On 27 Mar 2018, at 9:02, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
On Mon, Mar 26, 2018 at 05:46:45PM +0200, bert hubert wrote:
So my first suggested action is: could we write a document that has a
core
introduction of DNS and then provides a recommended (not) reading
list.
Maybe we could, but we failed at that once before.
Oh, there you go again with that operational history lesson. :-)
After the DNSSEC work wound down, around IETF 68, DNSEXT went
"dormant". But it was apparent that the DNS protocol was complicated
and difficult to understand, so the WG was rechartered partly to try
to get some clarity to the standards. The document the WG hung its
efforts on was
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dnsext-dns-protocol-profile-01.
The problem, of course, was that nobody had the time required to
complete this.
We hope that someone does, but rarely can we find someone whose boss
will give them the (literally) hundreds of hours that would take to do
this right.
I have no idea how the SMTP crowd at the IETF managed
to get the cycles to update 821/822 several times, but we were unable
to get this energy.
OK, my turn. I ran the Internet Mail Consortium during the timeframe of
that work, and helped shepherd some of the discussions and the interop
testing. It was grueling even though that was a group of people where
pretty much everyone liked each other and listened politely.
The last update to that draft came in January
2008, and by IETF 72 (in July of '08) Olafur and I concluded that, if
we couldn't get any activity, then we'd try to focus the WG on places
where it could make progress. We took that decision in the fall of
2008.
Now, I don't think that the work was bad or wrong, and I think that
draft remains a useful place to start if people want to pick up that
work again. But I'm not super convinced that this or any other WG
really will have the desire to undertake it. Maintenance is no fun,
and inventing new stuff is more entertaining.
But, by all means, if people want to revisit that effort, I think it
would be a fine thing. I think, however, that someone should contact
a friendly neighbourhood AD to try to determine where the work should
be chartered. I do _not_ think it is operations and management work.
From the SMTP work above, I would also say "...and unless you have an
author who can commit a lot of time over the course of two years".
One thing that would be interesting to explore in taking that effort
up is whether DNS should really be considered INT or ART. DNS lives
squarely in the application layer and isn't really like the other
things that fit in INT. OTOH, it's more a service to other parts of
the network than it is an application the way ordinary application
layer things are. The misfit of the model to the world strikes again!
This was another area where the SMTP work had an advantage: we got good
help from others in the Apps Area at the time.
--Paul Hoffman
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