Issue 1382 (was: Re: [ietf-dkim] New Issue: New resource record type)

[Stephen Farrell]

Scott,

The last time we met we had this same issue wrt key records
with the result shown below (excerpted from [1]).

I don't personally know if SSP records are in any way different
from key records, but it does seem to be the case that there is
some general opposition to (re-)using TXT.

And we won't really be able to have the discussion with the DNS
folks (which will be necessary) until we have a concrete protocol
to discuss with 'em.

So I'd suggest that we leave this issue [2] open for now, and come
back to the topic when we've got a concrete protocol on which we
can base the discussion.

Does that sound ok for now?

Stephen.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/wg/dkim/minutes?item=minutes66.html
[2] https://rt.psg.com/Ticket/Display.html?id=1382

"Bellovin on the DNS directorate issue: question about TXT vs other RR 
for _domainkey. Spent 45 minutes at DNS directorate. Steve not chair, 
but consensus. Quoting:

"The DNS directorate is unhappy with using TXT records this way. Some of 
the reasoning is spelled out in draft-iab-dns-choices-03.txt. At the 
least, a registry of _ names is needed, with provision for subtyping, 
but subtyping RRs has long been known to be bad . In general, TXT 
overloading can be likened to using HTTP as the universal transport 
protocol; see RFC 3205 for why that's a bad idea.

A more specific problem for this situation is the issue of wildcards. 
Briefly, you can't have a wildcard _domainkeys record; given that email 
is the major place where wildcards are used, this is a serious issue."

DNSSEC signing records at least may be found below _domainkeys and other 
RRs deliberately or by accident.

Olafur: If doc says "do not use wildcards" that'd be good. Proposes an 
experiment to acquire a new type if the WG want to try that (a fast 
process apparently).

Doug - eai may expand record as well as longer keys. Suggests that 
alternative to TXT might be good for that.

Crocker: Question to Bellovin: Would DNS directorate assert a DISCUSS. 
Bellovin: No-one said DISCUSS, but unhappiness. On the plus side, its a 
special record and we don't have to contend with other TXT records.

Way forward: WG will only specify a TXT for keys for now."