Subject: [dns-dir] Fwd: Re: [Errata Rejected] RFC1123

From: Olafur Gudmundsson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:21:30 -0400

Shit is going to hit the fan :-)

Jon Klensin wants DNS-dir to issue guidance on what is appropriate 
TLD strings.
(see IETF mailing list).

Andrew and I stopped him in getting his view through as an RFC1123 Errata.
IMHO inviting him to a meeting is going to be counter productive but we may
want him to submit an statement or request for action. (in particular as
this is the first meeting of the new DNS Dir).

Peter, as the DNS-dir "chair" this will be between you and the AD's to decide.
Everyone: please put up your availably on: 
http://www.doodle.ch/participation.html?pollId=i5hfkzq9fedrsw3z
soon so we can lock down the slot.
(Am I the only one planning on going to the social?)

         Olafur

>Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:42:24 -0400
>From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
>Subject: Re: [Errata Rejected] RFC1123
>To: Lisa Dusseault <[email-masked]>
>Cc: RFC Errata System <[email-masked]>, [email-masked],
>         Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>,
>         [email-masked], Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>,
>         Olafur Gudmundsson <[email-masked]>
>X-Mailer: Mulberry/4.0.8 (Win32)
>X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.64 on 66.92.146.20
>
>
>
>--On Tuesday, 15 July, 2008 09:19 -0700 Lisa Dusseault
><[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> > FYI,  I rejected the two errata mostly because they were
> > conflicting.  I got some advice from Andrew Sullivan and
> > Olafur which confirmed my preference not to answer the
> > conflict through errata processing but in some more open venue.
>
>Entirely proper and, IMO, the only possible decision under the
>circumstances.
>
> > I don't yet have any good ideas or preferences about how to
> > move forward.
>
>I think this is what we have a DNS Directorate for -- not
>necessarily to decide, but certainly to figure out how to
>proceed.  If it would helpful and someone wanted to invite me to
>a meeting or temporarily onto a mailing list, I'd be happy to
>try to do that.
>
>    john

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---

From: "Romascanu, Dan (Dan)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:24:31 +0200

You are not the only one planning on going to the social :-) 

Dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Olafur Gudmundsson
> Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 8:22 PM
> To: dns directorate
> Subject: [dns-dir] Fwd: Re: [Errata Rejected] RFC1123
> 
> 
> Jon Klensin wants DNS-dir to issue guidance on what is 
> appropriate TLD strings.
> (see IETF mailing list).
> 
> IMHO inviting him to a meeting is going to be counter 
> productive but we may want him to submit an statement or 
> request for action. (in particular as this is the first 
> meeting of the new DNS Dir).
> 
> > > conflicting.  I got some advice from Andrew Sullivan and Olafur 
> > > which confirmed my preference not to answer the conflict through 
> > > errata processing but in some more open venue.
> >
> > > I don't yet have any good ideas or preferences about how to move 
> > > forward.
> >
> necessarily 
> >to decide, but certainly to figure out how to proceed.  If it would 
> >helpful and someone wanted to invite me to a meeting or temporarily 
> >onto a mailing list, I'd be happy to try to do that.
> >
> >    john
>

---

From: Matt Larson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:16:56 -0400

> soon so we can lock down the slot.

I updated my availability just now...

> (Am I the only one planning on going to the social?)

...because I'm also going to the social.  :-)

See you all in Dublin,

Matt

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:16:36 -0400

> Andrew and I stopped him in getting his view through as an RFC1123 Errata.

Just to be clear, my impression wasn't that he was trying to get his
view through as an erratum, but that he filed the erratum because
someone else had already filed an erratum with slightly different
consequences.  I do feel pretty strongly that, if people want to put
different labels at the top level than RFC 1123 allows, we need to
update the RFC, not change its meaning via errata.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
[email-masked]
+1 503 667 4564 x104
http://www.commandprompt.com/
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---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:11:29 +0200

On 22 jul 2008, at 22.16, Andrew Sullivan wrote:

> I do feel pretty strongly that, if people want to put

Agreed.

    Patrik

---

From: Peter Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:02:14 +0200

Olafur,

> Jon Klensin wants DNS-dir to issue guidance on what is appropriate 

thanks for the heads up.  I've seen a mixturee of threads in the order of
300+ messages around an update to RFC2606, single character names and
IDN test TLDs.  Are you referring to particular message (none matched
"directorate)?

> this is the first meeting of the new DNS Dir).

Since the thread was named "[Errata Rejected] RFC1123", I had a look,
but all I could find was
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/errata_search.php?eid=1354>, which in fact
is an _approved_ erratum that might even be questioned.

So, do you have any background that you could provide as input, i.e.,
what the actual question is (all numerical TLDs? domain name vs. hostname?)?

> Peter, as the DNS-dir "chair" this will be between you and the AD's to 

Glad you used quotes ;-)
Given that it's our first meeting and we'll have to go through a long list
of topics, including organizing work, I'm a bit hesitant to have an
"invited guest" for yet another topic, so your suggestion seems perfect
to me.

-Peter

---

From: Thomas Narten <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:57:30 -0400

> IDN test TLDs.  Are you referring to particular message (none matched

Long thread, indeed, multiple threads.

Crux of question was whether IETF and/or directorate could come up
with some guidance for ICANN on the use of single letter labels
(and/or TLDs). Should they be allowed? why/why not?

And, things get fun with IDNs, as in "what is a character".

Thomas

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:30:14 -0400

> is an _approved_ erratum that might even be questioned.

Ah.  It looks like the rejected errata disappear on rejection.  Too
bad, that.

The source of the problem is section 2.1 of RFC 1123, specifically
this text:

           If a dotted-decimal number can be entered without such
           identifying delimiters, then a full syntactic check must be
           made, because a segment of a host domain name is now allowed
           to begin with a digit and could legally be entirely numeric
           (see Section 6.1.2.4).  However, a valid host name can never
           have the dotted-decimal form #.#.#.#, since at least the
           highest-level component label will be alphabetic.

The problem is the claim that the highest-level component label will
be alphabetic.  It isn't clear in the text whether that is a normative
condition on the TLD name space or just a comment that stemmed from
the knowledge of the root zone of the day.

The practical problem we have today is that IDN labels are all of the
form xn--[LDH].  Since "-" isn't ASCII, the current contents of the
root zone (which include some testing IDNA TLDs) include labels that
are not all alphabetic.  This will become worse if IANA makes those
"test" labels a permanent part of the root zone, and starts adding
large numbers of IDNA TLDs.

The errata in question were 1081 and 1353.  I'm relying mostly on
memory in what I say now: 1081 was proposed by Frank Ellerman, and it
was intended to relax the restriction on top level label names by
saying that they were just like any other label; but it included some
remarks that overall a complete name could not have [0-9] at the
beginning of every label.  John Klensin filed 1353 in response; it
included less-invasive changes which specifically allowed
non-alphabetic characters at any position in the label _except_ the
first character.  The first character was still to be [a-z], on the
grounds that lazy programmers would probably just check for a letter
in the first position (and so the change in the rule wouldn't affect
those cases).

It was Lissa Dusseault who asked me for my opinion on this, so she may
have access to the full archive of the original proposals.

There is a good argument that the text in RFC 1123 is just a nod to
then-current policy.  I note, however, that the change to the protocol
that 1123 made relied pretty heavily on that policy, because you
needed to know the first character of _some_ label was guaranteed not
to be [0-9] in order to differentiate between dotted-quads and dns
labels separated by dots.  I therefore think it completely reasonable
for an implementor to have taken the remark in RFC 1123 as a normative
one (especially since RFC 1123 doesn't explicitly say it's not
normative), and therefore to test for only [a-z] in such labels.

I don't know whether the current text in RFC 1123 is in fact
normative.  I also don't know whether there is any software anywhere
in the world that actually checks whether top level labels are always
alphabetic; and, if there is such software, whether it just checks for
[a-z] at position 1 or whether it checks that there is not anything
other than [a-z] in the whole label.  I claim that, if we're going to
accept a change to the text that is at least arguably normative, it
had better go through some working group and up the standards track
rather than being done as an erratum.

A

---

From: Peter Koch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:13:20 +0200

Andrew,

thanks a lot for the background information.

> Ah.  It looks like the rejected errata disappear on rejection.  Too

I haven't been able to access the RFC Editor's website for the last couple of
hours, but let's see whether the rejected errata remain accessible by number,
even if they're not listed under an RFC number.

> the knowledge of the root zone of the day.

Yes, that has bitten me a couple of times, as well.

> in the first position (and so the change in the rule wouldn't affect

Understood, the problem is that "numeric" and "alphabetic" don't cover all
options.

> normative), and therefore to test for only [a-z] in such labels.

Maybe, but since the reasoning was to avoid confusion with IPv4 addresses,
it's equally resonable to test for !=[0-9]+, i.e. "non-numeric". That's
at least code I've seen.

> rather than being done as an erratum.

Full agreement that it needs a seperate document, whether BCP or standards
track. And it has to be different from what's currently discussed as
2606bis, which is already outgrowing its mission IMHO.  There is previous
work by Mark Andrews on hostname vs. domain name syntax that could serve
as a basis.  However, due to the layer 9 issues involved, we should discuss
both the scope of the document and potential editors.
That said, I doubt that "guidance by the DNS directorate" is enough here,
instead I'd suggest we add "Tasking a document on TLD label syntax
clarification" to our agenda. Opinions?

-Peter

PS: Speaking of single label names, a TLD like 0x7f000001 should probably also
    be avoided.
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