Internet DRAFT - draft-koch-dns-glue-clarifications
draft-koch-dns-glue-clarifications
Network Working Group P. Koch
Internet-Draft DENIC eG
Expires: May 22, 2008 November 19, 2007
DNS Glue RR Survey and Terminology Clarification
draft-koch-dns-glue-clarifications-03
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).
Abstract
This document presents a survey of the use of the term "glue record"
in DNS related RFCs and proposes a terminology for the various glue
policies seen in different TLDs.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. RFC Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Name Server Naming Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Glue Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.1. Root Server "Glue" in the Root Zone File . . . . . . . 6
6.2. Using Glue records in responses . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6.3. Glue RRs for multihomed name servers . . . . . . . . . 7
6.4. Grandchild Glue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. DNSSEC Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. IPv6 Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Appendix A. Document Revision History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A.1. Changes from -02 to -03 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A.2. Changes from -01 to -02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A.3. Changes from -00 to -01 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . 13
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1. Introduction
When delegating zones from a TLD or other DNS zone, some additional
information is needed when resolving a name server's (as per an NS
RR) address would involve the particular name server itself. Such a
dependency on itself, direct or indirect, may effectively shadow a
part of a zone's NS RRSet, reducing redundancy, or even render the
zone completely unresolvable. This additional information is an
amendment to the delegation in the form of glue address records. In
the real life DNS multiple strategies to determine necessity or
acceptance of glue records co-exist. This document lists a subset of
those approaches.
This document also tries to clarify when and where to call an address
record "glue record".
Comments should be directed at the author.
Domain names and IP addresses herein are for explanatory purposes
only and should not be expected to lead to useful information in real
life [RFC2606],[RFC3330]).
2. RFC Survey
To find out more about early motivations and strategies for DNS glue
records, all existing RFCs were automatically searched for the term
"glue" (case insensitive, no word boundaries) and those matching were
inspected on a case by case basis. Whenever the term was used in a
DNS context, the RFC was added to the list which can be found in the
References section. It turned out that, while all early RFCs are
consistent in using "glue" only for type A address records for NS RR
targets, they apply slightly different logic as to when a glue A RR
should be present.
3. Terms
When the term "glue record" was introduced in [RFC0973], it was meant
to denominate both data origin and purpose. Data origin is related
to the zone, although the glue records do not belong to the
authoritative zone data. The purpose is constrained to providing
address information for name servers mentioned in NS RRs, which would
otherwise not be resolvable. Glue records are address information
accompanying a delegation (in the delegating zone).
There is sometimes confusion when data in a DNS response is also
called "glue" data, e.g. [RFC2010] starts speaking of "fetching"
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glue. In a DNS response packet (answer or referral) the address
information for name servers is carried in the additional section.
This address information might have originated from glue records but
might also come from cached or authoritative data. DNS data in
response packets should only be called "glue data" when it is certain
and needs to be emphasized that it originates from glue records.
[RFC4472] introduces the concept of 'critical' and 'courtesy'
additional data.
4. Name Server Naming Strategies
The DNS refers to name servers by their name in NS resource records.
The servers' names can have different relations to the zone delegated
to them. The following categories will use the example of the zone
"del.example" being delegated from the "example" TLD zone.
in domain A name server can be within the delegated domain, which
includes the name of the delegated domain itself, e.g.,
"del.example", "dns.del.example", or "dns.sub.del.example". In
all but the first case the name might be part of a subzone of
"del.example". This naming scheme is sometimes also called "in-
bailiwick".
sibling domain A name server's name can be within the delegating but
outside the delegated domain, e.g., "dns.other.example". There
are two sub-cases here, depending on the treatment of the
"other.example" domain:
authoritative in sibling When the name server's name is within
the parent domain, but in a separate zone, this is a sibling
zone of the delegated zone.
authoritative in parent A name server's name may also appear
authoritative in the parent zone.
unrelated A name server's name may not share its parent with the
delegated domain, e.g., "dns.example.org".
{To be elaborated further.}
5. Glue Policies
In the DNS tree different policies are applied with respect to
registering glue with the delegating zone. "Registering" in this
case means that the respective glue information is accepted,
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requested or required and then attached to the zone data so that it
is available at all authoritative servers, i.e. the glue travels with
the zone data by AXFR, IXFR or other means. However, it does not
make the glue data part of the zone's authoritative data.
This is a list of existing glue policies:
"never" or "null": Glue RRs are never registered. This currently
applies to larger parts of the IN-ADDR.ARPA reverse tree.
"narrow": Glue RRs are registered if and only if the name server
resides within or below the delegated (child) zone (that is,
within the delegated domain). This was suggested by [RFC1034].
"wide": Glue RRs are registered if and only if the name server
resides below the delegating (parent) zone. There is no need to
register glue RRs if the name server's name belongs into the
parent zone. This was suggested by [RFC1033]. It is used for the
root zone.
"case by case": Glue RRs are registered following the "narrow"
policy except where there are (circular) dependencies that demand
additional glue RRs.
"mandatory": Glue RRs are always registered for all name servers.
This was suggested by [RFC0973].
"other": Combinations of the above may exist, e.g. if a registry
runs multiple sibling domains and decides to register glue RRs
whenever a name server resides in or below one of the siblings.
This category would also include other policies like "random" or
"arbitrary".
Glue RRs are needed only in the delegating zone, regardless of glue
policy. See Section 6.1 for a discussion of root zone issues.
Various RFCs have identified extraneous glue RRs as sources of error
and confusion ([RFC1713], [RFC1912]).
6. Open Issues
Future versions of this document will expand on these topics:
o Software issues when following NS RRs
[I-D.minda-dnsop-using-in-bailiwick-nameservers]
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o Mixed IPv4 and IPv6 environments, following the example of
[RFC4472].
o TTL considerations: glue data vs. authoritative data as well as NS
RRSet TTLs vs A RRSet TTLs
6.1. Root Server "Glue" in the Root Zone File
As said before, Glue is meant to be present in the delegating zone
only. The only exception seems to be root zone which also contains
the address records for its authoritative name servers. However,
with the current setup the root servers also serve the ARPA domain
and with the root zone's "wide" glue policy this means that there
should be glue RRs for this particular set of nameservers, but only
in their capacity as ARPA TLD servers. [The position of the A RRs in
the root zone file (which has just editorial value) as well as their
TTLs suggest that historically there will have been a different
reason].
Also, per operational practice, almost all root servers are
authoritative for the zone they reside in (even if that is not
officially delegated to all the 13 servers). So, they have the
authoritative data present and do not need to rely upon the data
transported with the root zone.
[To have a complete trust chain available at the root servers leading
to their own names, it would be useful to have them configured
authoritative for all intermediate zones. It has been suggested
before to move the root server's names to a distinct TLD. Another
option would be to move their names to e.g. ROOT-SERVERS.ARPA
instead.]
6.2. Using Glue records in responses
Some implementations use Glue information not only during additional
section processing, but also in the answer section of responses.
Given an excerpt of the "example" TLD zone file,
one.example. NS dns.one.example.
NS dns.two.example.
dns.one.example. A 192.0.2.53
what should a name server authoritative for the example TLD do when
asked for the A RR for dns.one.example? Some implementations will
put the A RR in the answer section of the response, others will
respond with a referral and only copy the glue A RR into the
additional section (the handling of dns.two.example's A RR is not
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considered here).
Step 4 of the algorithm in 4.3.2 of [RFC1034] suggests that after
copying the NS RRs into the authority section (in step 3b) the cache
should be consulted and used to fill the answer section. Depending
on whether or not Glue data is considered to reside in the cache (it
is definitely not authoritative), one or the other response type will
be preferred.
With DNSSEC an A RRSet response originating from glue data will
always miss the appropriate signature, because neither does the
delegating zone sign the glue RRSet nor does a glue RRSIG (child's
signature covering the address RRSet) exist in that delegating zone.
[discuss levels of indirection and operational reasons that lead to
the "gluepot response"]
6.3. Glue RRs for multihomed name servers
Some name server names resolve to A or AAAA RRSets consisting of more
than one record, i.e. they have multiple addresses. It is
recommended that these RRSets be consistent between the child and the
parent.
Research is needed to evaluate the effective difference between
multiple names and multiple addresses for a name server. These
effects heavily depend on server selection algorithms in resolvers.
6.4. Grandchild Glue
When a name server resides within the delegated domain, the
delegation needs a glue record with both the "wide" and the "narrow"
glue policy. However, the server does not necessarily have its name
within the delegated zone since it may belong to a child or
grandchild zone of the delegated one.
This is a delegation in the example TLD:
one.example. NS one.example.
NS dns.one.example.
NS dns.deep.one.example.
Only the first name server is known to have its name in the delegated
zone, where the second and third could both be in separate zones.
NB: even dns.one.example. could be a zone delegated from one.example.
As a consequence, it cannot be concluded that any such name server is
able to authoritatively serve its own name, e.g., if it does not
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serve the grandchild zone.
7. DNSSEC Considerations
DNSSEC signatures do not cover glue records [RFC3833], [RFC4033].
Using the gluepot to fill the answer section is discouraged with
DNSSEC, see Section 6.2.
8. IPv6 Considerations
While this document makes no explicit statements about AAAA RRs,
similar logic applies except in cases where A and AAAA glue RR
interaction requires specific consideration (response packet size,
TTL consistency, namespace fragmentation).
The specification of the A6 RR [RFC2874] contains, in section 5.1.2,
a detailed discussion of glue issues due to the variable
representation of IPv6 addresses in A6.
9. Security Considerations
This section needs more work
10. IANA Considerations
This section needs more work
11. References
[I-D.ietf-dnsext-axfr-clarify]
Gustafsson, A., "DNS Zone Transfer Protocol
Clarifications", draft-ietf-dnsext-axfr-clarify-05 (work
in progress), December 2002.
[I-D.ietf-dnsop-respsize]
Vixie, P. and A. Kato, "DNS Referral Response Size
Issues", draft-ietf-dnsop-respsize-07 (work in progress),
February 2007.
[I-D.minda-dnsop-using-in-bailiwick-nameservers]
Minda, M., "Using In-Bailiwick Namesevers in .ARPA",
draft-minda-dnsop-using-in-bailiwick-nameservers-01 (work
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in progress), July 2005.
[RFC0973] Mockapetris, P., "Domain system changes and observations",
RFC 973, January 1986.
[RFC1033] Lottor, M., "Domain administrators operations guide",
RFC 1033, November 1987.
[RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.
[RFC1207] Malkin, G., Marine, A., and J. Reynolds, "FYI on Questions
and Answers: Answers to commonly asked "experienced
Internet user" questions", RFC 1207, February 1991.
[RFC1386] Cooper, A. and J. Postel, "The US Domain", RFC 1386,
December 1992.
[RFC1537] Beertema, P., "Common DNS Data File Configuration Errors",
RFC 1537, October 1993.
[RFC1637] Manning, B. and R. Colella, "DNS NSAP Resource Records",
RFC 1637, June 1994.
[RFC1713] Romao, A., "Tools for DNS debugging", RFC 1713,
November 1994.
[RFC1912] Barr, D., "Common DNS Operational and Configuration
Errors", RFC 1912, February 1996.
[RFC2010] Manning, B. and P. Vixie, "Operational Criteria for Root
Name Servers", RFC 2010, October 1996.
[RFC2065] Eastlake, D. and C. Kaufman, "Domain Name System Security
Extensions", RFC 2065, January 1997.
[RFC2136] Vixie, P., Thomson, S., Rekhter, Y., and J. Bound,
"Dynamic Updates in the Domain Name System (DNS UPDATE)",
RFC 2136, April 1997.
[RFC2181] Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Clarifications to the DNS
Specification", RFC 2181, July 1997.
[RFC2535] Eastlake, D., "Domain Name System Security Extensions",
RFC 2535, March 1999.
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[RFC2606] Eastlake, D. and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
Names", BCP 32, RFC 2606, June 1999.
[RFC2672] Crawford, M., "Non-Terminal DNS Name Redirection",
RFC 2672, August 1999.
[RFC2845] Vixie, P., Gudmundsson, O., Eastlake, D., and B.
Wellington, "Secret Key Transaction Authentication for DNS
(TSIG)", RFC 2845, May 2000.
[RFC2874] Crawford, M. and C. Huitema, "DNS Extensions to Support
IPv6 Address Aggregation and Renumbering", RFC 2874,
July 2000.
[RFC2931] Eastlake, D., "DNS Request and Transaction Signatures (
SIG(0)s)", RFC 2931, September 2000.
[RFC3330] IANA, "Special-Use IPv4 Addresses", RFC 3330,
September 2002.
[RFC3363] Bush, R., Durand, A., Fink, B., Gudmundsson, O., and T.
Hain, "Representing Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)
Addresses in the Domain Name System (DNS)", RFC 3363,
August 2002.
[RFC3364] Austein, R., "Tradeoffs in Domain Name System (DNS)
Support for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6)", RFC 3364,
August 2002.
[RFC3375] Hollenbeck, S., "Generic Registry-Registrar Protocol
Requirements", RFC 3375, September 2002.
[RFC3658] Gudmundsson, O., "Delegation Signer (DS) Resource Record
(RR)", RFC 3658, December 2003.
[RFC3731] Hollenbeck, S., "Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)
Domain Name Mapping", RFC 3731, March 2004.
[RFC3732] Hollenbeck, S., "Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)
Host Mapping", RFC 3732, March 2004.
[RFC3833] Atkins, D. and R. Austein, "Threat Analysis of the Domain
Name System (DNS)", RFC 3833, August 2004.
[RFC3845] Schlyter, J., "DNS Security (DNSSEC) NextSECure (NSEC)
RDATA Format", RFC 3845, August 2004.
[RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
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Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements",
RFC 4033, March 2005.
[RFC4034] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions",
RFC 4034, March 2005.
[RFC4035] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security
Extensions", RFC 4035, March 2005.
[RFC4183] Warnicke, E., "A Suggested Scheme for DNS Resolution of
Networks and Gateways", RFC 4183, September 2005.
[RFC4472] Durand, A., Ihren, J., and P. Savola, "Operational
Considerations and Issues with IPv6 DNS", RFC 4472,
April 2006.
[RFC4697] Larson, M. and P. Barber, "Observed DNS Resolution
Misbehavior", BCP 123, RFC 4697, October 2006.
[RFC4871] Allman, E., Callas, J., Delany, M., Libbey, M., Fenton,
J., and M. Thomas, "DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)
Signatures", RFC 4871, May 2007.
[RFC4931] Hollenbeck, S., "Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)
Domain Name Mapping", RFC 4931, May 2007.
[RFC4932] Hollenbeck, S., "Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)
Host Mapping", RFC 4932, May 2007.
Appendix A. Document Revision History
This section is to be removed should the draft be published.
A.1. Changes from -02 to -03
Added text about name server naming
Maintenance of references, minor edits
A.2. Changes from -01 to -02
Added text about grandchild glue
Maintenance of references, minor edits
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A.3. Changes from -00 to -01
Mentioned RFC survey
Added text about root server glue
New text for using glue in responses
Author's Address
Peter Koch
DENIC eG
Wiesenhuettenplatz 26
Frankfurt 60329
DE
Phone: +49 69 27235 0
Email: pk@DENIC.DE
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