--On Saturday, July 19, 2014 07:03 -0700 Douglas Otis
<doug.mtview@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>> If you would prefer a different term, please suggest one.
>>
>> That particular problem would be easily solved by saying
>>
>> "MX Resource Record with a null value"
>>
>> or even
>>
>> "MX Resource Record that, by convention, points at the
>> root"
>
> Agreed.
>
> Null as a term is misleading since these MX record contain an
> a value that simply won't resolve an address because it points
> to root.
>
> Although first used in defining SRV RR where:
> "A Target of "." means that the service is decidedly not
> available at this domain."
Trying to do fine editing on the IETF list is rarely productive
so, if this level of tuning is important (I think some of it
is), perhaps the document should be returned to the WG --with
all of the issues on the table that were apparently not raised
before Last Call-- and Last Called again when it is really
ready. Personally, I find symptoms that choices of string,
choices of response code, details of terminology, DNS impact,
etc., were not sorted out in the WG beyond repetitions of
statements like "this has been done since 2006 and no major
issues have appeared", troubling in and of themselves. To me,
the IETF adds value when those discussions occur both intra-area
and cross-area. If that value isn't wanted, or isn't wanted
beyond an editorial check, I'm not sure why we should be
investing the resources. YMMD, of course.
But, since I'm writing this note anyway, let me suggest that it
would be entirely reasonable (maybe not ideal, but reasonable)
to be very clear in the document about what is going on, perhaps
with the language I suggested and Doug likes, but then to point
out that the mechanism has been known as "null MX" or "nullMX"
for some years and that usage will undoubtedly continue. Such a
statement could even survive a change of what goes into the DATA
field should that otherwise be desired. If people want to refer
to this as "nullMX", that is probably no worse than an obscure
acronym or abbreviation. It is also very different from the
term I objected to that started this because "NULL MX Resource
Record" is rather clearly DNS-incorrect and misleading.
john