Subject: Re: axfr-clarify breaking RFC 1034

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 10:21:09 +1100

> Robert Elz writes:
> > If you have a proposal for some method to actually cause the parent/child
> > delegation to *always* be compatible (glue in parent matches records in
> > child, always), then please don't keep it a secret
> 
> Read about timestamps in http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/tinydns-data.html. It's
> not my fault that BIND can't handle this trivial synchronization.
> 
> If you're trying to say that the RFC 1034 requirement should be loosened
> to allow semi-synchronized changes (parent zone is changed after all the
> child servers have changed), go ahead and make that proposal in DNSEXT,
> and we'll discuss it. But don't try to sneak it past us as part of an
> ``AXFR clarification.''

	Semi-synchronized changes have always been part of the DNS.
	Anyone who believes otherwise is deluding themselves.

	Mark
--
Mark Andrews, Internet Software Consortium
1 Seymour St., Dundas Valley, NSW 2117, Australia
PHONE: +61 2 9871 4742                 INTERNET: [email-masked]

---

From: "D. J. Bernstein" <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Feb 2003 00:07:52 -0000

> Semi-synchronized changes have always been part of the DNS.

If there's an honest proposal to modify the DNS specifications to allow
semi-synchronized changes (once again: parent zone being changed after
all the child servers have changed), perhaps the discussion will reveal
that those changes work with BIND 4, BIND 8, djbdns, etc.; that those
changes are useful; and that nobody objects to this modification.

On the other hand, if there's an honest proposal to modify the DNS
specifications to allow _unsychronized_ changes (such as your asinine
configuration examples), the discussion will reveal that those changes
do _not_ work with the majority of DNS servers on the Internet, that
those changes are _not_ useful, and that the modification is a bad idea.

What we have here is much worse: a thoroughly dishonest attempt to slip
the latter modification past us as part of an ``AXFR clarification.''
Anyone with a shred of integrity should be opposing this fraud.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago