[rssac-caucus] possible new work item
Joe Abley
jabley at hopcount.ca
Tue May 19 16:16:23 UTC 2015
Hi all,
I have a suggestion for a new work item for RSSAC. If RSSAC thinks this
work would be of value, and there are people willing to work on it, I'd
be happy to (co-) lead a work party.
A rough sketch of a charter follows.
Comments would be most welcome!
Thanks,
Joe
Back in the dim mists of time, individual root servers had names chosen
by the organisation that operated them. Some/all of these names are
recorded for posterity in the canonical root hints file, e.g. A was
originally NS.INTERNIC.NET, B was originally NS1.ISI.EDU, F was
originally NS.ISC.ORG, etc.
ftp://rs.internic.net/domain/named.cache
The naming scheme was subsequently changed to <letter>.ROOT-SERVERS.NET,
with the intent that the response to the priming query (using label
compression for the ROOT-SERVERS.NET domain) would be smaller, and would
allow an additional four root servers to be specified without causing
the priming response to grow beyond the specified non-EDNS(0) message
size limit using UDP transport. I have seen this cleverness attributed
to Bill Manning in the past.
ROOT-SERVERS.NET was delegated from the NET zone to all root servers.
The domain exists in the NET registry, defended by a platoon of registry
locks, and the zone itself is (if I recall correctly) maintained and
distributed by Verisign to root server operators as part of the root
zone maintainer function, with changes following a similar process to
that used for the root zone, including interactions between the three
root zone partners.
In the opinions of some (but not all) people, the existence of the
ROOT-SERVERS.NET zone is a historical mistake, and it would have been
better to name the root servers in a way that avoided the necessity for
a separate zone, e.g. bare single-label names (A, B, C, ...) or
multi-label names with no delegation (A.ROOT-SERVERS, B.ROOT-SERVERS)
provisioned directly in the root zone.
The presence of a label like ROOT-SERVERS might in effect constitute a
reserved TLD label, with corresponding impact on ICANN policy for root
zone management, the technical direction and remit of the IETF/IAB, and
the intersection of the two. So, there are dragons^Wpolitical
considerations, although I think RSSAC should constrain itself to
technical commentary and leave any dragon baiting to others.
SAC53 has a thing or two to say about "dotless domains" like A, B, C,
etc which could no doubt provide a useful citation. A client that sends
a priming query with EDNS0.DO=1 (which, I gather, is how most priming
queries are observed to arrive today) does not currently receive a
response with signatures in the additional section of the response,
because the ROOT-SERVERS.NET zone is not signed. The lack of signatures
in the ROOT-SERVERS.NET zone is either a feature or a bug, depending on
your perspective; if it was to be signed, the question of key management
would arise. If signatures were present, there might be some operational
impact caused by the increased size of the priming response.
Rather than the naming scheme for root servers remaining a collection of
partially-remembered anecdotes plus occasional yet regular memes on
mailing lists about what a mistake the current naming scheme was, I
think it would be good if RSSAC could produce a document that:
1. Provides a citeable history on how root nameservers were originally
named and how they are named today, recording the reasons for the
change;
2. Considers the risks and benefits of a new naming scheme that avoids
the zone cut, including impact on root zone partners' processes, on
operational issues like priming response sizes and backed-in assumptions
elsewhere about root server names and on security issues relating to
DNSSEC validation;
3. Considers the risks associated with any transition from the current
naming scheme to a different one;
4. Makes recommendations as to whether a change from the current scheme
should be made and, if the recommendation is to make a change, makes
further recommendations that might frame the way a transition is planned
and managed operationally. A recommendation that there be no change is
an equally reasonable outcome; either way the document should include
high-quality justification and reasoning.
All recommendations made would be actionable by ICANN (rather than
recommendations actionable by the other two partners or anybody else
with skin in the game), since that is the scope of our role.
More information about the rssac-caucus
mailing list