IDNAbis spec

Andrew Sullivan ajs at shinkuro.com
Wed Nov 4 16:48:29 CET 2009


[ccs to people known to be on list are trimmed]

On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 07:23:42AM -0800, Erik van der Poel wrote:
> I was talking about a single DNAME definition, not about other DNAMEs
> that might enter the picture at some point. 

That sounds like operational guidance, not protocol.  "Be careful" is
not a useful thing to put in a protocol document, even if it's
perfectly good operational advice.

I think you're right that it'd be nice to put together a set of
guidelines for what people ought to do when operating IDNA-aware
zones.  There are several sets of considerations that need to be taken
into account, and such advice ought indeed to be offered.

The IDNABIS WG is not the forum that should generate that advice:
hardly anybody here is a DNS operator.  I in fact previously offered
(in a fit of insanity) to put together a -00 draft outlining such
advice.  I think it should probably be taken to DNSOP to see if
there's any interest.  But the response to me (one with which I have
considerable sympathy) was that it'd be crazy to try to produce
operational suggestions for a protocol that hasn't made it out of the
IETF's process yet.

> If somebody were to
> implement a tool that checks DNAMEs before inserting them into a zone,
> that tool could check a *single* DNAME against the IDNAbis bidi rules.
> 
> Here is an example from http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2672
> 
> frobozz.example.  DNAME    frobozz-division.acme.example.
> 
> When the tool is about to insert this DNAME into the zone, it can
> apply the bidi rules to the full domain name (which consists of
> multiple labels, as you can see).

I think you don't fully understand how DNAMEs work.  Your example does
not alias "frobozz.example." to "frobozz-division.acme.example.",
because DNAMEs don't alias the owner name where the DNAME appears.
That DNAME _does_ alias www.frobozz.example to
www.frobozz-division.acme.example.  It also aliases א1.frobozz.example
to א1.frobozz-division.acme.example.  In fact, it aliases
*.frobozz.example.  The problem is to know whether there is in fact
the label א1 in frobozz-division.acme.example, and without controlling
both zones, the administrator of frobozz.example doesn't know (and
can't know unless zone transfer is permitted or
frobozz-division.acme.example is running DNSSEC with NSEC).  This is
why there is a problem.  DNAMEs don't do what a lot of people think
they do.

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
ajs at shinkuro.com
Shinkuro, Inc.


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