Internet DRAFT - draft-andrews-http-srv

draft-andrews-http-srv






Network Working Group                                         M. Andrews
Internet-Draft                                                       ISC
Expires: November 21, 2014                                   T. Kottelin
                                                            May 20, 2014


          Use of SRV records in conjuction with HTTP and URIs"
                       draft-andrews-http-srv-02

Abstract

   The combined use of SRV records for HTTP along with URIs is not as
   straight forward as it would appear at first glance.  This document
   looks at the issues involved and recommends solutions.

Status of this Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on November 21, 2014.

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   This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF



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   Contributions published or made publicly available before November
   10, 2008.  The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
   material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
   modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
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   than English.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  URIs without an explicit port specification . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  URIs with a explicit port specification . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
   4.  Transitioning Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   7.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6





























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1.  Introduction

   Many of todays HTTP sites are virtual, that is they are hosted on a
   machine that is not known by the name the HTTP site is known by.
   This leads to the problem of how to rationally give these HTTP sites
   IP addresses.  This has traditionally been done by using CNAMES
   [RFC1034] [RFC1035] or by using explicit IP address records where
   CNAMES are illegal due to restrictions in the DNS.

   Both of these solutions have undesired side effects.  CNAMES are not
   protocol specific.  Using IP address records is a logistic nightmare
   for large servers with many virtual sites.  This is becoming a bigger
   problem as companies move away from identifying their HTTP site with
   a "www" prefix and just use their delegated domain name, e.g.
   "http://example.com/".

   Using SRV [RFC2782] records would seem to be a natural solution to
   this problem in that they are protocol specific and will work where
   CNAMES are illegal in the DNS.

   There are problems with doing this without thought however in that
   URIs [RFC3986] can specify a port and SRV records do specify a port.
   When this occurs which one do you honour?

   In addition to this SRV records provide for load balancing.  For most
   protocols this is straight forward as there will only be a single
   connection made.  For HTTP however there are often many connections
   made in a session.  Should each of these individual connections be
   load balanced or should the load balancing be on a per session basis?

   The key words "MUST", "REQUIRED", "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT
   RECOMMENDED", and "MAY" in this document are to be interpreted as
   described in [RFC2119].


2.  URIs without an explicit port specification

   If the URI does not explicitly specify a port to connect to, i.e. the
   URI does not contain a ":<port>" part, there is no port conflict.  In
   this case a client MUST follow the logic specified in [RFC2782],
   including the server selection mechanism provided by the priority and
   weight fields.  If SRV records do not exist then the client MUST fall
   back to looking for IP address records.

   Once a server is selected it SHOULD be continued to be used for the
   rest of the session if possible after an initial connection is made.
   If a server has multiple addresses the client SHOULD continue to use
   the same address while possible taking into consideration ttl values



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   on address records.  If connections to this address fail it SHOULD
   try the other addresses for the server first before attempting other
   servers.

   The use of a SRV record does not affect the contents of the "Host:"
   field of the HTTP transaction.  Its only effect is to potentially
   change the address and port the client connects to.  All other parts
   of the HTTP transaction are not affected by the presence of a SRV
   record.

   Examples:

   Single SRV record:

   URI:     http://example.com/
   SRV RR:  _http._tcp.example.com. SRV   10 0 8080 host1.example.com.
   A RRs:   example.com.            A     10.0.0.2
            host1.example.com.      A     10.0.1.1

   Connect to: 10.0.1.1 port 8080

   Multiple SRV records:

   URI:      http://example.com/
   SRV RRs:  _http._tcp.example.com. SRV   10 1 8080 host1.example.com.
             _http._tcp.example.com. SRV   10 3 8080 host2.example.com.
             _http._tcp.example.com. SRV   20 0 8080 host3.example.com.
   A RRs:    example.com.            A     10.0.0.4
             host1.example.com.      A     10.0.1.2
             host2.example.com.      A     10.0.2.2
             host3.example.com.      AAAA  1080::8:800:200C:417A

   Connect to: 10.0.1.2 port 8080 or 10.0.2.2 port 8080 if either is
   available (the probability of being selected should be 25% for
   10.0.1.2 port 8080, and 75% for 10.0.2.2 port 8080); otherwise, try
   1080::8:800:200C:417A port 8080.


3.  URIs with a explicit port specification

   If the URI does explicitly specify a port, other than the default
   port, to connect to then there is a potential conflict in the port
   specification between the URI and the SRV records, and the SRV record
   is ignored.  In this case the user agent MUST query for address
   records for the host name in the URI (instead of SRV records).

   If the server has multiple addresses the client SHOULD continue to
   use the same address while possible taking into consideration ttl



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   values on address records.

   Note [RFC3986], Section 6.2.3.  Scheme-Based Normalization states
   that URIs with a port value equal to the default port (80) are
   identical to those with no port or a empty port.

   Examples:

   Default port specified:

   URI:      http://example.com:80/
   SRV RR:   _http._tcp.example.com. SRV   10 1 8080 host2.example.com.
   A RRs:    example.com.            A     10.0.0.1
             host2.example.com.      A     10.0.2.2

   Connect to: 10.0.0.2 port 8080

   Non-default port specified:

   URI:      http://example.com:8080/
   SRV RR:   _http._tcp.example.com. SRV   10 1 80 host2.example.com.
   CNAME RR: example.com.            CNAME host1.example.com.
   A RRs:    host1.example.com.      A     10.0.0.1
             host2.example.com.      AAAA  1080::8:800:200C:417A

   Connect to: 10.0.0.1 port 8080


4.  Transitioning Considerations

   When transitioning from using a non-SRV solution to using a SRV based
   solution old, non-SRV aware, clients will continue to look for
   address records.  It may be necessary to use redirection at the HTTP
   layer to direct these clients to the new servers if the SRV records
   point to a different <address, port> tuple.

   It will also be necessary to continue to provide the existing address
   / CNAME records until there is a significant percentage of SRV aware
   clients.  Experience has shown that this should be within one to two
   years of the introduction of the first SRV aware client.

   In cases where you are just trying to replace the A or CNAME record
   referring to a service providers machine with a SRV record the
   following should suffice.

   The service provider is hosting the service on machine.example.net
   and you are example.com.




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   example.com.            A   <IP address of machine.example.net>
   _http._tcp.example.com. SRV 0 0 80 machine.example.net.


5.  Security Considerations

   The authors believe the algorithm described in this document to not
   cause any new security problems.  However care should be taken as SRV
   and non-SRV aware clients may be directed to different locations.


6.  IANA Considerations

   A well known label has to be allocated for the first label of the
   http SRV record.  This document has used "_http".


7.  Normative References

   [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.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   [RFC2782]  Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for
              specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782,
              February 2000.

   [RFC3986]  Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform
              Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66,
              RFC 3986, January 2005.


Authors' Addresses

   M. Andrews
   Internet Systems Consortium
   950 Charter Street
   Redwood City, CA  94063
   US

   Email: marka@isc.org





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   T. Kottelin
   Laivalahden puistotie 10 C 37
   Helsinki  FIN-00810
   Finland

   Email: thor@anta.net













































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