>> Sometimes an ASCII text record will be fine, in other cases, it probably won't. > >My point is as we move again towards multiple text representations of "the digit five" for example, >both encoding and parsing is easier and more secure if that digit is really for example eight bits >and not "text" that someone has to parse. Unless you provision your DNS zones with a hex debugger, the digit will always start out as text that someone has to parse. The question is who does the parsing, the DNS server or the application. As I said in a previous message, I can see plausible reasons to put the parser into the application. Would you really want to build an SPF or DKIM parser into every DNS server? That's a lot of code that the DNS manager doesn't care about, but the mail manager does. R's, John PS: For anyone who didn't read my previous message, I am NOT saying that it's fine to overload everything into TXT. I am saying that new RRTYPEs that are text blobs interpreted by client software wouldn't necessarily be bad. _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf