Early Review of draft-ietf-dnsop-qdcount-is-one-01
review-ietf-dnsop-qdcount-is-one-01-dnsdir-early-brown-2024-01-17-00

I have been selected as the DNS Directorate reviewer for this draft. The DNS
Directorate seeks to review all DNS or DNS-related drafts as they pass through
IETF last call and IESG review, and sometimes on special request. The purpose
of the review is to provide assistance to the ADs. For more information about
the DNS Directorate, please see https://wiki.ietf.org/en/group/dnsdir

This draft proposes addition of normative language updating RFC1035 to specify
that QDCOUNT must not be > 1 for OPCODE=0 (QUERY) DNS requests. The intent is
to eliminate present ambiguity in the specification where QDCOUNT is not
required to be <= 1, but (as described by section A.1 and A.5 of the draft) in
practical terms given the meaning of other fields (AA) and the surrounding
language in RFC1035 it is undefined how such a question should or even could be
interpreted and usefully responded to.

The proposal has been discussed in the dnsop group and previous meetings and my
observation of the discussion is that there is both broad agreement that
QDCOUNT > 1 is not used in practice and at least some supporting evidence
presented that it is not observed in the wild either.

The draft itself is clear and understandable. Both the language and the
substance of the proposal make sense to me.

Given this previous discussion and clarity of proposal I see no blockers or
issues for the ADs to consider and recommend this draft is ready to be
progressed further.