INTERNET-DRAFT Declan Ma, Ed. Intended Status: Proposed Standard zDNS Ltd. Expires: 2015-10-15 2015-05-22 DNS Name Syntax draft-pfrc-2181-name-syntax-00 Abstract RFC 2181 collected eight independent considerations and created a single docuement to address each of them in turn. Over the following two decades it has become clear that each of these items should be considered and evovolve in its own right, as suggested in RFC 2181. This document extracts the exact text from RFC 2181 and places it into its own track. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/1id-abstracts.html The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html Copyright and License Notice Copyright (c) 2015 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as Declan Ma, Ed. Expires 2015-10-15 [Page 1] INTERNET DRAFT DNS Name Syntax 2015-05-22 described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 Name syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Declan Ma, Ed. Expires 2015-10-15 [Page 2] INTERNET DRAFT DNS Name Syntax 2015-05-22 1 Introduction This document is intended to describe the issue of what makes a valid DNS label. 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 RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 3 Name syntax Occasionally it is assumed that the Domain Name System serves only the purpose of mapping Internet host names to data, and mapping Internet addresses to host names. This is not correct, the DNS is a general (if somewhat limited) hierarchical database, and can store almost any kind of data, for almost any purpose. The DNS itself places only one restriction on the particular labels that can be used to identify resource records. That one restriction relates to the length of the label and the full name. The length of any one label is limited to between 1 and 63 octets. A full domain name is limited to 255 octets (including the separators). The zero length full name is defined as representing the root of the DNS tree, and is typically written and displayed as ".". Those restrictions aside, any binary string whatever can be used as the label of any resource record. Similarly, any binary string can serve as the value of any record that includes a domain name as some or all of its value (SOA, NS, MX, PTR, CNAME, and any others that may be added). Implementations of the DNS protocols must not place any restrictions on the labels that can be used. In particular, DNS servers must not refuse to serve a zone because it contains labels that might not be acceptable to some DNS client programs. A DNS server may be configurable to issue warnings when loading, or even to refuse to load, a primary zone containing labels that might be considered questionable, however this should not happen by default. Note however, that the various applications that make use of DNS data can have restrictions imposed on what particular values are acceptable in their environment. For example, that any binary label can have an MX record does not imply that any binary name can be used as the host part of an e-mail address. Clients of the DNS can impose whatever restrictions are appropriate to their circumstances on the values they use as keys for DNS lookup requests, and on the values Declan Ma, Ed. Expires 2015-10-15 [Page 3] INTERNET DRAFT DNS Name Syntax 2015-05-22 returned by the DNS. If the client has such restrictions, it is solely responsible for validating the data from the DNS to ensure that it conforms before it makes any use of that data. See also [RFC1123] section 6.1.3.5. 4 Security Considerations It may be observed that in section 3.2.1 of RFC1035, which defines the format of a Resource Record, that the definition of the TTL field contains a throw away line which states that the TTL of an SOA record should always be sent as zero to prevent caching. This is mentioned nowhere else, and has not generally been implemented. Implementations should not assume that SOA records will have a TTL of zero, nor are they required to send SOA records with a TTL of zero. 5 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. [RFC1123] Braden, R., Ed., "Requirements for Internet Hosts - Application and Support", STD 3, RFC 1123, October 1989. [RFC2199] Ramos, A., "Request for Comments Summary RFC Numbers 2100- 2199", RFC 2199, January 1998. 6 Authors' Addresses Declan Ma, Ed. ZDNS Ltd. 4, South 4th Street, Zhongguancun, Haidian, Beijing 100190, China Declan Ma, Ed. Expires 2015-10-15 [Page 4]