Subject: more wild cards

From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 2004 21:48:42 -0400

I've been looking at the text as it stands and the minutes of the 
meeting in Minneapolis.  Besides the name question -

1) * SOA.  The text goes to great lengths to say that this is doable 
in one sense, but in another sense it's stupid.  I.e., Step 2 of the 
algorithm in RFC 1034 (sect 4.3.2) says "pick the zone".  If you can 
generate zones on the fly, you do it here.

The problem is, you really can't.

Let's say you have example.com and *.example.com on the server.  I 
ask for www.cnn.example.com.  In step 2, you can't just generate 
cnn.example.com - because you don't know if there's an NS RR set for 
cnn.exmample.com in example.com.  I.e., you'd have to do step 2, then 
step 3.  If in step 3 you'd decide to send a referral, you would then 
have to go back to step 2 and generate.

Now, I realize that the algorithm is a suggestion, that the 
sequential nature of step 2 and step 3 isn't strict - but I don't 
think the intent was to do step 2 - 3 - 2 (again) - 3 (again).

I'm suggesting that we declare a * SOA to be an load/update error.

2) * NS.  The text talks around this too, with the discussion being 
rather vague.  But at the end of the meeting I recall someone say:

   "You have to be authoritative for the data to synthesize records, and if you
    see * NS, you are not in the authoritative zone."

I forget who said it, it isn't in the minutes, but I think that's a 
sharp observation.  (I didn't see it, and I have been staring at wild 
cards for some time now.)

I'm suggesting that * NS be a load/update error.

3) * CNAME.  From memory, we wanted to alter the algorithm to make 
this "chaseable" in the answer generation.  I'm going to recover the 
text on this and put it in.

There's a blurb about fixing DNAME, I'll do that.  At this moment, I 
think that captures the main pending changes that I have questions 
about.

-- 
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Edward Lewis                                            +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer

"I can't go to Miami.  I'm expecting calls from telemarketers." -
Grandpa Simpson.

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From: Edward Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 15:39:06 -0400

At 15:24 -0400 9/10/04, Scott Rose wrote:
>Whoops, my bad:
>
>The closest encloser for [D] would be "example.com".  not
>"star.example.com".  At least that's my impression from the wildcard clarify
>draft.

...;) and I had a pretty printed response to say as much. ;)  Yeah, 
the tree doesn't have a star.example.com, so it can't be the closest 
encloser.
-- 
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Edward Lewis                                            +1-703-227-9854
ARIN Research Engineer