Internet DRAFT - draft-hoffman-rfc6761bis
draft-hoffman-rfc6761bis
Network Working Group P. Hoffman
Internet-Draft ICANN
Obsoletes: 6761 (if approved) 3 October 2022
Updates: 1918, 2606 (if approved)
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: 6 April 2023
Special-Use Domain Names Registry
draft-hoffman-rfc6761bis-01
Abstract
This document obsoletes RFC 6761 that created the Special-Use Domain
Names registry at IANA for domain names that are reserved for special
use. The registry has proved to be useful. RFC 6761 also has a
description for when reserving such a name is appropriate, and the
procedure for doing so; those descriptions have turned out to cause
many problems in the IETF. Because of those problems, this document
obsoletes RFC 6761 while retaining the registry and greatly reducing
the rest of the discussion and requirements in RFC 6761. It places
the responsibility for accepting Special-Use Domain Names entries
with the IESG.
[ A repository for this draft can be found here (https://github.com/
paulehoffman/6761bis). ]
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
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."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 6 April 2023.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
Hoffman Expires 6 April 2023 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft Special-Use Domain Names Registry October 2022
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://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 Revised BSD License text as
described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Requirements for the Special-Use Domain Names Registry . . . 3
3. History of the Special-Use Domain Names Registry . . . . . . 3
4. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Appendix A. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
There is a long history of RFCs that reserve some domain names for
private use. [RFC2606] reserved ".test", ".example", ".invalid",
".localhost", "example.com", "example.net", and "example.org", as
well as all names below those names. It also created a registry at
IANA called "special-use domain names"
(https://www.iana.org/assignments/special-use-domain-names) for those
names and for future names assigned by the IETF.
This document obsoletes [RFC6761]. It keeps the IANA registry and
all its contents, but removes some of the requirements from RFC 6761
that were sometimes ignored after RFC 6761 was published. It also
has a brief discussion of what has happened since RFC 6761 was
published. The intentions for these changes to RFC 6761 are to make
it easier for the IESG to analyze proposals for inclusion in the
registry, and to make the requirements match what the IESG is already
doing.
In this document, "domain name" means a name in the global DNS as
defined in [RFC8499].
Hoffman Expires 6 April 2023 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft Special-Use Domain Names Registry October 2022
2. Requirements for the Special-Use Domain Names Registry
In order to be added to the Special-Use Domain Names registry, a
domain name needs to be specified in an IETF "Standards Action" RFC
or an "IESG Approval" specification. These terms are defined in
[RFC8126] as:
Standards Action: For the Standards Action policy, values are
assigned only through Standards Track or Best Current Practice
RFCs in the IETF Stream.
IESG Approval: New assignments may be approved by the IESG.
Although there is no requirement that the request be documented in
an RFC, the IESG has the discretion to request documents or other
supporting materials on a case-by-case basis.
A specification for this registry does not need to be an RFC.
RFC 6761 said that its process applied when a name required special
handling in order to implement some desired new functionality. This
document drops that requirement and the associated requirements for
documenting all the types of special handling required.
Of course, the IESG should require that all use case assumptions and
requirements for the names added to the registry be wholly contained
in the RFC or specification defining that name. However, the level
of that requirement is controlled by the IESG for each name, not by
this document. It is the IESG that decide whether to add new names
that are top-level names (such as ".example"), or names at the second
level of existing Special Domains (such as "example.arpa").
3. History of the Special-Use Domain Names Registry
RFC 6761 contained the initial entries for the registry. Those were
the names from [RFC2606] as well as "in-addr.arpa" names for the
private IPv4 addresses in [RFC1918]: 10/8, 172.16/12, and 192.168/16.
Immediately after RFC 6761 was published, [RFC6762] was published and
contained entries for "254.169.in-addr.arpa", "8.e.f.ip6.arpa",
"9.e.f.ip6.arpa", "a.e.f.ip6.arpa", and "b.e.f.ip6.arpa". It also
contained the registration for ".local". All of these were placed in
the Special-Use Domain Names registry.
After that, the registry became contentious, with many parties asking
to have top-level names that were related to their protocols added to
the registry. In September 2014, the IAB issued a liaison statment
(https://datatracker.ietf.org/liaison/1351/) to ICANN concerning the
registry. That statement said in part:
Hoffman Expires 6 April 2023 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft Special-Use Domain Names Registry October 2022
Under its current charter, the DNSOP working group in the IETF is
responsible to review and clarify the overlap between (among other
things) the special names registry from RFC 6761 and the public DNS
root. This could include consideration of the problem of existing
name collisions, provision of additional guidelines, or further
modification to the process in RFC 6761 to reduce the potential for
collisions in the future.
In September 2015, the IETF published a blog post
(https://www.ietf.org/blog/onion/), It says in part:
...the IESG believes RFC 6761 needs action, and substantial community
input. It needs to be open for review and modification because the
current process is unscalable.
Soon after, only one name, ".onion" [RFC7686] from October 2015, was
added to the registry.
Even with a great deal of subsequent effort, the DNSOP Working Group
could not reach consensus on how to move forward with any names other
than ".onion". After that, the only names added to the registry were
six names under ".arpa". Of those, only one RFC specifying those
names followed the requirements in RFC 6761 for documenting all the
types of special handling required.
In the future, the DNSOP WG and IESG can consider amending the DNSOP
Working Group charter to remove the responsibility of the DNSOP WG
for special-use domain names.
4. IANA Considerations
All entries in the Special-Use Domain Names registry that refer to
RFC 6761 are updated to point to this document.
Names can be added to this registry by the IETF after being specified
in an IETF "Standards Action" RFC or an "IESG Approval"
specification.
The requirement from RFC 6761 that the specification must contain
"Domain Name Reservation Considerations" is no longer required. It
has not been consistently enforced by the IETF and IANA since 2015.
5. Security Considerations
This document has the same security considerations as those expressed
in RFC 6761:
Hoffman Expires 6 April 2023 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft Special-Use Domain Names Registry October 2022
This document outlines the circumstances in which reserving a domain
name for special use is appropriate, and the procedure for having
that Special-Use Domain Name recorded by IANA. Any document
requesting such a Special-Use Domain Name needs to contain an
appropriate "Security Considerations" section which describes any
security issues relevant to that special use.
6. References
6.1. Normative References
[RFC6761] Cheshire, S. and M. Krochmal, "Special-Use Domain Names",
RFC 6761, DOI 10.17487/RFC6761, February 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6761>.
[RFC8126] Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.
[RFC8499] Hoffman, P., Sullivan, A., and K. Fujiwara, "DNS
Terminology", BCP 219, RFC 8499, DOI 10.17487/RFC8499,
January 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8499>.
6.2. Informative References
[RFC1918] Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, B., Karrenberg, D., de Groot, G.
J., and E. Lear, "Address Allocation for Private
Internets", BCP 5, RFC 1918, DOI 10.17487/RFC1918,
February 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1918>.
[RFC2606] Eastlake 3rd, D. and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
Names", BCP 32, RFC 2606, DOI 10.17487/RFC2606, June 1999,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2606>.
[RFC6762] Cheshire, S. and M. Krochmal, "Multicast DNS", RFC 6762,
DOI 10.17487/RFC6762, February 2013,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6762>.
[RFC7686] Appelbaum, J. and A. Muffett, "The ".onion" Special-Use
Domain Name", RFC 7686, DOI 10.17487/RFC7686, October
2015, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7686>.
Hoffman Expires 6 April 2023 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft Special-Use Domain Names Registry October 2022
Appendix A. Acknowledgements
This document lifts many ideas from RFC 6761. Stuart Cheshire and
Marc Krochmal deserve acknowledgement for the writing and the hard
work that went into getting RFC 6761 through the IETF process. The
members of the DNSOP Working Group who participated in the follow-up
work on the registry also deserve acknowledgement.
Author's Address
Paul Hoffman
ICANN
Email: paul.hoffman@icann.org
Hoffman Expires 6 April 2023 [Page 6]
