DNSOP M. Andrews Internet-Draft ISC Updates: 1034 (if approved) S. Huque Intended status: Standards Track Salesforce Expires: 16 December 2023 P. Wouters Aiven D. Wessels Verisign 14 June 2023 DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Responses draft-ietf-dnsop-glue-is-not-optional-09 Abstract The DNS uses glue records to allow iterative clients to find the addresses of name servers that are contained within a delegated zone. Authoritative Servers are expected to return all available glue records for in-domain name servers in a referral response. If message size constraints prevent the inclusion of all glue records for in-domain name servers, the server must set the TC flag to inform the client that the response is incomplete, and that the client should use another transport to retrieve the full response. This document updates RFC 1034 to clarify correct server behavior. 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 16 December 2023. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2023 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 1] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 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 1.1. Reserved Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Types of Glue in Referral Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.1. Glue for In-Domain Name Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2.2. Glue for Sibling Domain Name Servers . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.3. Glue for Cyclic Sibling Domain Name Servers . . . . . . . 5 2.4. Missing Glue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.1. Glue for In-Domain Name Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.2. Glue for Sibling Domain Name Servers . . . . . . . . . . 8 3.3. Updates to RFC 1034 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 5. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8. Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 9. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 1. Introduction The Domain Name System (DNS) [RFC1034], [RFC1035] uses glue records to allow iterative clients to find the addresses of name servers that are contained within a delegated zone. Glue records are added to the parent zone as part of the delegation process and returned in referral responses, otherwise a resolver following the referral has no way of finding these addresses. Authoritative servers are expected to return all available glue records for in-domain name servers in a referral response. If message size constraints prevent the inclusion of all glue records for in-domain name servers over the chosen transport, the server MUST set the TC (Truncated) flag to inform the client that the response is incomplete, and that the client SHOULD use another transport to retrieve the full response. This document clarifies that expectation. Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 2] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 DNS responses sometimes contain optional data in the additional section. In-domain glue records, however, are not optional. Several other protocol extensions, when used, are also not optional. This includes TSIG [RFC8945], OPT [RFC6891], and SIG(0) [RFC2931]. At the time of this writing, addresses (A or AAAA records) for a delegation's authoritative name servers are the only type of glue defined for the DNS. Note that this document only clarifies requirements of name server software implementations. It does not introduce or change any requirements on data placed in DNS zones or registries. In other words, this document only makes requirements on "available glue records" (i.e., those given in a zone), but does not make requirements regarding their presence in a zone. If some glue records are absent from a given zone, an authoritative name server may be unable to return a useful referral response for the corresponding domain. The IETF may want to consider a separate update to the requirements for including glue in zone data, beyond those given in [RFC1034] and [RFC1035]. This document assumes a reasonable level of familiarity with DNS operations and protocol terms. Much of the terminology is explained in further detail in "DNS Terminology" [RFC8499]. 1.1. Reserved Words The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here. 2. Types of Glue in Referral Responses This section describes different types of glue that may be found in DNS referral responses. Note that the type of glue depends on the QNAME. A particular name server (and its corresponding glue record) can be in-domain for one response and in a sibling domain for another. 2.1. Glue for In-Domain Name Servers The following is a simple example of glue records present in the delegating zone "test" for the child zone "foo.test". The name servers for foo.test (ns1.foo.test and ns2.foo.test) are both below the delegation point. They are configured as glue records in the "test" zone: Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 3] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.foo.test. foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.foo.test. ns1.foo.test. 86400 IN A 192.0.2.1 ns2.foo.test. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:db8::2:2 A referral response from "test" for "foo.test" with glue for in- domain name servers looks like this: ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.foo.test. IN A ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.foo.test. foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.foo.test. ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.foo.test. 86400 IN A 192.0.2.1 ns2.foo.test. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:db8::2:2 2.2. Glue for Sibling Domain Name Servers Sibling domain name servers are NS records that are not contained in the delegated zone itself, but in another zone delegated from the same parent. In many cases, glue for sibling domain name servers are not strictly required for resolution, since the resolver can make follow-on queries to the sibling zone to resolve the name server addresses (after following the referral to the sibling zone). However, most name server implementations today provide them as an optimization to obviate the need for extra traffic from iterative resolvers. Here the delegating zone "test" contains two delegations for the child zones "bar.test" and "foo.test": bar.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.bar.test. bar.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.bar.test. ns1.bar.test. 86400 IN A 192.0.2.1 ns2.bar.test. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:db8::2:2 foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.bar.test. foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.bar.test. A referral response from "test" for "foo.test" with glue for sibling domain name servers looks like this: Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 4] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.foo.test. IN A ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.bar.test. foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.bar.test. ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.bar.test. 86400 IN A 192.0.2.1 ns2.bar.test. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:db8::2:2 2.3. Glue for Cyclic Sibling Domain Name Servers The use of sibling domain name servers can introduce cyclic dependencies. This happens when one domain specifies name servers from a sibling domain, and vice versa. This type of cyclic dependency can only be broken when the delegating name server includes glue for the sibling domain in a referral response. Here the delegating zone "test" contains two delegations for the child zones "bar.test" and "foo.test", and each use name servers under the other: bar.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.foo.test. bar.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.foo.test. ns1.bar.test. 86400 IN A 192.0.2.1 ns2.bar.test. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:db8::2:2 foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.bar.test. foo.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.bar.test. ns1.foo.test. 86400 IN A 192.0.2.3 ns2.foo.test. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:db8::2:4 A referral response from "test" for "bar.test" with glue for sibling domain name servers looks like this: ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;www.bar.test. IN A ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: bar.test. 86400 IN NS ns1.foo.test. bar.test. 86400 IN NS ns2.foo.test. ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION: ns1.foo.test. 86400 IN A 192.0.2.3 ns2.foo.test. 86400 IN AAAA 2001:db8::2:4 Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 5] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 In late 2021 the authors analyzed zone file data available from ICANN's Centralized Zone Data Service [CZDS] and found 222 out of approximately 209,000,000 total delegations that had only sibling domain NS RRs in a cyclic dependency as above. 2.4. Missing Glue An example of missing glue is included here, even though it can not be considered as a type of glue. While not common, real examples of responses that lack required glue, and with TC=0, have been shown to occur and cause resolution failures. The example below, from the dig command [DIG], is based on a response observed in June 2020. The names have been altered to fall under documentation domains. It shows a case where none of the glue records present in the zone fit into the available space of the UDP response, and the TC flag was not set. While this example shows a referral with DNSSEC records [RFC4033], [RFC4034], [RFC4035], this behavior has been seen with plain DNS responses as well. Some records have been truncated for display purposes. Note that at the time of this writing, the servers originally responsible for this example have been updated and now correctly set the TC flag. Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 6] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 % dig +norec +dnssec +bufsize=512 +ignore @ns.example.net \ rh202ns2.355.foo.example ; <<>> DiG 9.15.4 <<>> +norec +dnssec +bufsize +ignore \ @ns.example.net rh202ns2.355.foo.example ; (2 servers found) ;; global options: +cmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 8798 ;; flags: qr; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 9, ADDITIONAL: 1 ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION: ; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 4096 ;; QUESTION SECTION: ;rh202ns2.355.foo.example. IN A ;; AUTHORITY SECTION: foo.example. 86400 IN NS rh120ns2.368.foo.example. foo.example. 86400 IN NS rh202ns2.355.foo.example. foo.example. 86400 IN NS rh120ns1.368.foo.example. foo.example. 86400 IN NS rh202ns1.355.foo.example. foo.example. 3600 IN DS 51937 8 1 ... foo.example. 3600 IN DS 635 8 2 ... foo.example. 3600 IN DS 51937 8 2 ... foo.example. 3600 IN DS 635 8 1 ... foo.example. 3600 IN RRSIG DS 8 2 3600 ... 3. Requirements This section describes updated requirements for including glue in DNS referral responses. 3.1. Glue for In-Domain Name Servers This document clarifies that when a name server generates a referral response, it MUST include all available glue records for in-domain name servers in the additional section, or MUST set TC=1 if constrained by message size. At the time of writing, most iterative clients send initial queries over UDP and retry over TCP upon receiving a response with the TC flag set. UDP responses are generally limited to between 1232 and 4096 bytes, due to values commonly used for the EDNS0 UDP Message Size field [RFC6891], [FLAGDAY2020]. TCP responses are limited to 65,535 bytes. Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 7] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 3.2. Glue for Sibling Domain Name Servers This document clarifies that when a name server generates a referral response, it SHOULD include all available glue records in the additional section. If, after adding glue for all in-domain name servers, the glue for all sibling domain name servers does not fit due to message size constraints, the name server MAY set TC=1 but is not obligated to do so. Note that users may experience resolution failures for domains with cyclically-dependent sibling name servers when the delegating name server chooses to omit the corresponding glue in a referral response. As described in Section 2.3, such domains are rare. 3.3. Updates to RFC 1034 Replace "Copy the NS RRs for the subzone into the authority section of the reply. Put whatever addresses are available into the additional section, using glue RRs if the addresses are not available from authoritative data or the cache. Go to step 4." with "Copy the NS RRs for the subzone into the authority section of the reply. Put whatever NS addresses are available into the additional section, using glue RRs if the addresses are not available from authoritative data or the cache. If all glue RRs for in-domain name servers do not fit, set TC=1 in the header. Go to step 4." 4. Security Considerations This document clarifies correct DNS server behavior and does not introduce any changes or new security considerations. 5. Operational Considerations At the time of this writing, the behavior of most DNS server implementations is to set the TC flag only if none of the available glue records fit in a response over UDP transport. The updated requirements in this document might lead to an increase in the fraction of UDP responses with the TC flag set, and consequently an increase in the number of queries received over TCP transport. Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 8] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 6. IANA Considerations There are no actions for IANA. 7. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Joe Abley, David Blacka, Brian Dickson, Kazunori Fujiwara, Paul Hoffman, Geoff Huston, Jared Mauch, George Michaelson, Yasuhiro Orange Morishita, Benno Overeinder, John R Levine, Hugo Salgado, Shinta Sato, Puneet Sood, Petr Spacek, Ralf Weber, Tim Wicinski, Suzanne Woolf, and other members of the DNSOP working group for their input. 8. Changes RFC Editor: Please remove this section before publication. This section lists substantial changes to the document as it is being worked on. From -01 to -02: * Clarified that "servers" means "authoritative servers". * Clarified that "available glue" means "all available glue". * Updated examples and placed before RFC 1034 update. From -02 to -03: * Clarified scope to focus only on name server responses, and not zone/registry data. * Reorganized with section 2 as Types of Glue and section 3 as Requirements. * Removed any discussion of promoted / orphan glue. * Use appropriate documentation addresses and domain names. * Added Sibling Cyclic Glue example. From -03 to -04: * Use "referral glue" on the assumption that other types of glue may be defined in the future. * Added Operational Considerations section. Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 9] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 * Note many current implementations set TC=1 only when no glue RRs fit. New requirements may lead to more truncation and TCP. * Sibling glue can be optional. Only require TC=1 when all in- domain glue RRs don't fit. * Avoid talking about requirements for UDP/TCP specifically, and talk more generically about message size constraints regardless of transport. From -04 to -05: * Reverting the -04 change to use the phrase "referral glue". * Rephrase "in-domain glue" as "glue for in-domain name servers". * Rephrase "sibling glue" as "glue for sibling domain name servers". * Expand paragraph noting this document does not make requirements about presence of glue in zones. From -05 to -06: * More instances of rephrasing "in-domain glue" as "glue for in- domain name servers" (and for sibling glue). From -06 to -07: * Change "NOT REQUIRED to set TC=1" to "MAY set TC=1 but is not obligated to do so." From -07 to -08: * Update TSIG reference to RFC8945. From -08 to -09: * Lowercase RFC2119 keywords in abstract * Add informative reference to DNS terminology RFC * Add informative reference to dig 9. Normative References [RFC1034] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities", STD 13, RFC 1034, DOI 10.17487/RFC1034, November 1987, . Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 10] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 [RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035, November 1987, . [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, . [RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC 2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174, May 2017, . 10. Informative References [CZDS] ICANN, "Centralized Zone Data Service", January 2022, . [DIG] Wikipedia, "dig (command)", June 2023, . [FLAGDAY2020] Various DNS software and service providers, "DNS Flag Day 2020", October 2020, . [RFC2931] Eastlake 3rd, D., "DNS Request and Transaction Signatures ( SIG(0)s )", RFC 2931, DOI 10.17487/RFC2931, September 2000, . [RFC4033] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose, "DNS Security Introduction and Requirements", RFC 4033, DOI 10.17487/RFC4033, March 2005, . [RFC4034] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose, "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions", RFC 4034, DOI 10.17487/RFC4034, March 2005, . [RFC4035] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S. Rose, "Protocol Modifications for the DNS Security Extensions", RFC 4035, DOI 10.17487/RFC4035, March 2005, . [RFC6891] Damas, J., Graff, M., and P. Vixie, "Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS(0))", STD 75, RFC 6891, DOI 10.17487/RFC6891, April 2013, . Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 11] Internet-Draft DNS Glue Requirements in Referral Respon June 2023 [RFC8499] Hoffman, P., Sullivan, A., and K. Fujiwara, "DNS Terminology", BCP 219, RFC 8499, DOI 10.17487/RFC8499, January 2019, . [RFC8945] Dupont, F., Morris, S., Vixie, P., Eastlake 3rd, D., Gudmundsson, O., and B. Wellington, "Secret Key Transaction Authentication for DNS (TSIG)", STD 93, RFC 8945, DOI 10.17487/RFC8945, November 2020, . Authors' Addresses M. Andrews ISC Email: marka@isc.org Shumon Huque Salesforce Email: shuque@gmail.com Paul Wouters Aiven Email: paul.wouters@aiven.io Duane Wessels Verisign Email: dwessels@verisign.com Andrews, et al. Expires 16 December 2023 [Page 12]