4 DNSEXT Working Group M. Graff
5 Internet-Draft P. Vixie
6 Obsoletes: 2671 (if approved) Internet Systems Consortium
7 Intended status: Standards Track July 28, 2009
8 Expires: January 29, 2010
11 Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)
12 draft-ietf-dnsext-rfc2671bis-edns0-02
16 This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
17 provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
19 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
20 Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
21 other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
24 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
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26 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
27 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
29 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
30 http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
32 The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
33 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
35 This Internet-Draft will expire on January 29, 2010.
39 Copyright (c) 2009 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
40 document authors. All rights reserved.
42 This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
43 Provisions Relating to IETF Documents in effect on the date of
44 publication of this document (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).
45 Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
46 and restrictions with respect to this document.
50 The Domain Name System's wire protocol includes a number of fixed
51 fields whose range has been or soon will be exhausted and does not
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60 allow requestors to advertise their capabilities to responders. This
61 document describes backward compatible mechanisms for allowing the
64 This document updates the EDNS0 specification based on 10 years of
65 operational experience.
70 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
71 2. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
72 3. EDNS Support Requirement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
73 4. Affected Protocol Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
74 4.1. Message Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
75 4.2. Label Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
76 4.3. UDP Message Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
77 5. Extended Label Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
78 6. OPT pseudo-RR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
79 6.1. OPT Record Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
80 6.2. OPT Record Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
81 6.3. Requestor's Payload Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
82 6.4. Responder's Payload Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
83 6.5. Payload Size Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
84 6.6. Middleware Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
85 6.7. Extended RCODE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
86 6.8. OPT Options Type Allocation Procedure . . . . . . . . . . 8
87 7. Transport Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
88 8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
89 9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
90 10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
91 11. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
92 11.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
93 11.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
94 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
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118 DNS [RFC1035] specifies a Message Format and within such messages
119 there are standard formats for encoding options, errors, and name
120 compression. The maximum allowable size of a DNS Message is fixed.
121 Many of DNS's protocol limits are too small for uses which are or
122 which are desired to become common. There is no way for
123 implementations to advertise their capabilities.
125 Unextended agents will not know how to interpret the protocol
126 extensions detailed here. In practice, these clients will be
127 upgraded when they have need of a new feature, and only new features
128 will make use of the extensions. Extended agents must be prepared
129 for behaviour of unextended clients in the face of new protocol
130 elements, and fall back gracefully to unextended DNS. [RFC2671]
131 originally proposed extensions to the basic DNS protocol to overcome
132 these deficiencies. This memo refines that specification and
136 2. Requirements Language
138 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
139 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
140 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
143 3. EDNS Support Requirement
145 EDNS support is manditory in a modern world. DNSSEC requires EDNS
146 support, and many other featres are made possible only by EDNS
147 support to request or advertise them.
150 4. Affected Protocol Elements
154 The DNS Message Header's (see , section 4.1.1 [RFC1035]) second full
155 16-bit word is divided into a 4-bit OPCODE, a 4-bit RCODE, and a
156 number of 1-bit flags. The original reserved Z bits have been
157 allocated to various purposes, and most of the RCODE values are now
158 in use. More flags and more possible RCODEs are needed. The OPT
159 pseudo-RR specified below contains subfields that carry a bit field
160 extension of the RCODE field and additional flag bits, respectively.
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174 The first two bits of a wire format domain label are used to denote
175 the type of the label. ,section 4.1.4 [RFC1035] allocates two of the
176 four possible types and reserves the other two. More label types
177 were proposed in [RFC2671] section 3.
179 4.3. UDP Message Size
181 DNS Messages are limited to 512 octets in size when sent over UDP.
182 While the minimum maximum reassembly buffer size still allows a limit
183 of 512 octets of UDP payload, most of the hosts now connected to the
184 Internet are able to reassemble larger datagrams. Some mechanism
185 must be created to allow requestors to advertise larger buffer sizes
186 to responders. To this end, the OPT pseudo-RR specified below
187 contains a maximum payload size field.
190 5. Extended Label Types
192 The first octet in the on-the-wire representation of a DNS label
193 specifies the label type; the basic DNS specification [RFC1035]
194 dedicates the two most significant bits of that octet for this
197 This document reserves DNS label type 0b01 for use as an indication
198 for Extended Label Types. A specific extended label type is selected
199 by the 6 least significant bits of the first octet. Thus, Extended
200 Label Types are indicated by the values 64-127 (0b01xxxxxx) in the
201 first octet of the label.
203 This document does not describe any specific Extended Label Type.
205 In practice, Extended Label Types are difficult to use due to support
206 in clients and intermediate gateways. Therefore, the registry of
207 Extended Label Types is requested to be closed. They cause
208 interoperability problems and at present no defined label types are
214 6.1. OPT Record Behavior
216 One OPT pseudo-RR (RR type 41) MAY be added to the additional data
217 section of a request. If present in requests, compliant responders
218 which implement EDNS MUST include an OPT record in non-truncated
219 responses, and SHOULD attempt to include them in all responses. An
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228 OPT is called a pseudo-RR because it pertains to a particular
229 transport level message and not to any actual DNS data. OPT RRs MUST
230 NOT be cached, forwarded, or stored in or loaded from master files.
231 The quantity of OPT pseudo-RRs per message MUST be either zero or
232 one, but not greater.
234 6.2. OPT Record Format
236 An OPT RR has a fixed part and a variable set of options expressed as
237 {attribute, value} pairs. The fixed part holds some DNS meta data
238 and also a small collection of basic extension elements which we
239 expect to be so popular that it would be a waste of wire space to
240 encode them as {attribute, value} pairs.
242 The fixed part of an OPT RR is structured as follows:
244 +------------+--------------+------------------------------+
245 | Field Name | Field Type | Description |
246 +------------+--------------+------------------------------+
247 | NAME | domain name | empty (root domain) |
248 | TYPE | u_int16_t | OPT |
249 | CLASS | u_int16_t | requestor's UDP payload size |
250 | TTL | u_int32_t | extended RCODE and flags |
251 | RDLEN | u_int16_t | describes RDATA |
252 | RDATA | octet stream | {attribute,value} pairs |
253 +------------+--------------+------------------------------+
257 The variable part of an OPT RR is encoded in its RDATA and is
258 structured as zero or more of the following:
262 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
264 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
266 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
270 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
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285 Assigned by Expert Review.
288 Size (in octets) of OPTION-DATA.
291 Varies per OPTION-CODE.
293 Order of appearance of option tuples is never relevant. Any option
294 whose meaning is affected by other options is so affected no matter
295 which one comes first in the OPT RDATA.
297 Any OPTION-CODE values not understood by a responder or requestor
298 MUST be ignored. Specifications of such options might wish to
299 include some kind of signalled acknowledgement. For example, an
300 option specification might say that if a responder sees option XYZ,
301 it SHOULD include option XYZ in its response.
303 6.3. Requestor's Payload Size
305 The requestor's UDP payload size (which OPT stores in the RR CLASS
306 field) is the number of octets of the largest UDP payload that can be
307 reassembled and delivered in the requestor's network stack. Note
308 that path MTU, with or without fragmentation, may be smaller than
309 this. Values lower than 512 MUST be treated as equal to 512.
311 Note that a 512-octet UDP payload requires a 576-octet IP reassembly
312 buffer. Choosing 1280 for IPv4 over Ethernet would be reasonable.
313 The consequence of choosing too large a value may be an ICMP message
314 from an intermediate gateway, or even a silent drop of the response
317 The requestor's maximum payload size can change over time, and MUST
318 therefore not be cached for use beyond the transaction in which it is
321 6.4. Responder's Payload Size
323 The responder's maximum payload size can change over time, but can be
324 reasonably expected to remain constant between two sequential
325 transactions; for example, a meaningless QUERY to discover a
326 responder's maximum UDP payload size, followed immediately by an
327 UPDATE which takes advantage of this size. (This is considered
328 preferrable to the outright use of TCP for oversized requests, if
329 there is any reason to suspect that the responder implements EDNS,
330 and if a request will not fit in the default 512 payload size limit.)
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340 6.5. Payload Size Selection
342 Due to transaction overhead, it is unwise to advertise an
343 architectural limit as a maximum UDP payload size. Just because your
344 stack can reassemble 64KB datagrams, don't assume that you want to
345 spend more than about 4KB of state memory per ongoing transaction.
347 A requestor MAY choose to implement a fallback to smaller advertised
348 sizes to work around firewall or other network limitations. A
349 requestor SHOULD choose to use a fallback mechanism which begins with
350 a large size, such as 4096. If that fails, a fallback around the
351 1220 byte range SHOULD be tried, as it has a reasonable chance to fit
352 within a single Ethernet frame. Failing that, a requestor MAY choose
353 a 512 byte packet, which with large answers may cause a TCP retry.
355 6.6. Middleware Boxes
357 Middleware boxes MUST NOT limit DNS messages over UDP to 512 bytes.
359 Middleware boxes which simply forward requests to a recursive
360 resolver MUST NOT modify the OPT record contents in either direction.
364 The extended RCODE and flags (which OPT stores in the RR TTL field)
365 are structured as follows:
368 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
369 0: | EXTENDED-RCODE | VERSION |
370 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
372 +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
375 Forms upper 8 bits of extended 12-bit RCODE. Note that
376 EXTENDED-RCODE value "0" indicates that an unextended RCODE is
377 in use (values "0" through "15").
380 Indicates the implementation level of whoever sets it. Full
381 conformance with this specification is indicated by version
382 ``0.'' Requestors are encouraged to set this to the lowest
383 implemented level capable of expressing a transaction, to
384 minimize the responder and network load of discovering the
385 greatest common implementation level between requestor and
386 responder. A requestor's version numbering strategy MAY
387 ideally be a run time configuration option.
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396 If a responder does not implement the VERSION level of the
397 request, then it answers with RCODE=BADVERS. All responses
398 MUST be limited in format to the VERSION level of the request,
399 but the VERSION of each response SHOULD be the highest
400 implementation level of the responder. In this way a requestor
401 will learn the implementation level of a responder as a side
402 effect of every response, including error responses and
403 including RCODE=BADVERS.
406 DNSSEC OK bit as defined by [RFC3225].
409 Set to zero by senders and ignored by receivers, unless
410 modified in a subsequent specification.
412 6.8. OPT Options Type Allocation Procedure
414 Allocations assigned by expert review. TBD
417 7. Transport Considerations
419 The presence of an OPT pseudo-RR in a request should be taken as an
420 indication that the requestor fully implements the given version of
421 EDNS, and can correctly understand any response that conforms to that
422 feature's specification.
424 Lack of presence of an OPT record in a request MUST be taken as an
425 indication that the requestor does not implement any part of this
426 specification and that the responder MUST NOT use any protocol
427 extension described here in its response.
429 Responders who do not implement these protocol extensions MUST
430 respond with FORMERR messages without any OPT record.
432 If there is a problem with processing the OPT record itself, such as
433 an option value that is badly formatted or includes out of range
434 values, a FORMERR MAY be retured. If this occurs the response MUST
435 include an OPT record. This MAY be used to distinguish between
436 servers whcih do not implement EDNS and format errors within EDNS.
438 If EDNS is used in a request, and the response arrives with TC set
439 and with no EDNS OPT RR, a requestor SHOULD assume that truncation
440 prevented the OPT RR from being appended by the responder, and
441 further, that EDNS is not used in the response. Correspondingly, an
442 EDNS responder who cannot fit all necessary elements (including an
443 OPT RR) into a response, SHOULD respond with a normal (unextended)
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452 DNS response, possibly setting TC if the response will not fit in the
453 unextended response message's 512-octet size.
456 8. Security Considerations
458 Requestor-side specification of the maximum buffer size may open a
459 new DNS denial of service attack if responders can be made to send
460 messages which are too large for intermediate gateways to forward,
461 thus leading to potential ICMP storms between gateways and
464 Announcing very large UDP buffer sizes may result in dropping by
465 firewalls. This could cause retransmissions with no hope of success.
466 Some devices reject fragmented UDP packets.
468 Announcing too small UDP buffer sizes may result in fallback to TCP.
469 This is especially important with DNSSEC, where answers are much
473 9. IANA Considerations
475 The IANA has assigned RR type code 41 for OPT.
477 [RFC2671] specified a number of IANA sub-registries within "DOMAIN
478 NAME SYSTEM PARAMETERS:" "EDNS Extended Label Type", "EDNS Option
479 Codes", "EDNS Version Numbers", and "Domain System Response Code."
480 IANA is advised to re-parent these subregistries to this document.
482 RFC 2671 created an extended label type registry. We request that
483 this registry be closed.
485 This document assigns extended label type 0bxx111111 as "Reserved for
486 future extended label types." We request that IANA record this
489 This document assigns option code 65535 to "Reserved for future
492 This document expands the RCODE space from 4 bits to 12 bits. This
493 will allow IANA to assign more than the 16 distinct RCODE values
494 allowed in RFC 1035 [RFC1035].
496 This document assigns EDNS Extended RCODE "16" to "BADVERS".
498 IESG approval should be required to create new entries in the EDNS
499 Extended Label Type or EDNS Version Number registries, while any
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508 published RFC (including Informational, Experimental, or BCP) should
509 be grounds for allocation of an EDNS Option Code.
514 Paul Mockapetris, Mark Andrews, Robert Elz, Don Lewis, Bob Halley,
515 Donald Eastlake, Rob Austein, Matt Crawford, Randy Bush, and Thomas
516 Narten were each instrumental in creating and refining this
522 11.1. Normative References
524 [RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
525 specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.
527 [RFC2671] Vixie, P., "Extension Mechanisms for DNS (EDNS0)",
528 RFC 2671, August 1999.
530 [RFC3225] Conrad, D., "Indicating Resolver Support of DNSSEC",
531 RFC 3225, December 2001.
533 11.2. Informative References
535 [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
536 Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
542 Internet Systems Consortium
544 Redwood City, California 94063
547 Phone: +1 650.423.1304
548 Email: mgraff@isc.org
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565 Internet Systems Consortium
567 Redwood City, California 94063
570 Phone: +1 650.423.1301
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