any confusion about computers is set upon by the unscrupulous to
 gather money.  Encouraging TLD hostnames as a matter of policy is more
 complex than noting that the DNS specifications allow such a thing.

It's clear that single label host names are not supposed
to be used in a global context anymore.  Just because nobody
wrote down Don't add a A or MX record at the apex of a
TLD doesn't mean that adding one was expected or desired.

There are lots of things we do and don't expect infrastructure
zone operators to do that differ from end user zones.  Most
of these are not codified.

Mark

 But it was pretty cool. :-)
 
 --=20
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 asc
 Unexpected attachment on this mail? See http://www.isi.edu/~faber/FAQ.html#=
 SIG
 
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Ted Faber
On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 10:54:45AM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
  Let me be precise.  The resolver treats those names differently because
  it was handed a name that did or did not end in a dot - the resolver's
  syntax for absolute vs. relative pathname.  I understand that may
  conflict with application syntax.  Applications that do not support an
  explicit notation for absolute domain names will not be able to look
  them up when those names are masked by site-dependent resolution of
  relative names.  Both hk and www.isi.deterlab.net are relative
  names and subject to masking.
 
   The (some) resolver handles names differently if it contains a dot.

The distinction that I have been unclearly stating is between absolute
and relative names.  RFC 1034 (i said 1035 earlier, but it's 1034) lays
out a convention for specifying which one you want by appending the dot.
As long as you tell the resolver which one you want, it matters little
if the dot character is at the end or not.

1034/1035 compliant resolvers are allowed to do site dependent things to
relative names and not to absolute ones.

   There is a good case to be made that pet should *never*
   be looked up as plain pet if there is not a match on the
   search list.
 
   There is a good case to be made that pet.com should never
   be looked up against the search list.

I prefer the 1034/1035 view that this sort of decision is up to the
application and the DNS admin and that the DNS simply provides the
ability to do both.

 
  I understand that such maskings are more intuitive with short names like
  hk, but that limitation of the application interface applies to any
  relative domain name.
 
   The only reason to want single labels to be looked up as
   is is reverse the clock and support deprecated naming
   schemes.

I don't want anything in this space.  I don't care if the root's
unchanged or as wide as .com.

If I want those labels to work at all it's because their working
reflects a clean DNS design.  It (irrationally) warms my heart to see
that they mostly do.  I'm not extending my admiration of the design
into an operational recommendation, no matter how much you'd like me to.

The fact that the existing TLDs could do this would lead to a pretty
boring flat name space - 110 names fit in /etc/hosts or equivalent just
fine.  A proliferation of TLDs is your problem, of course.  I don't
think that forcing the seekers of vanity TLDs to prepend www. to their
webserver hostname is going to change anything. After all many browsers
will add that for you.  

If you're worried about a flat namespace, attack the right problem - a
proliferation of TLDs, not this business of the TLD having an A record
at the top.  For most uses, www.yournamehere is just as flat.  And
just as flat as yournamehere.com, I might add.


   There are lots of things we do and don't expect infrastructure
   zone operators to do that differ from end user zones.  Most
   of these are not codified.

If there are only a few TLDs I really fail to see how this one fits
there and if there are a lot of TLDs I don't see how outlawing it helps
you.  But YMMV and I'm not running a TLD server, so my opinion matters
little.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Mark Andrews

 It's nonsensical for an application to decide that relative names are 
 unacceptable, but to require users to input names as relative.

 it's nonsensical for you to unilaterally declare that such names are 
 relative, when well over two decades of practice indicates otherwise.
 
 I didn't declare it; 1034 did. 

And RFC 1535 got resolvers to try search lists last if there
was a period in the name.   This removed the need for final
periods for any legal fully qualified host name.

hk is not a legal fully qualified host name.  Demanding that
applications support final dots to support uses that are outside
of the original design scope is nonsensical.

Mark
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Keith Moore



The (some) resolver handles names differently if it contains a dot.


The distinction that I have been unclearly stating is between absolute
and relative names.  RFC 1034 (i said 1035 earlier, but it's 1034) lays
out a convention for specifying which one you want by appending the dot.
As long as you tell the resolver which one you want, it matters little
if the dot character is at the end or not.


in my experience, far too often applications don't tell the resolver 
which one they want.  also, APIs can vary enough from one implementation 
to another that a portable application may behave differently 
depending on which API implementation it is using.



1034/1035 compliant resolvers are allowed to do site dependent things to
relative names and not to absolute ones.


for better or worse, application protocols and applications haven't 
strictly followed 1034/1035 in this regard.



There is a good case to be made that pet should *never*
be looked up as plain pet if there is not a match on the
search list.

There is a good case to be made that pet.com should never
be looked up against the search list.


I prefer the 1034/1035 view that this sort of decision is up to the
application and the DNS admin and that the DNS simply provides the
ability to do both.


in general I agree, but I think we've learned a few things since then 
about the corner cases.


(I would _almost_ agree that pet should never be looked up as plain 
pet - except that I think it should be possible to directly query a 
server to find out what RRs that server has (right or wrong) and I 
wouldn't want the server to lie or the API to prevent such queries. 
That's why I would rather forbid servers to forward single-label queries 
- and perhaps, to refuse to cache NS records for them.)



If I want those labels to work at all it's because their working
reflects a clean DNS design.  


Cleanliness is secondary to function.  The purist in me likes regularity 
too.  But even if the _protocol_ is the same at the root as for any 
other zone, the root of the _name space_ really is special, and 
inherently so (given that these labels have semantics associated with 
them).  At a certain very technical level there is no difference between 
the root and any other zone.  But at a different level the root has a 
special role and is different than the other zones.  It is a single 
point of failure - not in the sense of a single server or a single 
network link but in the sense of a single organization running it whose 
mistakes affect the entire network.  Also, the relationship between the 
root and its subdomains is likely to be very different than that between 
any other domain and its subdomains.



If you're worried about a flat namespace, attack the right problem - a
proliferation of TLDs, not this business of the TLD having an A record
at the top. 


Vanity TLDs are indeed part of the problem.  Without vanity TLDs there 
would be much less incentive to have single-label domain names.


(I guess I need a better name than vanity TLDs for these - but I think 
you get what I mean.)


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-08 Thread Mark Andrews

 
 --5me2qT3T17SWzdxI
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
 Content-Disposition: inline
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
 
 On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 10:54:45AM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
   Let me be precise.  The resolver treats those names differently because
   it was handed a name that did or did not end in a dot - the resolver's
   syntax for absolute vs. relative pathname.  I understand that may
   conflict with application syntax.  Applications that do not support an
   explicit notation for absolute domain names will not be able to look
   them up when those names are masked by site-dependent resolution of
   relative names.  Both hk and www.isi.deterlab.net are relative
   names and subject to masking.
 =20
  The (some) resolver handles names differently if it contains a dot.
 
 The distinction that I have been unclearly stating is between absolute
 and relative names.  RFC 1034 (i said 1035 earlier, but it's 1034) lays
 out a convention for specifying which one you want by appending the dot.
 As long as you tell the resolver which one you want, it matters little
 if the dot character is at the end or not.
 
 1034/1035 compliant resolvers are allowed to do site dependent things to
 relative names and not to absolute ones.

hk is not a legal absolute hostname.  The current resolver
code handles all legal absolute hostnames (has a dot in the
middle).

Tools that look in the DNS have to handle *more* than
hostnames such tools may need to treat hk as absolute in
which case hk. is reasonable.  dig and nslookup are
examples of such tools.

Telnet is not a example of a tool that need to support hk.
as it is expecting hostnames not arbitary domain names.

Web browers are not tools that needs to support hk..

  There is a good case to be made that pet should *never*
  be looked up as plain pet if there is not a match on the
  search list.
 =20
  There is a good case to be made that pet.com should never
  be looked up against the search list.
 
 I prefer the 1034/1035 view that this sort of decision is up to the
 application and the DNS admin and that the DNS simply provides the
 ability to do both.

You are wanting to extend the definition of a legal absolute
hostname.
 
   I understand that such maskings are more intuitive with short names like
   hk, but that limitation of the application interface applies to any
   relative domain name.
 
  The only reason to want single labels to be looked up as
  is is reverse the clock and support deprecated naming
  schemes.
 
 I don't want anything in this space.  I don't care if the root's
 unchanged or as wide as .com.

There was a clear decision to move from a single label
hostnames to multiple label hostnames (RFC 921).  You are
attempting to reverse that decision.

Just because it is technically possible to add A records
at the apex of a tld or to add A records to names with
underscores in them doesn't change the fact that doing
either of these is a bad idea.

 If I want those labels to work at all it's because their working
 reflects a clean DNS design.  It (irrationally) warms my heart to see
 that they mostly do.  I'm not extending my admiration of the design
 into an operational recommendation, no matter how much you'd like me to.

No, it doesn't represent clean design.  Making them work is
outside of the design scope.  Unqualified names being looked
up against search lists was in the design scope.  The
official names of hosts having multiple labels was in the
design scope.  Single labels were explictly excluded from
being official names in the design scope.

Having single label hostnames match against the root is a
clear implementation error.

 The fact that the existing TLDs could do this would lead to a pretty
 boring flat name space - 110 names fit in /etc/hosts or equivalent just
 fine.  A proliferation of TLDs is your problem, of course.  I don't
 think that forcing the seekers of vanity TLDs to prepend www. to their
 webserver hostname is going to change anything. After all many browsers
 will add that for you. =20

 If you're worried about a flat namespace, attack the right problem - a
 proliferation of TLDs, not this business of the TLD having an A record
 at the top.  For most uses, www.yournamehere is just as flat.  And
 just as flat as yournamehere.com, I might add.

  There are lots of things we do and don't expect infrastructure
  zone operators to do that differ from end user zones.  Most
  of these are not codified.
 
 If there are only a few TLDs I really fail to see how this one fits
 there and if there are a lot of TLDs I don't see how outlawing it helps
 you.  But YMMV and I'm not running a TLD server, so my opinion matters
 little.

 --=20
 Ted Faber
 

Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?

2008-07-07 Thread Lyman Chapin

Is сом identical to com? (the first of these is U+0441
U+043E U+043C)


The current principle is that it should be be a confusing string,
which is vague enough to cover the case above (but perhaps not able to
cover .co)


Similarity can be defined and tested, by setting thresholds and the  
like, but confusing refers to a state of mind - something is  
confusing if the people who are likely to encounter it consider it  
to be confusing. There's no way to objectively define or test for  
confusing similarity without reference to how actual people respond  
to a particular string. That means either mining data collected from  
circumstances in which people have mistaken one string for another  
(perhaps a history of Google searches), or consulting a panel of real  
people whenever it is necessary to decide whether or not two strings  
are confusingly similar.



(b) be identical to a Reserved Name;



(c) consist of a single character;


I've heard it argued repeatedly that this is an unreasonable
rule for ideographic characters.   I don't have an opinion, but
hope that ICANN has considered that case in full details.


This is where we dive into a discussion what is a character. In
ideographic based language, there isnt a concept of a word.

For example, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are actually phonetics
language, and that ideograph characters are used to express the
phonetics. A word or more accurately morphemes can be express in a
single or more ideographs. A single latin character is unlikely to be
useful by itself (except of a and i) but thats not the case in CJK.

If the condition is that no single ASCII character, I may be neutral
about it (since a single ideograph would never translate to a single
ASCII character in the zonefile, due to the xn-- prefix) but if the
character is defined more broadly to cover U-label character, then
I would have strong objections.


At the moment, the condition is no single Unicode code point. To  
the extent that a single CJK ideograph can be expressed using a  
single Unicode code point, this would represent the situation to  
which you say you would object. I will dig through my notes to find  
out why the single character condition was adopted -


- Lyman
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Lyman Chapin
I understand the objection to MX records in TLDs based on the past  
history of how single label hostnames were (and, as Mark points out,  
undoubtedly still are) handled. If it were possible to put that  
aside, would you have any other objection to single label hostnames?  
I know that at least some of the interest in new gTLDs has been  
expressed by companies that like the idea of using a globally- 
recognized trademark as a TLD - for example,  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (not to imply that IBM is one of the companies  
that has expressed this sort of interest).


I'm familiar with draft-klensin-rfc2821bis-10.txt and understand  
the importance of using only FQDNs in SMTP exchanges given that [i]n  
the case of a top-level domain used by itself in an email address, a  
single string is used without any dots. What I'm interested in is  
any reason to proscribe the use of a TLD as a single label hostname  
(particularly for email addresses) other than the fact that there is  
software out there that will interpret it incorrectly -


- Lyman

On Jul 2, 2008, at 8:07 PM, Bernard Aboba wrote:


Mark Andrews said:

The Internet went to multi-label hostnames ~20 years ago.We added  
.ARPA to all the single label hostnames as partof that process.  
The only hold over is localhost andthat is implemeted locally,  
not in the global DNS. No sane TLD operator can expect http://tld;  
or [EMAIL PROTECTED]to work reliably. I suspect there are still mail  
configuationsaround that will re-write [EMAIL PROTECTED] to  
[EMAIL PROTECTED] we be writting a RFC which states that MX and  
addressrecords SHOULD NOT be added to the apex of a TLD zone?


Should we be writting a RFC which states that single labelhostnames/ 
mail domains SHOULD NOT be looked up as is inthe DNS?


Both sound like good ideas to me.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?

2008-07-07 Thread Vint Cerf

seems odd to me too, James.

vint


On Jul 3, 2008, at 6:14 PM, James Seng wrote:


At the moment, the condition is no single Unicode code point. To
the extent that a single CJK ideograph can be expressed using a
single Unicode code point, this would represent the situation to
which you say you would object. I will dig through my notes to find
out why the single character condition was adopted -


Would you be able to explain why the condition is no single Unicode
code point? Whats the technical basis for that?

-James Seng
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Re: Single-letter names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?)

2008-07-07 Thread William Tan
John,

To add to your point, one should also consider the question of
embedded semantics in a single-character label.

Alphabetic scripts such as Latin mostly represent sounds used to make
up words. While one can certainly find some legitimate
single-character words (such as the article a or the personal
pronoun i) and dream up others, it would not be very convincing in
the face of your explanation #3.

On the other hand, characters in ideographic scripts such as Han are
not mere sounds or glyphs; they represent one or more concepts.
Therefore, a single-ideographic-character TLD label is certainly more
justifiable. I would even go as far as to suggest that it is essential
in many cases. For example, 猫 (U+ 732B) in both Simplified Chinese
and Japanese means cat as in English, not the abbreviation for
Catalan nor the UNIX command. The reverse translation of cat yields
the exact character in Simplified Chinese, though in Japanese
sometimes the Hiragana sequence ねこ is also used. One would be
hard-pressed to come up with a different character to represent the
same concept in Han, aside from the traditional Chinese counterpart
�� (U+8C93).

I don't know what the present thinking is on the idea of non-semantic
TLDs, but IMHO the social expectations of DNS usage is cast in stone.
Jon's idea would simply shift the semantics to the second level,
thereby creating 24 roots instead of a single .

=wil

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 1:50 PM, John C Klensin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Vint,

 In the ASCII space, there have been three explanations offered
 historically for the one-character prohibition on top and
 second-level domains.   I've written variations on this note
 several times, so will just try to summarize here.  Of the
 three, the first of these is at best of only historical interest
 and may be apocryphal and the second is almost certainly no
 longer relevant.  The third remains significant.

 (1) Jon has been quoted as suggesting that we could have
 eliminated many of the problems we now face with TLDs and
 simultaneously made the no real semantics in TLD names rule
 much more clear had we initially allocated b..y as TLDs.
 Then, when someone asked for an assignment, it would have been
 allocated at random to one of those domains.  While this has a
 certain amount of appeal, at least in retrospect, there is
 probably no way to get from where we are today to that model...
 unless actions taken in the near future so ruin the current DNS
 tree as a locus for stable and predictable references that we
 need to start over with a new tree.  I don't think that a have
 to start over scenario is at all likely, but I no long believe
 it to be impossible.

 (2) There was an idea floating around for a while that, if some
 of the popular TLDs filled up, one could create single-letter
 subdomains and push subsequent registrations down the tree a
 bit.  For example, if .COM were declared full, then a.com,
 b.com, etc., would be allocated and additional reservations
 pushed into subdomains of those intermediate domains rather than
 being registered at the second level.  Until and unless the
 conventional wisdom that adding more names to .COM merely
 requires more hardware  and/or bandwidth, that won't be a
 filled up point at which this sort of strategy could be
 triggered.  Worse, trying to use single-letter subdomains as an
 expansion mechanism would raise political issues about putting
 latecomers at an advantage that would be, IMO, sufficient to
 completely kill the idea.  In the current climate, I think the
 community would decide that it preferred a disfunctional DNS if
 that were ever the choice (see the start over remark above).

 (3) At least in the discussions that led up to RFC 1591, and
 probably much earlier, there were concerns about reducing the
 likelihood of false hits if the end user made single-character
 typing errors.  With only 26 (or maybe 36) possible characters,
 it could just about be guaranteed that all of them would be
 registered and that _any_ typing error would yield a false
 match.  That, in itself, has been considered sufficient to
 prohibit single-letter labels and, by extension, to be fairly
 careful about two-letter ones.   There have been arguments on
 and off over the years as to whether this is a technical
 reason or an attempt to set policy.  Even though the mismatches
 would obviously not cause the network to explode or IP to stop
 working, at least some of us consider the informational
 retrieval and information theoretic reasons to insist on more
 information in domain name labels in order to lower the risk of
 false positive matches to be fully as technical as something
 that would have obvious lower-level network consequences.
 Others --frankly especially those who see commercial advantage
 in getting single-letter names-- have argued that this position
 is just a policy decision in disguise.

 Note that, with slight modifications, the second and third
 arguments apply equally well to 

Re: Single-letter names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?)

2008-07-07 Thread Vint Cerf

john,

my reaction was specific to IDN single character TLDs. In some  
languages these are complete words.


vint


On Jul 4, 2008, at 1:50 PM, John C Klensin wrote:


Vint,

In the ASCII space, there have been three explanations offered
historically for the one-character prohibition on top and
second-level domains.   I've written variations on this note
several times, so will just try to summarize here.  Of the
three, the first of these is at best of only historical interest
and may be apocryphal and the second is almost certainly no
longer relevant.  The third remains significant.

(1) Jon has been quoted as suggesting that we could have
eliminated many of the problems we now face with TLDs and
simultaneously made the no real semantics in TLD names rule
much more clear had we initially allocated b..y as TLDs.
Then, when someone asked for an assignment, it would have been
allocated at random to one of those domains.  While this has a
certain amount of appeal, at least in retrospect, there is
probably no way to get from where we are today to that model...
unless actions taken in the near future so ruin the current DNS
tree as a locus for stable and predictable references that we
need to start over with a new tree.  I don't think that a have
to start over scenario is at all likely, but I no long believe
it to be impossible.

(2) There was an idea floating around for a while that, if some
of the popular TLDs filled up, one could create single-letter
subdomains and push subsequent registrations down the tree a
bit.  For example, if .COM were declared full, then a.com,
b.com, etc., would be allocated and additional reservations
pushed into subdomains of those intermediate domains rather than
being registered at the second level.  Until and unless the
conventional wisdom that adding more names to .COM merely
requires more hardware  and/or bandwidth, that won't be a
filled up point at which this sort of strategy could be
triggered.  Worse, trying to use single-letter subdomains as an
expansion mechanism would raise political issues about putting
latecomers at an advantage that would be, IMO, sufficient to
completely kill the idea.  In the current climate, I think the
community would decide that it preferred a disfunctional DNS if
that were ever the choice (see the start over remark above).

(3) At least in the discussions that led up to RFC 1591, and
probably much earlier, there were concerns about reducing the
likelihood of false hits if the end user made single-character
typing errors.  With only 26 (or maybe 36) possible characters,
it could just about be guaranteed that all of them would be
registered and that _any_ typing error would yield a false
match.  That, in itself, has been considered sufficient to
prohibit single-letter labels and, by extension, to be fairly
careful about two-letter ones.   There have been arguments on
and off over the years as to whether this is a technical
reason or an attempt to set policy.  Even though the mismatches
would obviously not cause the network to explode or IP to stop
working, at least some of us consider the informational
retrieval and information theoretic reasons to insist on more
information in domain name labels in order to lower the risk of
false positive matches to be fully as technical as something
that would have obvious lower-level network consequences.
Others --frankly especially those who see commercial advantage
in getting single-letter names-- have argued that this position
is just a policy decision in disguise.

Note that, with slight modifications, the second and third
arguments apply equally well to TLD allocations and to SLD
allocations, especially in popular domains.

The reasoning associated with the third case also applies to any
other script that contains a fairly small number of characters.
One could manage a long philosophical discussion as to whether
there are sufficient characters in the fully-decorated
Latin-derived collection to eliminate the problem, but an
analysis of keyboard and typing techniques/ input methods for
that range of characters would, IMO, yield the same answer --
single-letter domains are just not a good idea and two-letter
ones near the top of the tree should be used only with great
caution.

On the other hand, the same reasoning would break down when
confronted with a script that contains thousands of characters,
such as the ideographic ones.  There are enough characters
available in those scripts that one can presumably not worry
about single-character typing errors (and one can perhaps worry
even less if the usual input methods involve typing
phonetically, using a different script, and then selecting the
relevant characters from a menu -- in those cases, the phonetic
representations are typically more than a character or two long
and the menu selection provides an extra check about false
matches).

 john



--On Thursday, 03 July, 2008 19:04 -0400 Vint Cerf
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


seems odd to me too, James.


RE: Single-letter names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?)

2008-07-07 Thread Edmon Chung
Regarding single Unicode code-point labels at the TLD level, there was quite
some discussion on this topic at the GNSO Reserved Names working group and
then at the new gTLD discussion.  The final recommendation from the GNSO
was:

Single and two-character U-labels on the top level and second level of a
domain name should not be restricted in general. At the top level, requested
strings should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis in the new gTLD process
depending on the script and language used in order to determine whether the
string should be granted for allocation in the DNS. Single and two character
labels at the second level and the third level if applicable should be
available for registration, provided they are consistent with the IDN
Guidelines.

As for ASCII, the recommendation was:
We recommend reservation of single letters at the top level based on
technical questions raised. If sufficient research at a later date
demonstrates that the technical issues and concerns are addressed, the topic
of releasing reservation status can be reconsidered.

Edmon

 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:idna-update-
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Vint Cerf
 Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2008 3:33 AM
 To: John C Klensin
 Cc: James Seng; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; ietf@ietf.org; Lyman Chapin
 Subject: Re: Single-letter names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the
 recent ICANN changes?)
 
 john,
 
 my reaction was specific to IDN single character TLDs. In some
 languages these are complete words.
 
 vint
 
 
 On Jul 4, 2008, at 1:50 PM, John C Klensin wrote:
 
  Vint,
 
  In the ASCII space, there have been three explanations offered
  historically for the one-character prohibition on top and
  second-level domains.   I've written variations on this note
  several times, so will just try to summarize here.  Of the
  three, the first of these is at best of only historical interest
  and may be apocryphal and the second is almost certainly no
  longer relevant.  The third remains significant.
 
  (1) Jon has been quoted as suggesting that we could have
  eliminated many of the problems we now face with TLDs and
  simultaneously made the no real semantics in TLD names rule
  much more clear had we initially allocated b..y as TLDs.
  Then, when someone asked for an assignment, it would have been
  allocated at random to one of those domains.  While this has a
  certain amount of appeal, at least in retrospect, there is
  probably no way to get from where we are today to that model...
  unless actions taken in the near future so ruin the current DNS
  tree as a locus for stable and predictable references that we
  need to start over with a new tree.  I don't think that a have
  to start over scenario is at all likely, but I no long believe
  it to be impossible.
 
  (2) There was an idea floating around for a while that, if some
  of the popular TLDs filled up, one could create single-letter
  subdomains and push subsequent registrations down the tree a
  bit.  For example, if .COM were declared full, then a.com,
  b.com, etc., would be allocated and additional reservations
  pushed into subdomains of those intermediate domains rather than
  being registered at the second level.  Until and unless the
  conventional wisdom that adding more names to .COM merely
  requires more hardware  and/or bandwidth, that won't be a
  filled up point at which this sort of strategy could be
  triggered.  Worse, trying to use single-letter subdomains as an
  expansion mechanism would raise political issues about putting
  latecomers at an advantage that would be, IMO, sufficient to
  completely kill the idea.  In the current climate, I think the
  community would decide that it preferred a disfunctional DNS if
  that were ever the choice (see the start over remark above).
 
  (3) At least in the discussions that led up to RFC 1591, and
  probably much earlier, there were concerns about reducing the
  likelihood of false hits if the end user made single-character
  typing errors.  With only 26 (or maybe 36) possible characters,
  it could just about be guaranteed that all of them would be
  registered and that _any_ typing error would yield a false
  match.  That, in itself, has been considered sufficient to
  prohibit single-letter labels and, by extension, to be fairly
  careful about two-letter ones.   There have been arguments on
  and off over the years as to whether this is a technical
  reason or an attempt to set policy.  Even though the mismatches
  would obviously not cause the network to explode or IP to stop
  working, at least some of us consider the informational
  retrieval and information theoretic reasons to insist on more
  information in domain name labels in order to lower the risk of
  false positive matches to be fully as technical as something
  that would have obvious lower-level network consequences.
  Others --frankly especially those who see commercial advantage
  in getting single-letter names

Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Dave Crocker



Lyman Chapin wrote:
   If it were possible to put that aside, 
would you have any other objection to single label hostnames? I know 
that at least some of the interest in new gTLDs has been expressed by 
companies that like the idea of using a globally-recognized trademark as 
a TLD - for example, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (not to imply that IBM is one 
of the companies that has expressed this sort of interest).


What will be the impact of having, perhaps,

  1)  millions of entries in the root servers, and

  2)  constant traffic banging on those servers?

Historically, the view has been that bloating the root servers in that way would 
be very dangerous.


Counter-claims observe that .com seems to have survived with a similar storage 
and traffic pattern, so why should there be a problem moving the pattern up one 
level?


d/

--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Keith Moore
Historically, the view has been that bloating the root servers in that 
way would be very dangerous.


Counter-claims observe that .com seems to have survived with a similar 
storage and traffic pattern, so why should there be a problem moving the 
pattern up one level?


because it makes the root more expensive to run, and thereby makes the 
root more vulnerable to capture by people bent on making money or 
wielding power (and all that that entails) rather than running it as a 
reliable service for the benefit of the entire network.


indeed, the history of .com provides many instructive examples of why 
the root should NOT be run the same way.


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread John Levine
What will be the impact of having, perhaps,

   1)  millions of entries in the root servers, and

Let's start by considering thousands of entries, since I see little
reason to expect even that many from ICANN's current plans.

   2)  constant traffic banging on those servers?

The latest CAIDA study says:

* The overall query traffic experienced by the roots continues to
  grow. The observed 2007 query rate and client rate was 1.5-3X above
  their observed values in 2006

* The proportion of invalid traffic, i.e., DNS pollution, hitting the
  roots is still high, over 99% of the queries should not even be sent
  to the root servers. We found an extremely strong correlation both
  years: the higher the query rate of a client, the lower the fraction
  of valid queries.

That suggests that if the legit traffic increased by an order of
magnitude, it would still be down in the noise compared to the junk.
Conversely, if root server traffic is an issue, getting networks to
clean up their DNS traffic would be much more effective than limiting
the number of TLDs.

http://www.caida.org/research/dns/roottraffic/comparison06_07.xml

R's,
John
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Keith Moore

The latest CAIDA study says:

* The overall query traffic experienced by the roots continues to
  grow. The observed 2007 query rate and client rate was 1.5-3X above
  their observed values in 2006

* The proportion of invalid traffic, i.e., DNS pollution, hitting the
  roots is still high, over 99% of the queries should not even be sent
  to the root servers. We found an extremely strong correlation both
  years: the higher the query rate of a client, the lower the fraction
  of valid queries.

That suggests that if the legit traffic increased by an order of
magnitude, it would still be down in the noise compared to the junk.
Conversely, if root server traffic is an issue, getting networks to
clean up their DNS traffic would be much more effective than limiting
the number of TLDs.


sounds good.  and why wouldn't cleaning up DNS traffic include 
refusing to refer any single-label query (for any record type other than 
NS, say) to an upstream server?


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread John C Klensin


--On Monday, 07 July, 2008 17:19 + John Levine
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

...
 * The proportion of invalid traffic, i.e., DNS pollution,
 hitting the   roots is still high, over 99% of the queries
 should not even be sent   to the root servers. We found an
 extremely strong correlation both   years: the higher the
 query rate of a client, the lower the fraction   of valid
 queries.
 
 That suggests that if the legit traffic increased by an order
 of magnitude, it would still be down in the noise compared to
 the junk. Conversely, if root server traffic is an issue,
 getting networks to clean up their DNS traffic would be much
 more effective than limiting the number of TLDs.
 
 http://www.caida.org/research/dns/roottraffic/comparison06_07.
 xml

John,

While I find this interesting, I don't see much logical or
statistical justification for the belief that, if one increased
(by a lot) the number of TLDs, the amount of invalid traffic
would remain roughly constant, rather than increasing the
multiplier.  

And, of course, two of the ways of having networks [to] clean
up their DNS traffic depend on local caching of the root zone
(see previous note) and filtering out root queries for
implausible domains.  Both of those are facilitated by smaller
root zones and impeded by very large ones.

john

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread John Levine

the junk. Conversely, if root server traffic is an issue,
getting networks to clean up their DNS traffic would be much
more effective than limiting the number of TLDs.


While I find this interesting, I don't see much logical or statistical 
justification for the belief that, if one increased (by a lot) the 
number of TLDs, the amount of invalid traffic would remain roughly 
constant, rather than increasing the multiplier.


As I recall from prior surveys, the invalid traffic is largely independent 
of valid domains, e.g., queries from RFC1918 space (4% of all traffic at 
one server), repeated queries for the same nonexistent name, dynamic rDNS 
updates from misconfigured Windows boxes, stuff like that.



And, of course, two of the ways of having networks [to] clean
up their DNS traffic depend on local caching of the root zone
(see previous note) and filtering out root queries for
implausible domains.  Both of those are facilitated by smaller
root zones and impeded by very large ones.


Oh, I agree.  But I really don't think there's much point in worrying 
about root zones with millions of domains.  Nothing ICANN is likely to do 
would raise it above thousands, and a zone with a few thousand entries 
should be well within the capacity of any DNS server.


Regards,
John Levine, [EMAIL PROTECTED], Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for 
Dummies,
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, ex-Mayor
More Wiener schnitzel, please, said Tom, revealingly.
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Dave Crocker



John Levine wrote:

What will be the impact of having, perhaps,

  1)  millions of entries in the root servers, and


Let's start by considering thousands of entries, since I see little
reason to expect even that many from ICANN's current plans.


When making a paradigm change to a core, infrastructure mechanism, it is best to 
assume the worst-case conditions, rather than best.


For example, I can assure you from first-hand knowledge that US$ 100K cost for a 
domain name a company deems desirable is not all that rare.  I would certainly 
not assume the global limit to be a few thousand.


More generally, the difference between allowing unbounded TLDs, versus limiting 
them by a price, involves very different strategic decision-making.  The former 
is massive and fundamental.  The latter is rather minor and likely to be viewed 
as tweaking.


So any analysis had better be made on the assumption that limits are from more 
natural and persistent characteristics, rather than from a current charging or 
operations constraints decision.




  2)  constant traffic banging on those servers?

* The proportion of invalid traffic, i.e., DNS pollution, hitting the
  roots is still high, over 99% of the queries should not even be sent
  to the root servers. 

...

That suggests that if the legit traffic increased by an order of
magnitude, it would still be down in the noise compared to the junk.


Not if, for example, the 99% also grew with the added legitimate traffice.

Again, the operations rule I've been taught is to base analyses based on the 
limit of worst-case scenarios that one can tolerate, not to make assumptions 
about reasonableness (other than there won't be any.)


d/

ps. I assume (and hope) that the real DNS root experts will weigh in on this, 
here, soon...


--

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread John Levine

Conversely, if root server traffic is an issue, getting networks to
clean up their DNS traffic would be much more effective than limiting
the number of TLDs.


sounds good.  and why wouldn't cleaning up DNS traffic include 
refusing to refer any single-label query (for any record type other than 
NS, say) to an upstream server?


I have to congratulate you on one of the most subtle proposals to destroy 
the Internet that I have seen in a long time.  More on that in a moment.


As I recall from prior root server surveys, the invalid traffic is 
unambiguously bogus, e.g., queries from RFC1918 space (4% of all traffic 
at one server), repeated queries for the same nonexistent name, dynamic 
rDNS updates from misconfigured Windows boxes, stuff like that where thre 
is no question it's wrong.


But, wow, what a can of worms would be opened by making a subtle semantic 
change to root DNS resolution.  As I presume everyone knows, the DNS is 
managed via a Mexican standoff among the root server operators, ICANN, and 
national governments.  The root servers don't have to do what ICANN says, 
so ICANN has (to date at least) been very careful never to ask them to do 
anything they might not want to do.  Governments assert control over their 
ccTLDs, so ICANN has carefully run IANA as a purely clerical operation, 
with policy decisions limited to verifying that updates are indeed from 
the relevant governments, and the root operators have always accepted the 
ccTLD delegations forwarded by IANA.  Nobody knows exactly what authority 
various governments have over various root servers, which are located in 
many countries all over the world.


So now ICANN and/or the root servers say, we changed our mind, we're not 
going to resolve names without dots.  So who's going to explain to the 
Vatican that, sorry, [EMAIL PROTECTED] doesn't work any more?  Or will the US take 
issue when addresses @as, which is part of the US, don't work?  Or France 
about @gp and @mq, which are as much part of France as Hawaii is part of 
the US?


What will Hong Kong or China do when the F and I roots in Hong Kong no 
longer resolve http://hk/?  The Philipines when the I root in Manila 
doesn't resolve http://ph/?


I'm impressed, it never occurred to me that one could cause this much 
damage with such an arcane change to name resolution.  That was really 
diabolical.



R's,
John
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread moore
 I have to congratulate you on one of the most subtle 
 proposals to destroy the Internet that I have seen 
 in a long time.  More on that in a moment.

Maybe you should read and understand the proposal before commenting on it.  I 
realize that it's difficult to actually
be sure you understand a single sentence before writing
several paragraphs - but hey, it's not much to ask.
(hint: It doesn't affect ICANN or the root servers at all.)

 So who's going to explain to the Vatican that, sorry, 
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] doesn't work any more?  Or will the US take 
 issue when addresses @as, which is part of the US, 
 don't work?  Or France about @gp and @mq, which are 
 as much part of France as Hawaii is part of the US?

I'd be very surprised if any of these work as-is, with any reliability.  They 
certainly won't work for email.  The assumption that fully qualified domain 
names contain at least one '.' is widespread in both protocol specifications 
and implementations.

 I'm impressed, it never occurred to me that one could 
 cause this much damage with such an arcane change to 
 name resolution. 

If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works reliably 
now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least a hint of merit to 
your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or URL that uses a single-label 
domain name.

Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Ted Faber
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
 reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least
 a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
 URL that uses a single-label domain name.

zod:~$ ping hk
PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=183.582 ms
64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=1 ttl=243 time=195.586 ms
64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=2 ttl=243 time=196.055 ms
64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=3 ttl=243 time=183.091 ms
^C
--- hk ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 20.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 183.091/189.578/196.055/6.247 ms
zod:~$ whost 203.119.2.28
203.119.2.28 www.hkdnr.hk 
zod:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
search isi.edu
nameserver 128.9.160.161
nameserver 128.9.64.64



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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Ted Faber
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
  reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least
  a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
  URL that uses a single-label domain name.
 
 zod:~$ ping hk
 PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
 64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=183.582 ms

Sorry. Typo.  I mean:

zod:/auto/boreas/jade/faber$ dig hk

;  DiG 9.4.2  hk
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; -HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 34376
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 15, ADDITIONAL: 5

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;hk.IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
hk. 604392  IN  A   203.119.2.28

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
hk. 604392  IN  NS  ADNS2.BERKELEY.EDU.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  TLD5.ULTRADNS.INFO.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  ADNS1.BERKELEY.EDU.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  TLD6.ULTRADNS.CO.UK.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  NS1.HKIRC.NET.hk.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  B.DNS.TW.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  NS3.CUHK.EDU.hk.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  SEC3.APNIC.NET.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  TLD3.ULTRADNS.ORG.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  NS2.CUHK.EDU.hk.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  NS2.HKIRC.NET.hk.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  TLD4.ULTRADNS.ORG.
hk. 604392  IN  NS  NS-HK.RIPE.NET.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
TLD4.ULTRADNS.ORG.  36836   IN  A   199.7.67.1
TLD4.ULTRADNS.ORG.  36836   IN  2001:502:100e::1
TLD3.ULTRADNS.ORG.  34966   IN  A   199.7.66.1
TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET.  29696   IN  A   204.74.113.1
TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET.  29696   IN  A   204.74.112.1

;; Query time: 4 msec
;; SERVER: 128.9.160.161#53(128.9.160.161)
;; WHEN: Mon Jul  7 13:43:55 2008
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 508


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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Theodore Tso
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
  reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least

  a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
  URL that uses a single-label domain name.
 
 zod:~$ ping hk
 PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
 64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=183.582 ms

% ping hk.
PING hk (203.119.2.28) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=1 ttl=238 time=265 ms
64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=2 ttl=238 time=265 ms

Not very reliably, I think.  :-)

- Ted
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Bill Manning
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:44:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
  On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
   reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least
   a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
   URL that uses a single-label domain name.
  
  zod:~$ ping hk
  PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
  64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=183.582 ms
 
 Sorry. Typo.  I mean:
 
 zod:/auto/boreas/jade/faber$ dig hk
 
 ;  DiG 9.4.2  hk
 ;; global options:  printcmd
 ;; Got answer:
 ;; -HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 34376
 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 15, ADDITIONAL: 5
 
 ;; QUESTION SECTION:
 ;hk.  IN  A
 
 ;; ANSWER SECTION:
 hk.   604392  IN  A   203.119.2.28
 
 ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  ADNS2.BERKELEY.EDU.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  TLD5.ULTRADNS.INFO.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  ADNS1.BERKELEY.EDU.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  TLD6.ULTRADNS.CO.UK.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  NS1.HKIRC.NET.hk.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  B.DNS.TW.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  NS3.CUHK.EDU.hk.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  SEC3.APNIC.NET.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  TLD3.ULTRADNS.ORG.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  NS2.CUHK.EDU.hk.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  NS2.HKIRC.NET.hk.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  TLD4.ULTRADNS.ORG.
 hk.   604392  IN  NS  NS-HK.RIPE.NET.
 
 ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
 TLD4.ULTRADNS.ORG.36836   IN  A   199.7.67.1
 TLD4.ULTRADNS.ORG.36836   IN  2001:502:100e::1
 TLD3.ULTRADNS.ORG.34966   IN  A   199.7.66.1
 TLD2.ULTRADNS.NET.29696   IN  A   204.74.113.1
 TLD1.ULTRADNS.NET.29696   IN  A   204.74.112.1
 
 ;; Query time: 4 msec
 ;; SERVER: 128.9.160.161#53(128.9.160.161)
 ;; WHEN: Mon Jul  7 13:43:55 2008
 ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 508
 
 
 -- 
 Ted Faber
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also...  
% dig version.bind txt chaos @128.9.160.161

;  DiG 8.3  version.bind txt chaos @128.9.160.161 
; (1 server found)
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; -HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4
;; flags: qr aa rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUERY SECTION:
;;  version.bind, type = TXT, class = CHAOS

;; ANSWER SECTION:
version.bind.   0S CHAOS TXT9.4.2

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
version.bind.   0S CHAOS NS version.bind.

so - recent resolver code does this trick.

ob. Unexpected attachment on this mail?  -  I was actually expecting
an attachment that was not there.  

--bill
Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread John C Klensin


--On Monday, 07 July, 2008 09:24 -0700 Dave Crocker
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 
 Lyman Chapin wrote:
If it were possible to put that aside, 
 would you have any other objection to single label hostnames?
 I know  that at least some of the interest in new gTLDs has
 been expressed by  companies that like the idea of using a
 globally-recognized trademark as  a TLD - for example,
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (not to imply that IBM is one  of the
 companies that has expressed this sort of interest).
 
 What will be the impact of having, perhaps,
 
1)  millions of entries in the root servers, and
 
2)  constant traffic banging on those servers?
 
 Historically, the view has been that bloating the root servers
 in that way would be very dangerous.
 
 Counter-claims observe that .com seems to have survived with a
 similar storage and traffic pattern, so why should there be a
 problem moving the pattern up one level?

To answer your question with a question...

At least one rather popular DNS server implementation on a
popular platform now comes with initial configuration files that
strongly suggest local caching of the entire root zone file.
Although it may not be a universally good recommendation (and
the config file is careful to note that), it is entirely
reasonable and practical for many or most situations.  What do
you think would happen to that recommendation, and the benefits
it affords, if the size of the root zone increased by an order
of magnitude or so?  Think ICANN (or anyone else) has done
traffic projections on what would happen if the root zone were
cached at many locations on the network but had, not only the
same size but roughly the same volatility (e.g., updates due to
changes in servers or services) as COM does today and, if so,
what those analyses suggest?

john


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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Ted Faber
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 05:01:30PM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
  On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
   If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
   reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least
 
   a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
   URL that uses a single-label domain name.
  
  zod:~$ ping hk
  PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
  64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=183.582 ms
 
 % ping hk.
 PING hk (203.119.2.28) 56(84) bytes of data.
 64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=1 ttl=238 time=265 ms
 64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=2 ttl=238 time=265 ms
 
 Not very reliably, I think.  :-)

Umm, hk. resolves to the same address from both our machines and is
pingable (modulo a single packet loss from yours, depending on how your
ping counts) from both.  http://hk pulls up a web page on a machine with
the same address.  (www.hkdnr.hk is an alias for hk. - the same machine;
you're not being redirected.)

That's at least as reliable as my (multi-dotted) home domain. :-)

I'm not sure what's not to like here.  But then again, I may be blind.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Ted Faber
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 02:04:31PM -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:44:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
  On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
   On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 also...  
 % dig version.bind txt chaos @128.9.160.161
 ;; ANSWER SECTION:
 version.bind.   0S CHAOS TXT9.4.2
 
   so - recent resolver code does this trick.

Fair enough.  Perils of working for ISI, I suppose - modern
infrastructure.

Not to argue with someone who's forgotten more about DNS than I know,
but I was able to get it to work from zig.usc.edu as well. On zig (a
Linux box talking to an ambiguously identified USC Bind 9x server)
ping needed the trailing dot on hk. to work.  And by got it to work, I
mean typed ping.  I also had no trouble on a FreeBSD machine talking
to bind 9.3.3.  It works at home, too, but that's also a 9.4.2 bind.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Keith Moore

Umm, hk. resolves to the same address from both our machines and is
pingable (modulo a single packet loss from yours, depending on how your
ping counts) from both.  http://hk pulls up a web page on a machine with
the same address. 


interesting.  I had actually tried that URL before sending the last 
message, and from where I tried it, it failed.  trying it again just 
now, from my home network, it works.  so the sample size is small but 
I'm still in doubt that this works reliably.


and even if there is a hint of merit to John's argument, John's claim 
that it would destroy the Internet, or even do it significant harm, 
seems utterly preposterous.


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Theodore Tso
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 02:13:47PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 05:01:30PM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
  On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
   On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least
  
a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
URL that uses a single-label domain name.
   
   zod:~$ ping hk
   PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=183.582 ms
  
  % ping hk.
  PING hk (203.119.2.28) 56(84) bytes of data.
  64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=1 ttl=238 time=265 ms
  64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=2 ttl=238 time=265 ms
  
  Not very reliably, I think.  :-)

Sorry, I cut and paste the wrong example.  What I had meant to cut and
paste:

5% ping hk
PING hk.ibm.com (9.190.250.244) 56(84) bytes of data.
...

- Ted
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Willie Gillespie

Theodore Tso wrote:

On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 02:13:47PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:

On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 05:01:30PM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:

On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:

On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least



a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
URL that uses a single-label domain name.

zod:~$ ping hk
PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=0 ttl=243 time=183.582 ms

% ping hk.
PING hk (203.119.2.28) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=1 ttl=238 time=265 ms
64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=2 ttl=238 time=265 ms

Not very reliably, I think.  :-)


Sorry, I cut and paste the wrong example.  What I had meant to cut and
paste:

5% ping hk
PING hk.ibm.com (9.190.250.244) 56(84) bytes of data.
...

- Ted


With your hk.ibm.com example, do you have any search lines in your 
/etc/resolv.conf file that would be automatically appending?

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Karl Auerbach


I guess you've heard the old joke which asks How could God create the 
world in only seven days? - Because He had no installed base.


If we move this thread up one level of abstraction much of the 
conversation is asking the question of how strongly we respect the 
installed base of software out there on the net.


Do we have any principles we can use to guide our choice of where we put 
the needle along the continuum from no change, no way to any and 
every change is allowed?


--karl--
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Theodore Tso
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 03:56:10PM -0600, Willie Gillespie wrote:

 With your hk.ibm.com example, do you have any search lines in your  
 /etc/resolv.conf file that would be automatically appending?

Of course!  That was my point about why http://hk; or ping hk is
not going to be terribly reliable.  If you think people are going to
type http://hk.;, I can probably come up with Web 2.0 startup that
you could fund, if you're not interested in purchasing a certain
bridge in New York City...  :-)

- Ted
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Ted Faber
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 05:42:14PM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
 5% ping hk
 PING hk.ibm.com (9.190.250.244) 56(84) bytes of data.
 ...

I can do that with hk.com, too, as you know.  I think it's a feature.
YMMV.

My point is that from my minimal sample, hk seems to work about the
same as any other DNS name.  I believe that was in dispute.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Bill Manning
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 02:25:31PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 02:04:31PM -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
  On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:44:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
   On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  also...  
  % dig version.bind txt chaos @128.9.160.161
  ;; ANSWER SECTION:
  version.bind.   0S CHAOS TXT9.4.2
  
  so - recent resolver code does this trick.
 
 Fair enough.  Perils of working for ISI, I suppose - modern
 infrastructure.
 
 Not to argue with someone who's forgotten more about DNS than I know,
 but I was able to get it to work from zig.usc.edu as well. On zig (a
 Linux box talking to an ambiguously identified USC Bind 9x server)
 ping needed the trailing dot on hk. to work.  And by got it to work, I
 mean typed ping.  I also had no trouble on a FreeBSD machine talking
 to bind 9.3.3.  It works at home, too, but that's also a 9.4.2 bind.
 
 -- 
 Ted Faber
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so... the point i was tryig to make was/is:

simple queries only help if you know:
) the version of software running on your caching server
and
) the search list defined by your resolv.conf 

zig.usc.edu,
boreas.isi.edu,
luna-base.org,
ep.net,
lcs.mit.edu,
comcast.net,

all run slightly different caching code and variable search lists.

you, me, Ted, Keith, John, et.al.  are going to see -slightly- different
responses  when presenting our individual local caching servers with
non-terminated DNS strings.

Japp and Karl both hinted at this problem - local policy  is the worst 
policy,
except for all the others.  Your local DNS admin can (and occasionally 
they do)
toss you into a random walled-DNS garden that has only a passing 
similarity to
what you think of as the Internet.   
http://www.icann.org/committees/security/sac032.pdf
is illustrative.  

-- 
--bill

Opinions expressed may not even be mine by the time you read them, and
certainly don't reflect those of any other entity (legal or otherwise).

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Ted Faber
On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 03:49:53PM -0700, Bill Manning wrote:
   so... the point i was tryig to make was/is:
 
   simple queries only help if you know:
   ) the version of software running on your caching server
   and
   ) the search list defined by your resolv.conf 

Fair enough.   (I did include the resolv.conf in the first example, but
hadn't considered the caching server.)

And I understand how a DNS name without a dot in it can be confusing.
Even with a dot in there, DNS admins (or DHCP spoofers) can put you into
a walled garden pretty easily, though.

I'm not sure I see any great benefit to using the undotted names - the
dot really indicates the Internet brand pretty strongly - but it seems
to function in the environments I have easy access to.  I was primarily
responding to the fellow who doubted the practicality of the idea, not
endorsing it.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Mark Andrews

 
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 On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 05:01:30PM -0400, Theodore Tso wrote:
  On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:38:28PM -0700, Ted Faber wrote:
   On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 01:32:10PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wr=
 ote:
If you can cite verifiable evidence that even a single case that works
reliably now, will cease to work, I'll concede that there is at least
  
a hint of merit to your argument.   e.g. an actual email address or
URL that uses a single-label domain name.
  =20
   zod:~$ ping hk
   PING hk (203.119.2.28): 56 data bytes
   64 bytes from 203.119.2.28: icmp_seq=3D0 ttl=3D243 time=3D183.582 ms
 =20
  % ping hk.
  PING hk (203.119.2.28) 56(84) bytes of data.
  64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=3D1 ttl=3D238 time=3D=
 265 ms
  64 bytes from www.hkdnr.hk (203.119.2.28): icmp_seq=3D2 ttl=3D238 time=3D=
 265 ms
 =20
  Not very reliably, I think.  :-)
 
 Umm, hk. resolves to the same address from both our machines and is
 pingable (modulo a single packet loss from yours, depending on how your
 ping counts) from both.  http://hk pulls up a web page on a machine with
 the same address.  (www.hkdnr.hk is an alias for hk. - the same machine;
 you're not being redirected.)
 
 That's at least as reliable as my (multi-dotted) home domain. :-)
 
 I'm not sure what's not to like here.  But then again, I may be blind.

The point is that it is NOT reliable.  Whether it works
depends apon what names are matched in the search list.  It
does work for some people some of the time.  It does not
work for all of the world all of the time.  hk is not
globally unique.

bsdi# ping hk
PING hk.dv.isc.org (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.148 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.170 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.172 ms
^C
--- hk.dv.isc.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.148/0.163/0.172/0.011 ms
bsdi# 


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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Frank Ellermann
Bill Manning wrote:

 http://www.icann.org/committees/security/sac032.pdf
 is illustrative.

| entrusted agents should provide opt-out mechanisms that
| allows clients to receive the original DNS answers to
| their queries.

[...]

| Organizations that rely on accurate NXDomain reporting
| for operational stability should choose an entrusted
| agent that asserts it will not modify DNS responses in
| its terms of service.

Certainly illustrative , but not affecting 2606bis ;-)

 Frank

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Dave Crocker



John C Klensin wrote:

 What do
you think would happen to that recommendation, and the benefits
it affords, if the size of the root zone increased by an order
of magnitude or so?  



2 orders?  20K?

No, sorry.  Think 3-4 orders of magnitude.

Really.

Let me explain: I'm not against more TLDs.  Quite the opposite.  (I appointed by 
Postel to participate in the pre-ICANN committee tasked with increasing the number.)


But there is a paradigmatic difference between a TLD defined and operated to 
mediate on behalf of a general and diverse population, versus one constrained to 
a narrow and controlled constituency, such as a single company.


The number of the latter is quite large.  And by that I mean *really* large.

And all of the questions I asked 10 years ago said that TLDs on that latter 
scale would be problematic to the root.


d/
--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread James Seng
 And all of the questions I asked 10 years ago said that TLDs on that latter
 scale would be problematic to the root.

Was that pre-Anycast or post-Anycast?

-James Seng
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Mark Andrews

 On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 10:18:25AM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
   That's at least as reliable as my (multi-dotted) home domain. :-)
  =20
   I'm not sure what's not to like here.  But then again, I may be blind.
 =20
  The point is that it is NOT reliable.  Whether it works
  depends apon what names are matched in the search list.  It
  does work for some people some of the time.  It does not
  work for all of the world all of the time.  hk is not
  globally unique.
 
 That statement is also true for hk.com, ibm.com, google.com, or any
 other relative DNS name.
 
 The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined not by the
 presence of dot within the name but its absence from the end.  hk. is
 as global as hk.com. with respect to the search list; hk and
 hk.com are both relative names and their resolution is resolver
 dependent.
 
 I don't buy unreliable as a diagnosis for that state of affairs.  hk
 operates exactly as any other DNS name with respect to search path.  An
 incautious user or clever DNS administrator can create a confusing state
 of affairs with or without the interior dot.
 
 (As Bill Manning hinted, there may be other parts of the resolution code
 that are less reliable for names without a dot in them.  That I might
 buy as an argument for unreliability).=20
 
 If you'd like to argue something more subjective like confusing or
 even misleading, you'll find no resistance from me.
 
 --=20
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 http://www.isi.edu/~faber   PGP: http://www.isi.edu/~faber/pubkeys.=
 asc
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 SIG

The point of going to heirachical names (RFC 921) is to
remove abmiguity.  tlds don't meet the definition of a
heirachical name.

It is time that tld operators stopped mis-using the zones
they operate.

Mark
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Mark Andrews

 The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined not by the
 presence of dot within the name but its absence from the end.

No.  Please go and re-read RFC 921.

  hk. is
 as global as hk.com. with respect to the search list; hk and
 hk.com are both relative names and their resolution is resolver
 dependent.
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Mark Andrews

 
 --YD3LsXFS42OYHhNZ
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
 Content-Disposition: inline
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
 
 On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 11:47:15AM +1000, Mark Andrews wrote:
 =20
   The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined not by the
   presence of dot within the name but its absence from the end.
 =20
  No.  Please go and re-read RFC 921.
 
 What a charming document.
 
 I don't see anything in it that indicates a hierarchical name can't
 consist of one level, though I see plenty of examples of 2-level names.
 If you see text in there that I missed, I'm all ears.
 
 I do see this in RFC 1035, though:
 
 When a user needs to type a domain name, the length of each label is
 omitted and the labels are separated by dots (.).  Since a complete
 domain name ends with the root label, this leads to a printed form which
 ends in a dot.  We use this property to distinguish between:
 
- a character string which represents a complete domain name
  (often called absolute).  For example, poneria.ISI.EDU.
 
- a character string that represents the starting labels of a
  domain name which is incomplete, and should be completed by
  local software using knowledge of the local domain (often
  called relative).  For example, poneria used in the
  ISI.EDU domain.
 
 Relative names are either taken relative to a well known origin, or to a
 list of domains used as a search list.  Relative names appear mostly at
 the user interface, where their interpretation varies from
 implementation to implementation, and in master files, where they are
 relative to a single origin domain name.  The most common interpretation
 uses the root . as either the single origin or as one of the members
 of the search list, so a multi-label relative name is often one where
 the trailing dot has been omitted to save typing.
 
 That sounds a lot to me like hk. is as global as hk.com.

hk. is not a syntactically valid hostname (RFC 952).
hk. is not a syntactically valid mail domain.
Periods at the end are not legal.

RFC 1035 has *nothing* to do with defining what is legal
as a hostname.

Mark

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Joe Abley


On 7 Jul 2008, at 21:36, James Seng wrote:

And all of the questions I asked 10 years ago said that TLDs on  
that latter

scale would be problematic to the root.


Was that pre-Anycast or post-Anycast?


There are plenty of examples of people hosting large, infrastructure- 
type zones using servers and software that are conventional, commodity  
choices. NSD and BIND9 are both quite capable of hosting zones with  
single-digit millions of delegations without needing special care and  
feeding, for example.


Whether the DNS service for a zone is anycast or not has some, but  
really not that much relevance when you're considering the risk of an  
engorged root zone. I don't read anything in the layer-9 musings I've  
seen so far to suggest that the bar to entry for new TLDs will be so  
low that we'll see widespread TLD tasting and churn, for example,  
sufficient to make far-flung anycast instances struggle to keep up.


I'm not suggesting that growth should be allowed to happen without  
considering the technical consequences. However, I believe in practice  
with the headroom in systems and network that root server operators  
generally install anyway, there's considerable room for growth and the  
general argument that growth in the root zone will undermine stability  
sounds more like hysteria than science.



Joe
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Keith Moore


The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined not by the
presence of dot within the name but its absence from the end. 


not so.  in many contexts the trailing dot is not valid syntax.


I don't buy unreliable as a diagnosis for that state of affairs.  hk
operates exactly as any other DNS name with respect to search path. 


search path isn't the only factor here.

there are also protocol specifications that expect DNS names to have 
dots in them.


there are also software implementations that use the presence/absence of 
a dot to distinguish a DNS name from some other kind of name.  in any 
context where both a DNS name and something else can appear, it's useful 
to be able to distinguish the two - and the presence/absence of a dot is 
about the only test that works.


Keith
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Brian E Carpenter
Joe,

On 2008-07-08 14:55, Joe Abley wrote:
...
 I'm not suggesting that growth should be allowed to happen without
 considering the technical consequences. However, I believe in practice
 with the headroom in systems and network that root server operators
 generally install anyway, there's considerable room for growth 

'Considerable' isn't science. How many orders of magnitude do we
have good reason to believe is OK?

 and the
 general argument that growth in the root zone will undermine stability
 sounds more like hysteria than science.

No, it sounds like an absence of science. All we know is that
we are somewhere between 'considerable room for growth' and
'undermining stability.'

Frankly I don't think we have any more idea of the answer to that
than we did on 23 Feb 1998 when the IAB wrote to Ira Magaziner
(http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg04154.html):

 On the other hand, a very large increase in the total number of gTLDs
 (say to thousands) would lead us into technically unknown territory.

I suggest that there is some urgency in conducting a data-based
study of where the limit to stability lies.

Brian
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Douglas Otis


On Jul 7, 2008, at 10:49 AM, John C Klensin wrote:

--On Monday, 07 July, 2008 17:19 + John Levine
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
John,

While I find this interesting, I don't see much logical or  
statistical justification for the belief that, if one increased (by  
a lot) the number of TLDs, the amount of invalid traffic would  
remain roughly constant, rather than increasing the multiplier.


And, of course, two of the ways of having networks [to] clean up  
their DNS traffic depend on local caching of the root zone (see  
previous note) and filtering out root queries for implausible  
domains.  Both of those are facilitated by smaller root zones and  
impeded by very large ones.


Agreed.  This is happening while some email providers suggest  
widespread adoption of MX resource records targeting roots to signify  
opting-out.  Not only does this form of email opt-out unfairly burden  
the victim, this scheme also victimizes roots.  Are roots really  
inexhaustible and capable of sustaining high levels of horizontal  
growth, and ever greater levels of DNS misuse while adopting an  
additional security layer?  How will roots be able to block abuse once  
it proves destructive?


From the human aspect, the list of common file extensions is mind- 
numbingly long.  With a changing TLD landscape, one will no longer be  
sure whether a reference is to a file or to an Internet host.  This  
becomes critical since automation is often used to fully construct  
links.  Will obvious names be precluded such as .C0M, or those less  
obvious having international domain names?  While this might help  
ICANN raise money, their profit seems destine to come at the expense  
of those currently supporting existing infrastructure.  If domain  
tasting is an example of governance, then how can ICANN be trusted to  
operate in the greater interest of the Internet?  It seems more  
reasonable to extend ccTLDs into a comparative list of international  
domain names where desired, and then wait a decade to measure its  
impact and to allow wider deployment of DNSsec.


Smaller steps rather faith in ever greater capacity seems more  
appropriate.  If DNS were to approach the ability of roots to respond,  
then DDoS attacks take on truly global proportions.


-Doug


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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread John C Klensin


--On Tuesday, 08 July, 2008 11:47 +1000 Mark Andrews
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined
 not by the presence of dot within the name but its absence
 from the end.
 
   No.  Please go and re-read RFC 921.

This is the same RFC 921 that 

* is listed in the RFC Index as Status: UNKNOWN

* was not even examined in the requirements review
that led up to RFC 1123 and is not referenced there.

* primarily talks about an implementation schedule and
transition plan, not about long-term stable
interpretations.

??

Isn't claiming that as an authority in 2008 a bit of a stretch?
Especially since, as Ted Farber points out, text in 1035 itself
seems to contradict your reading of that particular section?

I believe that 952 is almost equally irrelevant wrt this
argument. YMMD, of course.

As Keith points out, there are lots and lots of reasons to avoid
believing that dot-less strings will be interpreted as domain
names consistently and in the way that users will expect.  Most
of them have to do with handling of names in applications, which
tends to get strange in edge cases and stranger when one relies
too much on having specific contents in resolver configuration
files.  The mere fact of inconsistent (but valid)
interpretations in different applications or configurations (or
even implementations of the same 
application) may be more than enough reason to avoid these
things, or at least be very careful about them.  But claiming
921 as an authority isn't one of the reasons, IMO.

 john

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-07 Thread Mark Andrews

 
 
 --On Tuesday, 08 July, 2008 11:47 +1000 Mark Andrews
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  
  The site-dependent interpretation of the name is determined
  not by the presence of dot within the name but its absence
  from the end.
  
  No.  Please go and re-read RFC 921.
 
 This is the same RFC 921 that 
   
   * is listed in the RFC Index as Status: UNKNOWN

Unknown doesn't mean irrelevent.
 
   * was not even examined in the requirements review
   that led up to RFC 1123 and is not referenced there.

RFC 1123 - RFC 952 - RFC 921

   * primarily talks about an implementation schedule and
   transition plan, not about long-term stable
   interpretations.


 Isn't claiming that as an authority in 2008 a bit of a stretch?

No.  Old does not mean irrelevent.

 Especially since, as Ted Farber points out, text in 1035 itself
 seems to contradict your reading of that particular section?

No.  RFC 1035 applies to domain names, not hostnames.

 I believe that 952 is almost equally irrelevant wrt this
 argument. YMMD, of course.

RFC 952 is the latest rfc which defines the syntax of a
hostname.

 As Keith points out, there are lots and lots of reasons to avoid
 believing that dot-less strings will be interpreted as domain
 names consistently and in the way that users will expect.  Most
 of them have to do with handling of names in applications, which
 tends to get strange in edge cases and stranger when one relies
 too much on having specific contents in resolver configuration
 files.  The mere fact of inconsistent (but valid)
 interpretations in different applications or configurations (or
 even implementations of the same 
 application) may be more than enough reason to avoid these
 things, or at least be very careful about them.  But claiming
 921 as an authority isn't one of the reasons, IMO.
 
  john
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Services and top-level DNS names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?)

2008-07-04 Thread John C Klensin


--On Friday, 04 July, 2008 09:14 +1000 Mark Andrews
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 Mark Andrews wrote:
 
  The Internet went to multi-label hostnames ~20 years ago.
 
 As noted in RFC 2821 as one dot required syntax, also
 mentioned in RFC 3696.  Recently *overruled* by 2821bis.
 
   There is a difference between allowing protocol to be used
   in a local only mode (single label) and a global mode
   (multi-label) and saying you must support single label in
   a global context.
 
   Single label names are local in scope.  Attempting to use
   them in a global context does not work.  As the names in
   . get more interesting the probability of collisions with
   existing names goes up.  Not many people choose two letter
   labels for the least significant parts of their host names
   unless they are choosing their initials.
 
   Museum on the other hand is a real English word.  I'm sure
   you will find lots other uses of museum in the DNS.  The
   same thing will happen with other TLD's as the rules are
   relaxed.
 
   Single label hostnames are not globally unique.  They SHOULD
   NOT be used in a context where globally unique names are
   required.

Mark,

With the understanding that I agree with everything you say
above, there are some interesting problems with SMTP (and maybe
some other protocols) as well as with how ICANN is proceeding.
In no particular order...

(1) ICANN is well aware of the problem you mention with museum
and presumably with coop, jobs, name, and maybe some
others I've forgotten at the moment.  As I understand it, they
have explicitly decided to ignore that problem except for names
of countries.  The problem also gets orders of magnitude worse
as we move to IDNs, especially it we also consider
transliterations of non-ASCII strings into scripts other than
the those to which the relevant word is native (whatever that
means -- the concept is extremely dubious for some languages).   

Whether the decision to enable the searching risks associated
with the use of names, rather than short mnemonics of
pre-specified length, is the result of realizing that the
problem is hopelessly intractable (it is) or the result of
rampant commercialism is probably in the eye of the beholder.


(2) Regardless of what some of us may think about the
desirability (or not) of associating services with TLD names, as
soon as we accept the idea that top-level domain names have
semantic content and are associated with fields of endeavor,
types of organizations or enterprises, etc., the desire to
associate, e.g., directory services or help functions with the
TLD follows almost naturally.   For years, we managed to dodge
that problem with conventional subdomains (e.g., nic.example.),
but we have not, to my knowledge, ever promoted those uses via,
e.g., a BCP that strongly recommends them (unlike the email
case, where RFC2142 does just that).

In the absence of reserved-name recommendations strong enough to
substitute for services associated with TLDs (and the horse has
probably let the barn on doing that), I think it is inevitable
that we will see more and more demand for the functionality
implied by

   some-protocol://TLD-name./

(with or without that trailing dot).   Some sort of directory
service for the domain is the obvious case, but there are
others.  I can think of only three ways to get that
functionality:

(i) Associate services with the TLD in the DNS.

(ii) Install a TLD wildcard that points to the relevant
services (and pray that it doesn't point to anything
else)

(iii) Reserve conventional subdomain names so that an
application can turn some-protocol://TLD-name/ into,
e.g., 
  some-protocol://some-protocol.TLD-name/

But, as discussed above, I believe we have waited much too long
to do anything effective about the third possibility.  And
simply saying this is a bad way to use the DNS is clearly not
going to get us anywhere in the current environment, even if it
were true.


(3)  SMTP does not permit an explicit trailing period in
addresses on the wire, so 
RCPT TO:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
is a syntax error.   RFC 2821 permitted it (as Frank points
out), unlike RFC 821 (which, I think, predated the discovery
that being able to explicitly specify the root was sometimes
important).  Discussion about 2821bis concluded that permitting
the trailing period caused more problems than it solved, so we
are back to not permitting it.   What 2821bis says in essence is
that it is the responsibility of the sending application to
figure out whether, if a user presents [EMAIL PROTECTED],
that implies the example TLD or an invitation to start
searching.  The application is expected to provide local syntax
when necessary to assist in making that distinction.

So, much as I'd like it if we could say Single label names are
local in scope...does not work, I fear that it is 

Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-04 Thread Dave Crocker





There is a difference between allowing protocol to be used
in a local only mode (single label) and a global mode
(multi-label) and saying you must support single label in
a global context.



If a protocol is used in a global mode, the problem with trying to use it in a 
tailored, local mode is that the various defaults of the local context are not 
carried with the data that escapes into the global context.


There must be perfect gatewaying between the two contexts and this almost never 
achieved.


d/

--

  Dave Crocker
  Brandenburg InternetWorking
  bbiw.net
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RE: Services and top-level DNS names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?)

2008-07-04 Thread Bernard Aboba

Single label names are local in scope.  Attempting to use
them in a global context does not work.  As the names in
 . get more interesting the probability of collisions with
existing names goes up.  Not many people choose two letter
 labels for the least significant parts of their host names
 unless they are choosing their initials.

 Single label hostnames are not globally unique.  They SHOULD
 NOT be used in a context where globally unique names are
 required.
 
 Mark,
 
 With the understanding that I agree with everything you say
 above, there are some interesting problems

Referring to the point Mark is making as a problem is a bit like
saying that someone attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge has
a problem.  While the potential bridge purchaser may in fact very
much desire to own the bridge, the problem is that the seller may
not in fact have the right to sell it. 

That's really at the core of what Mark is arguing -- that various
RFCs allocate single-label names for local use, and therefore that
ICANN may not possess the right to sell that property
to another party. 

 (1) ICANN is well aware of the problem you mention
 As I understand it, they have explicitly decided to ignore that problem...

Someone attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge can also explicitly
decide to ignore the problem of whether they in fact own it. 
That won't make the problem go away. 

In this particular case, we are talking about RFCs that are included
as requirements for purchase worth billions of dollars annually, as
well as local names currently in local use by hundreds of millions of
people. So we're not talking about selling a single Brooklyn Bridge
here, but many. 
 
 (2) Regardless of what some of us may think about the
 desirability (or not) of associating services with TLD names

The issue is not desirability.  Someone might very much desire
to purchase the Brooklyn Bridge.  It has many excellent qualities -- it is
used by many people over the course of a day, it is a registered historical
site making it of great interest to tourists, etc.   The problem is whether 
the
seller can establish title. 
  
 So, much as I'd like it if we could say Single label names are
 local in scope...does not work

Mark's point is that several RFCs already say this.  So what we have
here isn't really an technical argument or one about desirability -- it's
a property rights argument. 
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Single-letter names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?)

2008-07-04 Thread John C Klensin
Vint,

In the ASCII space, there have been three explanations offered
historically for the one-character prohibition on top and
second-level domains.   I've written variations on this note
several times, so will just try to summarize here.  Of the
three, the first of these is at best of only historical interest
and may be apocryphal and the second is almost certainly no
longer relevant.  The third remains significant.

(1) Jon has been quoted as suggesting that we could have
eliminated many of the problems we now face with TLDs and
simultaneously made the no real semantics in TLD names rule
much more clear had we initially allocated b..y as TLDs.
Then, when someone asked for an assignment, it would have been
allocated at random to one of those domains.  While this has a
certain amount of appeal, at least in retrospect, there is
probably no way to get from where we are today to that model...
unless actions taken in the near future so ruin the current DNS
tree as a locus for stable and predictable references that we
need to start over with a new tree.  I don't think that a have
to start over scenario is at all likely, but I no long believe
it to be impossible.

(2) There was an idea floating around for a while that, if some
of the popular TLDs filled up, one could create single-letter
subdomains and push subsequent registrations down the tree a
bit.  For example, if .COM were declared full, then a.com,
b.com, etc., would be allocated and additional reservations
pushed into subdomains of those intermediate domains rather than
being registered at the second level.  Until and unless the
conventional wisdom that adding more names to .COM merely
requires more hardware  and/or bandwidth, that won't be a
filled up point at which this sort of strategy could be
triggered.  Worse, trying to use single-letter subdomains as an
expansion mechanism would raise political issues about putting
latecomers at an advantage that would be, IMO, sufficient to
completely kill the idea.  In the current climate, I think the
community would decide that it preferred a disfunctional DNS if
that were ever the choice (see the start over remark above).

(3) At least in the discussions that led up to RFC 1591, and
probably much earlier, there were concerns about reducing the
likelihood of false hits if the end user made single-character
typing errors.  With only 26 (or maybe 36) possible characters,
it could just about be guaranteed that all of them would be
registered and that _any_ typing error would yield a false
match.  That, in itself, has been considered sufficient to
prohibit single-letter labels and, by extension, to be fairly
careful about two-letter ones.   There have been arguments on
and off over the years as to whether this is a technical
reason or an attempt to set policy.  Even though the mismatches
would obviously not cause the network to explode or IP to stop
working, at least some of us consider the informational
retrieval and information theoretic reasons to insist on more
information in domain name labels in order to lower the risk of
false positive matches to be fully as technical as something
that would have obvious lower-level network consequences.
Others --frankly especially those who see commercial advantage
in getting single-letter names-- have argued that this position
is just a policy decision in disguise.

Note that, with slight modifications, the second and third
arguments apply equally well to TLD allocations and to SLD
allocations, especially in popular domains.  

The reasoning associated with the third case also applies to any
other script that contains a fairly small number of characters.
One could manage a long philosophical discussion as to whether
there are sufficient characters in the fully-decorated
Latin-derived collection to eliminate the problem, but an
analysis of keyboard and typing techniques/ input methods for
that range of characters would, IMO, yield the same answer --
single-letter domains are just not a good idea and two-letter
ones near the top of the tree should be used only with great
caution.   

On the other hand, the same reasoning would break down when
confronted with a script that contains thousands of characters,
such as the ideographic ones.  There are enough characters
available in those scripts that one can presumably not worry
about single-character typing errors (and one can perhaps worry
even less if the usual input methods involve typing
phonetically, using a different script, and then selecting the
relevant characters from a menu -- in those cases, the phonetic
representations are typically more than a character or two long
and the menu selection provides an extra check about false
matches).

 john



--On Thursday, 03 July, 2008 19:04 -0400 Vint Cerf
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 seems odd to me too, James.
 
 vint
 
 
 On Jul 3, 2008, at 6:14 PM, James Seng wrote:
 
 At the moment, the condition is no single Unicode code
 point. To the extent that a single CJK ideograph 

RE: Services and top-level DNS names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?)

2008-07-04 Thread John C Klensin


--On Friday, 04 July, 2008 10:49 -0700 Bernard Aboba
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 
 Single label names are local in scope.  Attempting to use
 them in a global context does not work.  As the names in
 . get more interesting the probability of collisions with
 existing names goes up.  Not many people choose two letter
 labels for the least significant parts of their host names
 unless they are choosing their initials.
 
 Single label hostnames are not globally unique.  They SHOULD
 NOT be used in a context where globally unique names are
 required.
 
 Mark,
 
 With the understanding that I agree with everything you say
 above, there are some interesting problems
 
 Referring to the point Mark is making as a problem is a bit
 like saying that someone attempting to sell the Brooklyn
 Bridge has a problem.  While the potential bridge purchaser
 may in fact very much desire to own the bridge, the problem
 is that the seller may not in fact have the right to sell it. 
 
 That's really at the core of what Mark is arguing -- that
 various RFCs allocate single-label names for local use, and
 therefore that ICANN may not possess the right to sell that
 property to another party. 
 
 (1) ICANN is well aware of the problem you mention
 As I understand it, they have explicitly decided to ignore
 that problem...
 
 Someone attempting to sell the Brooklyn Bridge can also
 explicitly decide to ignore the problem of whether they in
 fact own it.  That won't make the problem go away. 
 
 In this particular case, we are talking about RFCs that are
 included as requirements for purchase worth billions of
 dollars annually, as well as local names currently in local
 use by hundreds of millions of people. So we're not talking
 about selling a single Brooklyn Bridge here, but many. 
  
 (2) Regardless of what some of us may think about the
 desirability (or not) of associating services with TLD names
 
 The issue is not desirability.  Someone might very much
 desire to purchase the Brooklyn Bridge.  It has many
 excellent qualities -- it is used by many people over the
 course of a day, it is a registered historical site making it
 of great interest to tourists, etc.   The problem is whether
 the seller can establish title. 
   
 So, much as I'd like it if we could say Single label names
 are local in scope...does not work
 
 Mark's point is that several RFCs already say this.  So what
 we have here isn't really an technical argument or one about
 desirability -- it's a property rights argument. 

Not really.  ICANN isn't selling single-label domains.  They
are selling (and I believe selling is probably now the correct
term) plain, ordinary, TLD delegations.  If I get one of those
and populate the TLD zone only with delegation records, there
are no problems with what ICANN has done at all, whether you
describe it a property rights or in some other way.  On the
other hand, if they delegate one and the enterprise that buys it
chooses to populate the zone with service records, then ICANN's
position will certainly be that any inability to use those
service records isn't ICANN's problem -- any more than
difficulties using .museum or .aero were ICANN's problem when
those to whom those domains were delegated discovered that a lot
of applications software thought that the one TLD label of more
than three characters was ARPA.

So the problem isn't whether some string not listed in 2606
can be allocated, it is how it is used after it is allocated.
And _that_ situation has a lot more to do about buyer beware
and understanding of conflicting expectations about use than it
does about ownership. 

john





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RE: Services and top-level DNS names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?)

2008-07-04 Thread Bernard Aboba

 Not really.  ICANN isn't selling single-label domains.  They
 are selling (and I believe selling is probably now the correct
 term) plain, ordinary, TLD delegations.  If I get one of those
 and populate the TLD zone only with delegation records, there
 are no problems with what ICANN has done at all, whether you
 describe it as a property right or in some other way.  

Agreed. 

 On the other hand, if they delegate one and the enterprise that buys it
 chooses to populate the zone with service records, then ICANN's
 position will certainly be that any inability to use those
 service records isn't ICANN's problem -- any more than
 difficulties using .museum or .aero were ICANN's problem when
 those to whom those domains were delegated discovered that a lot
 of applications software thought that the one TLD label of more
 than three characters was ARPA.

Is generic buyer beware disclaimer really sufficient here? 
The problem isn't just inability to use -- it's that other parties exist 
who may claim the usage right, and provide citations to RFCs to back up their 
claim.

For example, typing http://brooklynbridgepark/ into a browser utilizing
a resolver compliant with RFC 1536 will bring you to the web site of 
Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, assuming that .org is in your searchlist.

If ICANN sells the brooklynbridgepark TLD delegation to another party who 
populates
the zone with service records,  should that party expect that 
http://brooklynbridgepark/  
will now resolve to their site?  RFC 1536 says no.  

Similar problems will occur when the party purchasing the brooklynbridgepark 
TLD 
attempts to use the single-label name brooklynbridgepark for other uses, such 
as
network access. 

 And _that_ situation has a lot more to do about buyer beware
 and understanding of conflicting expectations about use than it
 does about ownership. 

Today there is a distinction between types of property rights - surface, 
subsurface,
or rights to the air above a property.  As noted at 
http://geology.com/articles/mineral-rights.shtml 
this was not always the case: 

  If we go back in time to the days before drilling and  mining, real 
estate transactions 
  were fee simple transfers.  However, 
once  subsurface mineral production became 
  possible, the ways in which people own property became much more complex.


If the analogy holds (and I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea if it does), then
we could be talking about a fee simple transfer in a situation where 
sub-rights may 
be claimed to belong to someone else.  


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Re: Services and top-level DNS names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?)

2008-07-04 Thread Mark Andrews

 So the problem isn't whether some string not listed in 2606
 can be allocated, it is how it is used after it is allocated.
 And _that_ situation has a lot more to do about buyer beware
 and understanding of conflicting expectations about use than it
 does about ownership. 
 
 john

I really wish it was *just* buyer beware.  If http://museum/
only works for some clients and not other then there really
isn't a problem.  By works here I mean connects to
83.145.59.103 or nowhere.

The problem is that it isn't just buyer beware.  If the
buyer adds any records are looked up by search mechanisms
as a part on normal application activity, A,  and MX
are simple examples, then *ALL* the users of the Internet
need to be aware that they are there.

This is a security problem, not a buyer beware problem.

This is a namespace clash and namespace clashes are bad for
many reasons.

Now as far as I can see there are two solutions which attack
the problem from different ends.

1. ban the adding of any records which meet the above criteria.
2. rewrite resolvers to not lookup single labels against the
   root.

Note banning would have to be described is a manner that
didn't preclude the negative advertisement of a service.
It would also have to be writen to exclude records that a
looked up with a prefix added.

Also what is the penalty for adding banned records?

Mark


;  DiG 9.3.4-P1  museum
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; -HEADER- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 61108
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 5, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;museum.IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
museum. 86034   IN  A   83.145.59.103

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
museum. 22099   IN  NS  ns-ext.vix.com.
museum. 22099   IN  NS  ns1.getty.edu.
museum. 22099   IN  NS  nic.icom.org.
museum. 22099   IN  NS  ns.icann.org.
museum. 22099   IN  NS  nic.museum.

;; Query time: 3 msec
;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
;; WHEN: Sat Jul  5 08:22:30 2008
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 162

-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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RE: Services and top-level DNS names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?)

2008-07-04 Thread John C Klensin
Bernard,

I'm going to try to respond to both your note and Mark's, using
yours as a base because it better reflects my perspective.

Before I go on, I think the three of us are in agreement about
the situation.  The question is what can (or should) be done
about it.

--On Friday, 04 July, 2008 13:52 -0700 Bernard Aboba
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Not really.  ICANN isn't selling single-label domains.  They
 are selling (and I believe selling is probably now the
 correct term) plain, ordinary, TLD delegations.  If I get one
 of those and populate the TLD zone only with delegation
 records, there are no problems with what ICANN has done at
 all, whether you describe it as a property right or in some
 other way.  
 
 Agreed. 
 
 On the other hand, if they delegate one and the enterprise
 that buys it chooses to populate the zone with service
 records, then ICANN's position will certainly be that any
 inability to use those service records isn't ICANN's problem
 -- any more than difficulties using .museum or .aero were
 ICANN's problem when those to whom those domains were
 delegated discovered that a lot of applications software
 thought that the one TLD label of more than three characters
 was ARPA.
 
 Is generic buyer beware disclaimer really sufficient here? 
 The problem isn't just inability to use -- it's that other
 parties exist  who may claim the usage right, and provide
 citations to RFCs to back up their claim.
 
 For example, typing http://brooklynbridgepark/ into a browser
 utilizing a resolver compliant with RFC 1536 will bring you to
 the web site of  Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy, assuming
 that .org is in your searchlist.

We agree so far, but let me note that 1536 is an informational
document.  We generally don't claim that systems are expected to
be compliant with those.
 
 If ICANN sells the brooklynbridgepark TLD delegation to
 another party who populates the zone with service records,
 should that party expect that http://brooklynbridgepark/  
 will now resolve to their site?  RFC 1536 says no.  
 
 Similar problems will occur when the party purchasing the
 brooklynbridgepark TLD  attempts to use the single-label name
 brooklynbridgepark for other uses, such as network access.

Yes.  And what I fear is that some applications and
implementations will support services on brooklynbridgepark as
a TLD and others will start searching.   Yes, that goes well
beyond buyer beware.

 And _that_ situation has a lot more to do about buyer beware
 and understanding of conflicting expectations about use than
 it does about ownership. 
 
 Today there is a distinction between types of property rights
 - surface, subsurface, or rights to the air above a property.
 As noted at http://geology.com/articles/mineral-rights.shtml 
 this was not always the case: 
 
   If we go back in time to the days before drilling and
 mining, real estate transactions were fee simple
 transfers.  However, once  subsurface mineral production
became 
 possible, the ways in which people own property became
 much more complex.

Sure.  But I know who to call --title insurance companies,
lawyers, judges, etc.-- when your mineral rights intrude on my
surface building rights or vice versa.

 If the analogy holds (and I'm not a lawyer, so I have no idea
 if it does), then we could be talking about a fee simple
 transfer in a situation where sub-rights may  be claimed to
 belong to someone else.  

But this gets back exactly to both the rude comments I've been
making about ICANN and the example I tried to construct (not
carefully enough) about a Microsoft TLD.

Let's take the second one first.  Suppose that Microsoft, at a
high corporate level, decided that they wanted to have a TLD
called microsoft and that they wanted to attach services to
it.  You would advise against that.  I would advise against
that.  So would others.  We would cite 1535, a number of other
RFCs, and general bad taste.  My assumption is that Microsoft
would give it up -- even if they wanted the domain, they
wouldn't expect to locate services at the top level.  But
suppose some marketing force took over and overwhelmed those
arguments.  The thing that makes Microsoft relevant to this
example is that the company distributes a very popular browser
and a couple of very popular email clients.  Were a corporate
decision to be made to support services on a TLD, at least
services on that one special-case TLD, than that decision could
extend to modifications to those application programs that would
permit access to those services.  

Again, I don't expect that to happen, but it carries over
directly into the main point I'm trying to make, which is that
property rights are a relevant metaphor for this situation
only if there is some basis or authority for enforcing those
rights.  As I've pointed out in other contexts recently, the
last few times I've tried to call the Protocol Police, they
didn't answer.

Ultimately, I'm concerned about what the IETF can usefully do

RE: Single-letter names (was: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?)

2008-07-04 Thread JFC Morfin
I feel that Edmon's report of the ICANN/GNSO point of view and the 
positions of James Seng are shared by most of the groups we relate 
with (Internet @large, open roots, ISO lobbies, Multilinc, MINC, 
Eurolinc, ISOC France, ccTLDs, etc.). If this WG does not think they 
are technically adequate there would certainly be a real urgency to 
document why, to have it confirmed by the IAB, and disseminated. This 
is due to the constraints a change would introduce outside of the 
Internet community and the général awareness of this debate after the 
Paris meeting. This WG needs to speak up now, or status quo will be 
considered as definitly settled.


I expect one single sign (logo) gcTLDs [geocultural] to be documented 
this year for multilingual information machines (airports, 
transports, health, kids, disabled). BTW this is also why I would 
recommend to refer to the semiotic rather than to the semantic aspects.

jfc

At 01:33 05/07/2008, Edmon Chung wrote:

Regarding single Unicode code-point labels at the TLD level, there was quite
some discussion on this topic at the GNSO Reserved Names working group and
then at the new gTLD discussion.  The final recommendation from the GNSO
was:

Single and two-character U-labels on the top level and second level of a
domain name should not be restricted in general. At the top level, requested
strings should be analyzed on a case-by-case basis in the new gTLD process
depending on the script and language used in order to determine whether the
string should be granted for allocation in the DNS. Single and two character
labels at the second level and the third level if applicable should be
available for registration, provided they are consistent with the IDN
Guidelines.

As for ASCII, the recommendation was:
We recommend reservation of single letters at the top level based on
technical questions raised. If sufficient research at a later date
demonstrates that the technical issues and concerns are addressed, the topic
of releasing reservation status can be reconsidered.

Edmon


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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Frank Ellermann
John C Klensin wrote:

 http://[10.0.0.6]/ anyone?

My bastard browser from hell eats http://[208.77.188.166]/

It's certainly no STD 66 URL.  But it won't surprise me if
the URL-bis, charset-bis, net_2.0-bis, MIME-bis, XHTML-bis,
(etc. ad nauseam) effort styling itself as HTML5 decrees
that this is as it should be based on current practice in
the browser industry.

That would be also the moment where I'd welcome a new TLD 
6] just to prove a subtle technical point.

 the IETF has a lot of trouble making clear decisions when
 those sorts of politics start to intrude.

So far nobody disagreed with RFC 1123 erratum 1335.  FWIW
that also eliminates 6] from the list of potential TLDs.

 Frank
-- 
Repost, apparently my first attempt didn't make it.

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Stephane Bortzmeyer
On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 09:23:58AM +1000,
 Mark Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote 
 a message of 32 lines which said:

   No sane TLD operator can expect http://tld; or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   to work reliably. 

[Mark, you used non-RFC2606 names, the IESG will put a DISCUSS against
you.]

I agree but it is not the point: an email adress like
[EMAIL PROTECTED] is legal and works but not reliably (there are
many stupid broken Web forms which refuse it and tell me it's not
valid).

http://example is legal and should work. If it does not, it may
indicate a broken implementation.

   I suspect there are still mail configuations
   around that will re-write [EMAIL PROTECTED] to [EMAIL PROTECTED].

There are many broken mail configurations.

   Should we be writting a RFC which states that MX and address
   records SHOULD NOT be added to the apex of a TLD zone?

No. A TLD is a domain like any other and we should not write special
rules for them.

   Should we be writting a RFC which states that single label
   hostnames/mail domains SHOULD NOT be looked up as is in
   the DNS?

I hate special cases.
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread SM

Hi Mark,
At 21:48 02-07-2008, Mark Andrews wrote:

The key word word is reliably.  http://museum/ can never
be guarenteed to work.


I saw the key word and I agree with you.  Someone out there thought 
that it was a good idea or else we wouldn't be discussing about 
this.  Your technical arguments are sound but they are unfortunately 
being overridden by other considerations.


There are currently 22 TLDs with MX records, 16 TLDs with address 
records and 11 TLDs with wildcards.


  The notion that different domains would be run in different ways --albeit
   within the broad contexts of public service on behalf of the
   Internet community and trustee... for the global Internet
   community-- was considered a design feature and a safeguard against
   a variety of potential abuses.  Obviously the world has changed in
   many ways (since then) ...

Regards,
-sm 


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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Mark Andrews

 On Thu, Jul 03, 2008 at 09:23:58AM +1000,
  Mark Andrews [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote 
  a message of 32 lines which said:
 
  No sane TLD operator can expect http://tld; or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  to work reliably. 
 
 [Mark, you used non-RFC2606 names, the IESG will put a DISCUSS against
 you.]
 
 I agree but it is not the point: an email adress like
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] is legal and works but not reliably (there are
 many stupid broken Web forms which refuse it and tell me it's not
 valid).
 
 http://example is legal and should work. If it does not, it may
 indicate a broken implementation.

But where should it resolve to?  example.example.net.
or  example.?  Under what circumstances?

I suspect there are still mail configuations
  around that will re-write [EMAIL PROTECTED] to [EMAIL PROTECTED].
 
 There are many broken mail configurations.
 
  Should we be writting a RFC which states that MX and address
  records SHOULD NOT be added to the apex of a TLD zone?
 
 No. A TLD is a domain like any other and we should not write special
 rules for them.

Names with and without dots already have different semantics.

  Should we be writting a RFC which states that single label
  hostnames/mail domains SHOULD NOT be looked up as is in
  the DNS?
 
 I hate special cases.

TLDs are already a special cases in so many ways.

Mark
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Frank Ellermann
John C Klensin wrote:

 http://[10.0.0.6]/ anyone?

My bastard browser from hell eats http://[208.77.188.166]/

It's certainly no STD 66 URL.  But it won't surprise me if
the URL-bis, charset-bis, net_2.0-bis, MIME-bis, XHTML-bis,
(etc. ad nauseam) effort styling itself as HTML5 decrees
that this is as it should be based on current practice in
the browser industry.

That would be also the moment where I'd welcome a new TLD 
6] just to prove a subtle technical point.

 the IETF has a lot of trouble making clear decisions when
 those sorts of politics start to intrude.

So far nobody disagreed with RFC 1123 erratum 1335.  FWIW
that also eliminates 6] from the list of potential TLDs.

 Frank

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Frank Ellermann
Mark Andrews wrote:

 The Internet went to multi-label hostnames ~20 years ago.

As noted in RFC 2821 as one dot required syntax, also
mentioned in RFC 3696.  Recently *overruled* by 2821bis.

 No sane TLD operator can expect http://tld; or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 to work reliably.  

Certainly not expect, but some gave it nevertheless a try.
My bastard browser from hell let's me say http://museum./ 
(note trailing dot).

 I suspect there are still mail configuations around that 
 will re-write [EMAIL PROTECTED] to [EMAIL PROTECTED].

They didn't note that RFC 2821 upgraded the 821 examples,
sh*t happens... eg

 Should we be writting a RFC which states that MX and 
 address records SHOULD NOT be added to the apex of a
 TLD zone?

No, there are enough TLDs disagreeing with this idea...

 Should we be writting a RFC which states that single
 label hostnames/mail domains SHOULD NOT be looked up
 as is in the DNS?

...the 2821bis Last Call ended months ago, and one dot
required was discussed long enough.  Change this again,
and I'll scream.

 Frank

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?

2008-07-03 Thread James Seng
On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 7:01 AM, John C Klensin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Any proposal for a new gTLD must satisfy a number of string
 criteria that will be specified explicitly in the RFP,
 including the requirements that the U-label must not:

 (a) be identical to an existing TLD;

 Is сом identical to com? (the first of these is U+0441
 U+043E U+043C)

The current principle is that it should be be a confusing string,
which is vague enough to cover the case above (but perhaps not able to
cover .co)

 (b) be identical to a Reserved Name;

 (c) consist of a single character;

 I've heard it argued repeatedly that this is an unreasonable
 rule for ideographic characters.   I don't have an opinion, but
 hope that ICANN has considered that case in full details.

This is where we dive into a discussion what is a character. In
ideographic based language, there isnt a concept of a word.

For example, Chinese, Japanese and Korean are actually phonetics
language, and that ideograph characters are used to express the
phonetics. A word or more accurately morphemes can be express in a
single or more ideographs. A single latin character is unlikely to be
useful by itself (except of a and i) but thats not the case in CJK.

If the condition is that no single ASCII character, I may be neutral
about it (since a single ideograph would never translate to a single
ASCII character in the zonefile, due to the xn-- prefix) but if the
character is defined more broadly to cover U-label character, then
I would have strong objections.

Incidentally, I remember it is a standing tradition that labels may
not be a single ascii character. But is there any technical reason we
should forbid it? (e.g. 6.cn have not kill any kittens yet)

-James Seng
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?

2008-07-03 Thread Frank Ellermann
James Seng wrote:

 if the character is defined more broadly to cover U-label
 character, then I would have strong objections.

+1  And fortunately it's not our job to figure out what a term
like IDN ccTLD actually means, where that might be important.

 I remember it is a standing tradition that labels may not 
 be a single ascii character.

IIRC SC SLDs were recently permitted.  In this acronym soup
that's single character second-level domains affecting TLDs
with a contract not permitting such beasts.  ASCII characters,
[0-9A-Za-z].

No TLD is forced to adopt this idea, and many TLDs have their
own rules.

 But is there any technical reason we should forbid it? (e.g.
 6.cn have not kill any kittens yet)

It is certainly an obstacle for *simple* definitions of what
constitutes confusingly similar or typo resistent.  But I
guess there is no *simple* definition also covering typos in
IDN A-labels, so maybe that point is moot.

Unrelated:  The 2606 thread on the general list so far was
about many interesting topics, notably about toplabels, but
not about the 2606bis draft.  

For the 3920bis-06 draft I sent this comment to the author:

 You claim to import idnlabel from RFC 3490, but there is
 no idnlabel in RFC 3490.  Besides you don't want only
 xn-- labels, you want ldh-label not limited to xn--.
 
 How about this, based on latest RFC 1123 toplabel erratum:
 
 | domain   = fqdn / address-literal
 | fqdn = *(ldhlabel .) toplabel
 | ldhlabel = letdig [*61(ldh) letdig]
 | toplabel = ALPHA   *61(ldh) letdig
 | letdig   = ALPHA / DIGIT
 | ldh  = ALPHA / DIGIT / -

 Frank

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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?

2008-07-03 Thread James Seng
 At the moment, the condition is no single Unicode code point. To
 the extent that a single CJK ideograph can be expressed using a
 single Unicode code point, this would represent the situation to
 which you say you would object. I will dig through my notes to find
 out why the single character condition was adopted -

Would you be able to explain why the condition is no single Unicode
code point? Whats the technical basis for that?

-James Seng
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RE: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Bernard Aboba

Lyman said: 
 
 I'm familiar with draft-klensin-rfc2821bis-10.txt and understand  the 
 importance of using only FQDNs in SMTP exchanges given that [i]n  the case 
 of a top-level domain used by itself in an email address, a  single string 
 is used without any dots. What I'm interested in is  any reason to 
 proscribe the use of a TLD as a single label hostname  (particularly for 
 email addresses) other than the fact that there is  software out there that 
 will interpret it incorrectly -
Potential problems with global use of single-label names go beyond SMTP.  
For example,  RFC 4282, which defines the Network Access Identifier 
(NAI), does not permit the use of single-label names. From Section 2.1: 
 
   realm   =  1*( label . ) label
 
As a result, someone purchasing the example TLD and using the NAI
[EMAIL PROTECTED] in order to obtain access to the network, might well 
discover that this would not work. 
 
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread James Seng
RFC 4282 defined

   label   =  let-dig *(ldh-str)

which means a single-label Unicode string would be absolutely fine
since it translate to xn--gibberish. A shorter gibberish of cos, but
still longer than a single character.

-James Seng

 Potential problems with global use of single-label names go beyond SMTP.
 For example,  RFC 4282, which defines the Network Access Identifier
 (NAI), does not permit the use of single-label names. From Section 2.1:

realm   =  1*( label . ) label

 As a result, someone purchasing the example TLD and using the NAI
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] in order to obtain access to the network, might well
 discover that this would not work.




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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread James Seng
Oops, ignore my email :P My reading comprehension is bad in the morning.

-James Seng

On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 6:31 AM, James Seng [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 RFC 4282 defined

   label   =  let-dig *(ldh-str)

 which means a single-label Unicode string would be absolutely fine
 since it translate to xn--gibberish. A shorter gibberish of cos, but
 still longer than a single character.

 -James Seng

 Potential problems with global use of single-label names go beyond SMTP.
 For example,  RFC 4282, which defines the Network Access Identifier
 (NAI), does not permit the use of single-label names. From Section 2.1:

realm   =  1*( label . ) label

 As a result, someone purchasing the example TLD and using the NAI
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] in order to obtain access to the network, might well
 discover that this would not work.




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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Mark Andrews

 Mark Andrews wrote:
 
  The Internet went to multi-label hostnames ~20 years ago.
 
 As noted in RFC 2821 as one dot required syntax, also
 mentioned in RFC 3696.  Recently *overruled* by 2821bis.

There is a difference between allowing protocol to be used
in a local only mode (single label) and a global mode
(multi-label) and saying you must support single label in
a global context.

Single label names are local in scope.  Attempting to use
them in a global context does not work.  As the names in
. get more interesting the probability of collisions with
existing names goes up.  Not many people choose two letter
labels for the least significant parts of their host names
unless they are choosing their initials.

Museum on the other hand is a real English word.  I'm sure
you will find lots other uses of museum in the DNS.  The
same thing will happen with other TLD's as the rules are
relaxed.

Single label hostnames are not globally unique.  They SHOULD
NOT be used in a context where globally unique names are
required.

Mark
 
-- 
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1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-03 Thread Mark Andrews

 
  Mark Andrews wrote:
  
   The Internet went to multi-label hostnames ~20 years ago.
  
  As noted in RFC 2821 as one dot required syntax, also
  mentioned in RFC 3696.  Recently *overruled* by 2821bis.
 
   There is a difference between allowing protocol to be used
   in a local only mode (single label) and a global mode
   (multi-label) and saying you must support single label in
   a global context.
 
   Single label names are local in scope.  Attempting to use
   them in a global context does not work.  As the names in
   . get more interesting the probability of collisions with
   existing names goes up.  Not many people choose two letter
   labels for the least significant parts of their host names
   unless they are choosing their initials.
 
   Museum on the other hand is a real English word.  I'm sure
   you will find lots other uses of museum in the DNS.  The
   same thing will happen with other TLD's as the rules are
   relaxed.
 
   Single label hostnames are not globally unique.  They SHOULD
   NOT be used in a context where globally unique names are
   required.
 
   Mark

Additionally we have RFC 1535 warning about the consequences
of treating global address as local in a addition to choosing
a bad definition of local for a search list.

The reverse is equally true.  Mail that was intended for a
local receipient may end up being delivered globally.  Not
everyone in a organisation tracks the comings and goings
of local addresses.

The sender may not even be local if a .forward contains
[EMAIL PROTECTED] and tld goes away locally.

Mark
-- 
Mark Andrews, ISC
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-02 Thread Thomas Narten
 In a more sane world, no one rational would want to build a
 business or other activity around a TLD named local.   But
 this is demonstrably not a sane world.

Right. I can see the business case for this. :-(

But at least in the first round, the barrier to entry is so high that
I don't see that sort of thing as being viable. The figure $100K for
a TLD application is what is floating around at the moment, though
that number is not nailed down definitively.

For much of the domain tasting related activities, a fundamental
premise was that the cost of using a name was very low (i.e., zero,
while the AGP was being leveraged).

Thomas
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-02 Thread James Seng
Which brings up a question can a TLD be used like a domain name?

not just http://microsoft/ but [EMAIL PROTECTED] will likely to fail to.

james

2008/7/2 Hallam-Baker, Phillip [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
 Another like restriction that might be investigated is whether
 http://microsoft/ or other similar corporate TLDs would work as intended
 with deployed legacy browsers.

 I suspect (but have not tried) that if you simply type 'Microsoft' into the
 address bar of some browsers you might have the keyword immediately
 interpreted as a search term, not an address to visit.


 I also suspect that if we actually read the technical specs being proposed
 we might find that some of these issues have already been anticipated in
 them and addressed.


 
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Dave Crocker
 Sent: Tue 7/1/2008 12:44 PM
 To: Tony Finch
 Cc: IETF Discussion
 Subject: Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?



 Tony Finch wrote:
 Speaking technically, how would you distinguish the top-level domain
 127.0.0.1 from the IP address 127.0.0.1?
 A word while passing here: is there a document (RFC, Posix standard,
 whatever) which says which is the right result in such a case?

 RFC 1123 section 2.1, especially the last sentence.

 Interesting.

 I hadn't noticed the implication of that, before, but it seems to be a
 pretty
 clear technical specification that a top-level domain is not allowed to be a
 decimal number.  Ever.

 That's a concrete constraint on what ICANN is permitted to authorize.

 d/
 --

Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes?

2008-07-02 Thread Steve Crocker

blush

Thanks!

Steve

On Jul 1, 2008, at 6:36 PM, John Levine wrote:


This does not mean that ICANN won't listen to the IETF; it means
that there will be voices more familiar to ICANN saying things
different than we are.


One of the few ICANN committees that actually works is the SSAC, the
Security and Stability Advisory Committee.  It includes a lot of
people we know, starting with Steve Crocker, the chair.  I cannot ever
recall a time when ICANN acted contrary to the advice of the SSAC.

So although I agree that there's a lot not to like about ICANN, the
chances that they will do technically dangerous things are low.

http://www.icann.org/committees/security/

R's,
John
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Re: Update of RFC 2606 based on the recent ICANN changes ?

2008-07-02 Thread Paul Hoffman
(It's always a bummer when ietf-general turns into ICANN-general, but 
in this case it seems like a useful discussion because the IETF will 
probably be asked policy questions for various proposed TLDs.)


At 10:17 AM -0400 7/2/08, Thomas Narten wrote:

  In a more sane world, no one rational would want to build a

 business or other activity around a TLD named local.   But
 this is demonstrably not a sane world.


Right. I can see the business case for this. :-(

But at least in the first round, the barrier to entry is so high that
I don't see that sort of thing as being viable.


Then you're not being creative enough.


The figure $100K for
a TLD application is what is floating around at the moment, though
that number is not nailed down definitively.


...nor justified financially...


For much of the domain tasting related activities, a fundamental
premise was that the cost of using a name was very low (i.e., zero,
while the AGP was being leveraged).


If that was true, then a domain that was popular but lost its name 
due to negligence in renewal should be able to buy it back from the 
taster for a few hundred bucks. Instead, the price I have heard more 
than once is tens of thousands of dollars.


Without doing a lot of business research and probably some traffic 
capture, you can't estimate the value of .local or a TLD that is a 
typo but not really infringing of a popular search term. We scoff at 
people who say it would be easy to just add privacy to that 
protocol; they should scoff at us for making wild guesses about 
values in a huge, unregulated business that is less than ten years 
old.


--Paul Hoffman, Director
--VPN Consortium
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