In message <5182828C.3040200@xxxxxxxx>, Hector Santos writes: > Mr. Resnick, for the record, I wasn't upset. Believe it or not, I was > actually applying an suggestion posted last month or so here with the > IETF diversity talks to help get a major WG issue resolved, one with a > near surety of an appeal, resolved and addressed much faster and hence > avoid a waste of time on the behalf of all. > > How appropo, that a topic of "balancing of process" as being considered. > It is one thing I believe the IETF needs and can be actually apply > today. Yes, I don't agree with the negative tone taken in SPFBIS where > in effect, an attempt to shut down communications and indirectly > personally attack posters occurred and the advocates of the SPF RRTYPE > removal (incidentally, a SPEC change which I believe was prohibited by > the charter), basically blowing off advocates of a RFC4408 status quo. > If you believe that was proper, I think we have a WG problem. > > Overall, I believe this (keep the migration path) is the proper > compromise to resolve the issue, and I believe that this particular > issue is industry-wide important to resolve with across the board > engineering input. It *SHOULD NOT* be reserved only to the applications > SPFBIS group especially when we know what the DNS community will say > about this and has said so since MARID 2003 and again last year in IETF > and DNSOPs. I was simply hoping to help "Balance the process" then as I > was attempted to do again. If I was in error for trying to get a > serious issue resolve, then please accept my apology. > > Sincerely, > > Hector Santos One of the questions is how to deal with vendors that claim to ship a product which is in compliance with the protcol when they are not. The DNS protocol has a error code for when you do not understand a query, FORMERR. It also has a error code for when you do not implement part of the protocol, NOTIMP. With RFC 103[45] you have three choices as a developer when you get a query type you don't know about. 1. Treat it as a FORMERR. 2. Treat it as a NOTIMP. 3. Treat it as a opaque data. Now in my book it isn't a FORMERR as you can understand the question even if you can't deal with it. NOTIMP is a reasonable response though I believe the intent in RFC 103[45] was to treat it as opaque data query which is what RFC 3597 says to do. Nowhere in RFC 103[45] does it say DO NOT RESPOND to the query yet we have DNS vendors that ship products that do just that and are claiming that they conform to the protocol. For a example of a set of servers that does this see earthlink.net's servers. Query for HINFO/earthlink.net at the authoritative servers for earthlink.net (itchy.earthlink.net and scratchy.earthlink.net) and you will not get a response. A RFC 103[45] compliant server should know about HINFO. It should also be capable of returning a NOERROR NODATA response for that query and it fact will if you ask for a non-existent TXT record at a name it serves. How do we deal with sites? How do we deal with vendors that ship such product? Mark -- Mark Andrews, ISC 1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742 INTERNET: marka@xxxxxxx