Network Working Group M. Mealling Internet-Draft Verisign Expires: August 1, 2000 February 2000 A DDDS Database Using The Domain Name System draft-ietf-urn-dns-ddds-database-03 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To view the entire list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories, see http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on August 1, 2000. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes a Dynamic Delegation Discovery System Database using the Domain Name System as a distributed database of Rules. The Keys are domain-names and the Rules are encoded using the NAPTR Resource Record. Since this document officially obsoletes RFC 2915, it is the official specification for the NAPTR DNS Resource Record. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 1] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. DDDS Database Specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. NAPTR RR Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.1 Packet Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.2 Master File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 5. Application Specifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 6. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 6.1 URN Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 6.2 E164 Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 7. Advice for DNS Administrators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 8. Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 2] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 1. Introduction The NAPTR DNS Resource Record was originally produced by the URN Working Group as a way to encode rule-sets in DNS so that the delegated sections of a URI could be decomposed in such a way that they could be changed and re-delegated over time. The result was a Resource Record that included a regular expression that would be used by a client program to rewrite a string into a domain name. Regular expressions were chosen for their compactness to expressivity ratio allowing for a great deal of information to be encoded in a rather small DNS packet. Over time this process was generalized for other Applications and Rule Databases. This document defines a Rules Database absent any particular Application as there may be several Applications all taking advantage of this particular Rules Database. As a result of this generalization, this document, along with RFC ZZZZ[11] and RFC XXXX[12], obsoletes RFC 2168[14], RFC 2915[13] and updates RFC 2276[10]. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 3] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 2. Terminology The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [1]. All other terminology, especially capitalized terms, is taken from [11]. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 4] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 3. DDDS Database Specification General Description: This database uses the Domain Name System (DNS) as specified in [3] and [2]. The character set used to specify the various values of the NAPTR records is UTF-8[15]. Key Format: A Key is a validly constructed DNS domain-name. Lookup Request: In order to request a set of rules for a given Key, the client issues a request, following standard DNS rules, for NAPTR Resource Records for the given domain-name. Lookup Response: The response to a request for a given Key (domain-name) will be a series of NAPTR records. The format of a NAPTR Resource Record can be found in Section 4. Rule Insertion Procedure: Rules are inserted by adding new records to the appropriate DNS zone. If a Rule produces a Key that exists in a particular zone then only the entity that has administrative control of that zone can specify the Rule associated with that Key. Collision Avoidance: In the case where two Application may use this Database (which is actually the case with the ENUM and URI Resolution Applications), there is a chance of collision between rules where two NAPTR records appear in the same DNS zone but they apply to more than one Appliation. There are three ways to avoid collisions: * create a new DNS zone in the zone which the administrator has authority that contains only NAPTR records that are appropriate for the application. E.g., all URI Resolution records are put into urires.example.com and all ENUM records are put into enum.example.com. In the case where this is not possible due to lack of control over the upstream delegation the second method is used. * write the regular expression such that it contains enough of the Application Unique string to disambiguate it from any other. For example, the URI Resolution Application would be able to use the scheme name on the left hand side to anchor the regular expression match to that scheme. An ENUM specific record in that same zone would be able to anchor the left hand side of the match with the "+" character which is defined by ENUM to be at the beginning of every Application Unique Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 5] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 String. This way a given Appliation Unique String can only match one or the other record, not both. * if two Application use different Flags or Services values then a record from another Application will be ignored since it doesn't apply to the Services/Flags in question. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 6] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 4. NAPTR RR Format 4.1 Packet Format The packet format of the NAPTR RR is given below. The DNS type code for NAPTR is 35. The packet format for the NAPTR record is as follows 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ | ORDER | +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ | PREFERENCE | +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ / FLAGS / +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ / SERVICES / +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ / REGEXP / +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ / REPLACEMENT / / / +--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ and as used here are defined in RFC1035[1]. ORDER A 16-bit unsigned integer specifying the order in which the NAPTR records MUST be processed in order to accurately represent the ordered list of Rules. The ordering is from lowest to highest. If two records have the same order value then they are considered to be the same rule and should be selected randomly unless the Preference numbers are different which means the randomization is weighted according to the ratio of the Preference values. PREFERENCE Although it is called "preference" in deference to DNS terminology, this field is equivalent to the Priority value in the DDDS Algorithm. It is a 16-bit unsigned integer that specifies the order in which NAPTR records with equal Order values SHOULD be processed, low numbers being processed before high numbers. This is similar to the preference field in an MX record, and is used so domain administrators can direct clients towards more capable hosts or lighter weight protocols. A client MAY look at records with higher preference values if it has a Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 7] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 good reason to do so such as not understanding some protocol or service. The important difference between Order and Preference is that once a match is found the client MUST NOT consider records with a different Order but they MAY process records with the same Order but different Preferences. I.e. Preference is used to give weight to rules that are considered the same from an authority standpoint but not from a simple load balancing standpoint. FLAGS A containing flags to control aspects of the rewriting and interpretation of the fields in the record. Flags are single characters from the set [A-Z0-9]. The case of the alphabetic characters is not significant. It is up to the Application specifying how it is using this Database to define the Flags in this field. It must define which ones are terminal and which ones are not. SERVICES A that specifies the Service Parameters applicable to this this delegation path. It is up to the Application Specification to specify the values found in this field. REGEXP A containing a substitution expression that is applied to the original string held by the client in order to construct the next domain name to lookup. See the DDDS Algorithm specification for the syntax of this field. As stated in the DDDS algorithm, The regular expressions MUST NOT be used in a cumulative fashion, that is, they should only be applied to the original string held by the client, never to the domain name produced by a previous NAPTR rewrite. The latter is tempting in some applications but experience has shown such use to be extremely fault sensitive, very error prone, and extremely difficult to debug. REPLACEMENT A which specifies the The next domain-name to query for depending on the potential values found in the flags field. This field is used when the regular expression is a simple replacement operation. Any value in this field MUST be a fully qualified domain-name. Unless and until permitted by future standards action, name compression is not to be used for this field. This field and the REGEXP field together make up the Substitution Expression in the DDDS Algorithm. They are also mutually exclusive. If a record is returned that has values for both fields then it is considered to be in error and should be ignored. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 8] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 4.2 Master File Format The master file format follows the standard rules in RFC-1035[1]. Order and preference, being 16-bit unsigned integers, shall be an integer between 0 and 65535. The Flags and Services and Regexp fields are all quoted s. Since the Regexp field can contain numerous backslashes and thus should be treated with care. See Section 10 for how to correctly enter and escape the regular expression. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 9] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 5. Application Specifications This DDDS Database is usable by any application that makes use of the DDDS algorithm. In addition to the items required to specify a DDDS Application, an application wishing to use this Database must also define the following values: o What DNS zone the Key that is produced by the First Well Known Rule belongs to. Any application must ensure that its rules do not collide with rules used by another application making use of this Database. For example, the 'foo' application might have all of its First Well Known Keys be found in the 'foo.net' zone. o What the allowed values for the Services and Protocols fields are. o What the expected output is of the terminal rewrite rule Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 10] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 6. Examples 6.1 URN Example The NAPTR record was originally specified for use with the a Uniform Resource Name Resolver Discovery System. This example details how a particular URN would use the NAPTR record to find a resolver service that can answer questions about the URN. See [12] for the definitive specification for this Application. Consider a URN namespace based on MIME Content-Ids (this is very hypothetical so do not rely on this). The URN might look like this: urn:cid:199606121851.1@bar.example.com This Application's First Well Known Rule is to extract the characters between the first and second colon. For this URN that would be 'cid'. The Application also specifies that, in order to build a Database-valid Key, the string 'urn.arpa' should be appended to the result of the First Well Known Rule. The result is 'cid.urn.arpa'. Next, the client queries the DNS for NAPTR records for the domain-name 'cid.urn.arpa'. The result is a single record: cid.urn.arpa. ;; order pref flags service regexp replacement IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "!urn:cid:.+@([^\.]+\.)(.*)$!\2!i" . Since there is only one record, ordering the responses is not a problem. The replacement field is empty, so the pattern provided in the regexp field is used . We apply that regexp to the entire URN to see if it matches, which it does. The \2 part of the substitution expression returns the string "example.com". Since the flags field is empty, the lookup is not terminal and our next probe to DNS is for more NAPTR records where the new domain is 'example.com'. Note that the rule does not extract the full domain name from the CID, instead it assumes the CID comes from a host and extracts its domain. While all hosts, such as 'bar', could have their very own NAPTR, maintaining those records for all the machines at a site could be an intolerable burden. Wildcards are not appropriate here since they only return results when there is no exactly matching names already in the system. The record returned from the query on "example.com" might look like: Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 11] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 example.com. ;; order pref flags service regexp replacement IN NAPTR 100 50 "a" "z3950+N2L+N2C" "" cidserver.example.com. IN NAPTR 100 50 "a" "rcds+N2C" "" cidserver.example.com. IN NAPTR 100 50 "s" "http+N2L+N2C+N2R" "" www.example.com. Continuing with the example, note that the values of the order and preference fields are equal in all records, so the client is free to pick any record. The Application defines the flag 'a' to mean a terminal lookup and that the output of the rewrite will be a domain-name for which an A record should be queried. Once the client has done that, it has the following information: the host, its IP address, the protocol, and the services available via that protocol. Given these bits of information the client has enough to be able to contact that server and ask it questions about the URN. Recall that the regular expression used \2 to extract a domain name from the CID, and \. for matching the literal '.' characters separating the domain name components. Since '\' is the escape character, literal occurances of a backslash must be escaped by another backslash. For the case of the cid.urn.arpa record above, the regular expression entered into the master file should be "!urn:cid:.+@([^\\.]+\\.)(.*)$!\\2!i". When the client code actually receives the record, the pattern will have been converted to "!urn:cid:.+@([^\.]+\.)(.*)$!\2!i". 6.2 E164 Example The ENUM Working Group in the IETF has specified a service that allows a telephone number to be mapped to a URI. The Application Unique String for the ENUM Application is the E.164 telephone number with the dashes removed. The First Well Known Rule is to remove all characters from the the telephone number and then use the entire number as the first Key. For example, the phone number "770-555-1212" represented as an E.164 number would be "+1-770-555-1212". Converted to the Key it would be "17705551212". The ENUM Application at present only uses this Database. It specifies that, in order to convert the first Key into a form valid for this Database, periods are inserted between each digit, the entire Key is inverted and then "e164.arpa" is appended to the end. The above telephone number would then read "2.1.2.1.5.5.5.0.7.7.1.e164.arpa.". This domain-name is then used to retrieve Rewrite Rules as NAPTR records. For this example telephone number we might get back the following NAPTR records: $ORIGIN 2.1.2.1.5.5.5.0.7.7.1.e164.arpa. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 12] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 IN NAPTR 100 10 "u" "sip+N2R" "!^.*$!sip:information@foo.se!" . IN NAPTR 102 10 "u" "smtp+N2R" "!^.*$!mailto:information@foo.se!" . ENUM uses the same 'u' flag as the URI Resolution Application. This flag states that the Rule is terminal and that the output is a URL which contains the information needed to contact that telephone service. ENUM also uses the same format for its Service Parameters. These state that the available protocols used to access that telephone's service are either the Session Initiation Protocol or SMTP mail. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 13] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 7. Advice for DNS Administrators Beware of regular expressions. Not only are they difficult to get correct on their own, but there is the previously mentioned interaction with DNS. Any backslashes in a regexp must be entered twice in a zone file in order to appear once in a query response. More seriously, the need for double backslashes has probably not been tested by all implementors of DNS servers. In order to mitigate zone file problems, administrators should encourage those writing rewrite rules to utilize the 'default delimiter' feature of the regular expression. In the DDDS specification the regular expression starts with the character that is to be the delimiter. Hence if the first character of the regular expression is an exclamation mark ('!') for example then the regular expression can usually be written without any backslashes. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 14] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 8. Notes A client MUST process multiple NAPTR records in the order specified by the "order" field, it MUST NOT simply use the first record that provides a known Service Parameter combination. When multiple RRs have the same "order" and all other criteria being equal, the client should use the value of the preference field to select the next NAPTR to consider. However, because it will often be the case where preferred protocols or services exist, clients may use this additional criteria to sort the records. If the lookup after a rewrite fails, clients are strongly encouraged to report a failure, rather than backing up to pursue other rewrite paths. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 15] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 9. IANA Considerations The values for the Services and Flags fields will be determined by the Application that makes use of this DDDS Database. Those values may require a registration mechanism and thus may need some IANA resources. This specification by itself does not. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 16] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 10. Security Considerations The NAPTR record, like any other DNS record, can be signed and validated according to the procedures specified in DNSSEC. This Database makes identifiers from other namespaces subject to the same attacks as normal domain names. Since they have not been easily resolvable before, this may or may not be considered a problem. Regular expressions should be checked for sanity, not blindly passed to something like PERL since arbitrary code can be included and subsequently processed. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 17] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 References [1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, BCP 14, March 1997. [2] Mockapetris, P.V., "Domain names - implementation and specification", RFC 1035, STD 13, Nov 1987. [3] Mockapetris, P.V., "Domain names - concepts and facilities", RFC 1034, STD 13, Nov 1987. [4] Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P. and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782, February 2000. [5] Crocker, D., "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997. [6] Daniel, R., "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN Resolution", RFC 2169, June 1997. [7] IEEE, "IEEE Standard for Information Technology - Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) - Part 2: Shell and Utilities (Vol. 1)", IEEE Std 1003.2-1992, January 1993. [8] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R.T. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. [9] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997. [10] Sollins, K., "Architectural Principles of Uniform Resource Name Resolution", RFC 2276, January 1998. [11] Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS)", RFC ZZZZ, Internet-Draft draft-ietf-urn-ddds-00.txt, May 2000. [12] Mealling, M., "URI Resolution using the Dynamic Delegation Discovery System", RFC XXXX, Internet-Draft draft-ietf-urn-uri-res-ddds-00.txt, July 2000. [13] Mealling, M. and R. Daniel, "The Naming Authority Pointer (NAPTR) DNS Resource Record", RFC 2915, August 2000. [14] Daniel, R. and M. Mealling, "Resolution of Uniform Resource Identifiers using the Domain Name System", RFC 2168, June 1997. [15] "Appendix A.2 of "The Unicode Standard, Version 2.0"", ISBN 0-201-48345-9, January 1996. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 18] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 Author's Address Michael Mealling Verisign 505 Huntmar Park Drive Herndon, VA 22070 US Phone: +1 770 921-2251 EMail: michaelm@netsol.com URI: http://www.verisign.com Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 19] Internet-Draft DDDS DNS Database February 2000 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implmentation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. 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Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Mealling Expires August 1, 2000 [Page 20]