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Expressing Quality of Service Requirements (QoS) in Domain Name System (DNS) Queries
draft-eastlake-dnsop-expressing-qos-requirements-01

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft whose latest revision state is "Active".
Authors Donald E. Eastlake 3rd , Haoyu Song
Last updated 2022-08-23
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draft-eastlake-dnsop-expressing-qos-requirements-01
DNSOP                                                        D. Eastlake
Internet-Draft                                                   H. Song
Intended status: Standards Track                  Futurewei Technologies
Expires: 24 February 2023                                 23 August 2022

 Expressing Quality of Service Requirements (QoS) in Domain Name System
                             (DNS) Queries
          draft-eastlake-dnsop-expressing-qos-requirements-01

Abstract

   A method of encoding communication service quality requirements in a
   Domain Name System (DNS) query is specified through inclusion of the
   requirements in one or more label of the name being queried.  This
   enables DNS responses that are dependent on such requirements without
   changes in the format of DNS protocol messages or DNS application
   program interfaces (APIs).

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
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   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 24 February 2023.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Terminology and Acronyms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Including Service Requirements in DNS Queries . . . . . . . .   4
     2.1.  Including Information in DNS Queries  . . . . . . . . . .   4
     2.2.  Encoding Service Requirements in DNS Names  . . . . . . .   5
       2.2.1.  Requirement TLV Encoding  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
       2.2.2.  Requirements Types and Value Encoding . . . . . . . .   6
       2.2.3.  Complete QoS DNS Names  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   3.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.1.  Requirements Label Type Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
     4.2.  Restricted LDH Label Prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
       4.2.1.  R-LDH Registry  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
       4.2.2.  R-LDH Expert Guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   9
   5.  Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12

1.  Introduction

   The Domain Name System (DNS) is a distributed database that stores
   data under hierarchical domain names and supports redundant servers,
   data caching, and security features.  The data is formatted into
   resource records (RRs) whose content type and structure are indicated
   by the RR Type field.  A typical use of DNS is that, by running the
   DNS protocol, a host gets the IP addresses stored at a domain name
   from DNS servers through a DNS resolver.  Many other types of data
   besides IP addresses can be stored in and returned by the DNS.

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   There are instances where different DNS answers are desired depending
   on the type of destination service to be connected to and/or the
   communication protocol to be used for that communication.  This can
   be indicated in a query through the use of designated initial labels
   beginning with the underscore codepoint ("_", 0x5F).  This was
   initially specified for the SRV RR Type [RFC2782].  It has been
   extended with additional types of leading-underscore labels for use
   with the TLSA, URI, TXT, and other RR Types [RFC8552].

   Similarly, there is a need to encode different communication service
   quality requirements in DNS queries.  Then different DNS answers can
   be returned depending, for example, on whether high bandwidth or low
   delay is the most important factor in the communication.  Different
   answers could cause packets to be differently handled, constructed,
   or addressed which in turn could affect the path taken and/or the
   behavior of network switches along the communications path so as to
   make the communications more likely to satisfy the desired
   communication service requirements.

   Such encoding into the name being queried ensures that requirements
   will be forwarded by any recursive DNS servers between the querying
   application and the responding authoritative server.  It also avoids
   any change in DNS protocol messages or application program interfaces
   (APIs).

   This document specifies how service requirements may be encoded in
   DNS queries through inclusion of the requirements in one or more
   labels of the name being queried enabling an authoritative server to
   take such requirements into account in determining its answers.

1.1.  Terminology and Acronyms

   The following terminology and acronyms are used in this document.
   General familiarity with DNS terminology [RFC8499] is assumed.

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119][RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   ABNF -  Augmented Backus-Naur Form [RFC5234].

   API -  Application Program Interface

   DNS -  Domain Name System

   LDH -  Letters, Digits, and Hyphen (DNS label) [RFC5890]

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   R-LDH -  Restricted LDH (DNS label) [RFC5890]

   RR -  Resource Record [RFC8499].  Ths unit of data stored in the DNS.

   TLV -  Type, Length, Value.

2.  Including Service Requirements in DNS Queries

   This section specifies how to encode communication services quality
   requirements in one or more domain name labels and discusses why some
   alternatives methods of including requirements in a DNS query are
   less desirable.

2.1.  Including Information in DNS Queries

   There exist methods to include information in a DNS request that are
   conveyed only from a resolver to a server, that is one hop.  These
   are primarily through the inclusion of "meta-RRs" in the Additional
   Information section of a DNS request [RFC1035] including the OPT
   meta-RR [RFC6891] which can carry an extensible set of options.
   These methods are generally not suitable to use for the inclusion of
   QoS requirements for two reasons:

   *  Typical APIs do not provide for meta-RRs to be specified on a
      query or retrieved from a response.

   *  Because meta-RRs designate transient data associated with a
      particular DNS message.  Thus, if a query is forwarded by a
      recursive DNS server, such requirements will be lost.

   Other methods of including information in a DNS query that are
   preserved when a query is forwarded are the Name, Class, and RR Type.

   Class is an additional dimension of DNS data besides Name and RR
   Type.  However, only the "IN" or Internet Class has significant
   deployment or utilization and DNS messages specifying other Classes
   are frequently blocked by middle-boxes.  Thus this dimension is not
   useful in practice.

   RR Type is only 16-bits and is already used to indicate the type of
   RRs being requested.

   This leaves only the name being queried for the encoding of service
   requirement as specified below.

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2.2.  Encoding Service Requirements in DNS Names

   Domain names consist of a sequence of labels, with labels further to
   the right being a higher level in the name hierarchy and labels to
   the left of a particular label identifying nodes in the hierarchical
   tree below that particular label.  Each label is limited to 63 octets
   in length and the zero length null label is reserved to identify the
   root node.  In a complete valid domain name, the sum of the length of
   each label in the name plus one octet of overhead per label
   (including the terminating null label) may not exceed 255 octets.

   Communication service requirements are encoded into names being
   queried.  This is done by including a service label, constructed as
   described below, in the name, usually as the left most label.  A
   service label consist of a special prefix followed by a sequence of
   one or more encoded TLVs indicating the service requirements.  The
   use of such a special prefix which affects the interpretation of the
   remainder of the label is similar to the "xn--" prefix to indicate
   internationalized domain names [RFC5890].

2.2.1.  Requirement TLV Encoding

   Each TLV expressing a service requirement can be thought of as being
   binarily encoded as shown in Figure 1.

                       0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7
                     +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
                     |     Type      |    Length     |
                     +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
                     |  Value (Length Bytes Long)    .
                     .                               .
                     .                               .
                     .................................

                Figure 1: Service Requirement TLV Structure

   *  Type:  4-bit unsigned integer indicating the type of service
         requirement.

      Length:  4-bit unsigned integer indicating the length of the value
         associated with the service requirement in bytes.  The presence
         of an explicit length makes it possible to skip unknown /
         unimplemented service requirements.

      Value:  The value associated with the service requirement.

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   Although the DNS does not constraint the octet values within a label,
   for ease of use and due to user interface restrictions, label octets
   are commonly limited to a subset of printing ASCII [RFC0020]
   character values.  Furthermore, for name matching purposes, the DNS
   does not distinguish between octets having the upper case and lower
   case codes for an ASCII letter and in some cases the storage of a
   label in the DNS and/or its later retrieval may change the value of
   an octet in that label between the values for upper and lower case
   version of an ASCII letter [RFC4343].  To avoid possible problems
   with this DNS case insensitivity or possibly problematic byte values
   such as zero, the TLV or sequence of TLVs is included in the DNS name
   label in hexadecimal notation.  There are more compact encoding that
   avoid these problems, such as a customization of Bootstring similar
   to Punycode [RFC3492] or Base32 [RFC4648] but for simplicity and to
   make the encoding into names more easily readable for debugging and
   other purposes, hexdecimal was chosen.

2.2.2.  Requirements Types and Value Encoding

   The following types of service requirement are initially defined:

   Coarse:  A general indication of the most important service being
      sought encoded as a one byte integer patterned after the IPv4 ToS
      (Type of Service) value specified in [RFC1349].  (This is "coarse"
      in contrast with the more precise service requirements defined
      below.)  The following values are defined:

      0x00  Normal service.

      0x01  Minimize cost.

      0x02  Maximize reliability.

      0x04  Maximize throughput.

      0x08  Minimize delay.

      0x10  Minimize jitter.

   Bandwidth:  The bandwidth requirement is encoded as a float32 (32-bit
      IEEE floating point format [ieee754] number).  The unit is bits
      per second.  If more than one TLV of this type occurs in a DNS
      name, all but the first (leftmost) are ignored.

   Delay:  The delay requirement is encoded in 24-bit integer format.
      The unit is microseconds.  If more than one TLV of this type
      occurs in a DNS name, all but the first (leftmost) are ignored.

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   Jitter:  The jitter (i.e., delay variation) is encoded in 24-bit
      integer format.  The unit is microseconds.  If more than one TLV
      of this type occurs in a DNS name, all but the first (leftmost)
      are ignored.

   Loss Rate:  This lost rate (i.e., the percentage of packet loss) is
      encoded in 24-bit integer format.  The basic unit is 0.0000001%
      (i.e., one packet drop per 1 billion packets), where (2^24 - 2) =
      1.6777214% is the largest loss rate defined, 2^24-1 means no loss
      rate requirement, and 0 means the drop rate should be smaller than
      0.0000001%. If more than one TLV of this type occurs in a DNS
      name, all but the first (leftmost) are ignored.

   Using IEEE 32-bit floating point for the values when appropriate
   provides a compact notation that can encode up to approximately 10^38
   and down to approximately 10^-38 with 6 to 9 significant digits of
   precision [ieee754].

2.2.3.  Complete QoS DNS Names

   The on-the-wire encoding of a domain name beginning with a service
   requirement label would be as shown in Figure 2 below.  (In the DNS
   wire encoding, each label is preceded by a length.)

    +-------+-------+-----+   +-----+--------------------------------+
    |length |prefix |TLV1 |...|TLVn |Encoded Remainder of Domain Name|
    +-------+-------+-----+   +-----+--------------------------------+

                    Figure 2: Name Wire Encoding Style 1

   Alternatively, service requirements could split among a sequence of
   two or more labels in a DNS name to be queried, as shown in Figure 3.

      +-------+------+----+   +-------+------+----+-----------------+
      |length |prefix|TLV1|...|length |prefix|TLVn|Remainder of Name|
      +-------+------+----+   +-------+------+----+-----------------+

                      Figure 3: Name Encoding Style 2

   The display presentation of a DNS name requesting a coarse QoS
   requirement for minimum delay for communication with example.com
   would be as shown in Figure 4

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                              qs--   Prefix
                                 1   TLV Type
                                 1   TLV Length
                                08   TLV Value
                       example.com   Remainder of domain name

             qs--1108.example.com.   Complete domain name

                         Figure 4: Example DNS Name

3.  Security Considerations

   TBD

4.  IANA Considerations

   This section conforms to [RFC8126].

   IANA is requested to create the following registries.

4.1.  Requirements Label Type Codes

   IANA is requested to create a registry on the Domain Name System
   (DNS) Parameters webpage as follows:

          Name: DNS QoS Requirements Label Type Codes
          Registration Procedure: IETF review.
          Reference: [this document]

           Code     Description     Reference
          ------   -------------   -----------------
             0      reserved
             1      Coarse QoS      [this document]
             2      Bandwidth       [this document]
             3      Delay           [this document]
             4      Jitter          [this document]
             5      Loss Rate       [this document]
          6-14      unassigned
            15      reserved

4.2.  Restricted LDH Label Prefixes

   LDH labels are specified in [RFC5890] as consisting of letters,
   digits, and hyphen but not beginning or ending with a hyphen.  That
   is, strings of length from 1 through 63 that match the ABNF
   (Augmented Backus-Naur Form [RFC5234]) expression for LDH below.

   *  LD = ( a-z / 0-9 ) ;letter or digit (case insensitive)

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   *  HYPH = %x2D ;hyphen / minus

   *  LDH = LD / HYPH

   *  LDH-LABEL = LD / LD 0*61LDH LD

   R-LDH (Restricted LDH) labels are specified in [RFC5890] as the
   subset of LDH-LABELs that begin with two letters/digits followed by
   two hyphens.  That is, they are LDH-LABELs that match the ABNF
   regular expression [RFC5234] below.

   *  R-LDH-LABEL = 2LD HYPH HYPH 0*58LDH LD

4.2.1.  R-LDH Registry

   IANA is requested to create a registry on the Domain Name System
   (DNS) Parameters webpage as follows:

          Name: DNS Restricted LDH (R-LDH) Label Prefixes
          Registration Procedure: Expert review.
          Reference: [this document]

          Prefix    Description             Reference
          ------   ---------------------   -----------
           qs--    QoS Requirements        [this document]
           xn--    Internationalization    [RFC5890]

4.2.2.  R-LDH Expert Guidance

   In reviewing applications for the assignment of an R-LDH prefix, the
   Expert should keep in mind the following guidance:

   *  The use of labels with the requested prefix must meet the
      following criteria:

      -  be documented in an Internet Draft,

      -  not significantly duplicate the use of any other R-LDH prefix,
         and

      -  not require any changes to DNS protocol messages or DNS
         mechanisms such as the handling of CNAME or DNAME RRs or
         wildcards.

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   *  Assignment of more than one R-LDH for a purpose is prohibited.  If
      it is necessary to distinguish sub-uses under an R-LDH prefix,
      this should be done by encoding within the R-LDH label after the
      prefix or by a further label or labels before and/or after the
      R-LDH label, such as a label beginning with underscore ("_").

   *  Prefixes where the first or second character is any of the digits
      "0", "1", and "5"or the letters "O", "I", "L", and "S" should not
      be assigned, due to the possibilities of confusion, unless there
      are strong reasons to use these characters.

5.  Acknowledgments

   The suggestions of the following are gratefully acknowledged:

   *  TBD

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [ieee754]  IEEE 754 WG, IEEE., "IEEE 754-2019 - IEEE Standard for
              Floating-Point Arithmetic", 2019,
              <https://standards.ieee.org/standard/754-2019.html>.

   [RFC0020]  Cerf, V G., "ASCII format for network interchange",
              STD 80, RFC 20, DOI 10.17487/RFC0020, October 1969,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc20>.

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC4343]  Eastlake 3rd, D., "Domain Name System (DNS) Case
              Insensitivity Clarification", RFC 4343,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC4343, January 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4343>.

   [RFC5234]  Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
              Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>.

   [RFC5890]  Klensin, J., "Internationalized Domain Names for
              Applications (IDNA): Definitions and Document Framework",
              RFC 5890, DOI 10.17487/RFC5890, August 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5890>.

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   [RFC8126]  Cotton, M., Leiba, B., and T. Narten, "Guidelines for
              Writing an IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26,
              RFC 8126, DOI 10.17487/RFC8126, June 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8126>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

6.2.  Informative References

   [RFC1035]  Mockapetris, P V., "Domain names - implementation and
              specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035,
              November 1987, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1035>.

   [RFC1349]  Almquist, P., "Type of Service in the Internet Protocol
              Suite", RFC 1349, DOI 10.17487/RFC1349, July 1992,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1349>.

   [RFC2782]  Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for
              specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2782, February 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2782>.

   [RFC3492]  Costello, A., "Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode
              for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications
              (IDNA)", RFC 3492, DOI 10.17487/RFC3492, March 2003,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3492>.

   [RFC4648]  Josefsson, S., "The Base16, Base32, and Base64 Data
              Encodings", RFC 4648, DOI 10.17487/RFC4648, October 2006,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4648>.

   [RFC6891]  Damas, J., Graff, M., and P. Vixie, "Extension Mechanisms
              for DNS (EDNS(0))", STD 75, RFC 6891,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6891, April 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6891>.

   [RFC8499]  Hoffman, P., Sullivan, A., and K. Fujiwara, "DNS
              Terminology", BCP 219, RFC 8499, DOI 10.17487/RFC8499,
              January 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8499>.

   [RFC8552]  Crocker, D., "Scoped Interpretation of DNS Resource
              Records through "Underscored" Naming of Attribute Leaves",
              BCP 222, RFC 8552, DOI 10.17487/RFC8552, March 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8552>.

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Authors' Addresses

   Donald Eastlake
   Futurewei Technologies
   2386 Panoramic Circle
   Apopka, FL 32703
   United States of America
   Phone: +1-508-333-2270
   Email: donald.eastlake@futurewei.com

   Haoyu Song
   Futurewei Technologies
   2220 Central Expressway
   Santa Clara, CA 95050
   United States of America
   Email: haoyu.song@futurewei.com

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