DNSOP Working Group P. van Dijk
Internet-Draft PowerDNS
Intended status: Standards Track L. Peltan
Expires: 26 February 2022 CZ.NIC
O. Sury
Internet Systems Consortium
W. Toorop
NLnet Labs
L. Vandewoestijne
25 August 2021
DNS Catalog Zones
draft-ietf-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-03
Abstract
This document describes a method for automatic DNS zone provisioning
among DNS primary and secondary nameservers by storing and
transferring the catalog of zones to be provisioned as one or more
regular DNS zones.
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
working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet-
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 26 February 2022.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text
as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Catalog Zone Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.1. SOA and NS Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4.2. Catalog Zone Schema Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.3. List of Member Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1. The Change of ownership (Coo) Property . . . . . . . . . 6
5.2. The Group Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2.1. Group Property Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.3. The Epoch Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.3.1. The TIMESTAMP Resource Record . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5.4. The Serial Property . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.4.1. The SERIAL Resource Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.4.2. SERIAL RDATA Wire Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.4.3. SERIAL Presentation Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.4.4. SERIAL RR Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.5. Custom properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Nameserver Behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1. General Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.2. Member zone removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3. Member zone name clash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.4. Migrating member zones between catalogs . . . . . . . . . 12
6.5. Zone associated state reset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Implementation Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
10.1. TIMESTAMP RR type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
10.2. SERIAL RR type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
11. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
12. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
13. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Appendix A. Change History (to be removed before final
publication) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
1. Introduction
The content of a DNS zone is synchronized amongst its primary and
secondary nameservers using AXFR and IXFR. However, the list of
zones served by the primary (called a catalog in [RFC1035]) is not
automatically synchronized with the secondaries. To add or remove a
zone, the administrator of a DNS nameserver farm not only has to add
or remove the zone from the primary, they must also add/remove the
zone from all secondaries, either manually or via an external
application. This can be both inconvenient and error-prone; it is
also dependent on the nameserver implementation.
This document describes a method in which the catalog is represented
as a regular DNS zone (called a "catalog zone" here), and transferred
using DNS zone transfers. As zones are added to or removed from the
catalog zone, these changes are distributed to the secondary
nameservers in the normal way. The secondary nameservers then
add/remove/modify the zones they serve in accordance with the changes
to the catalog zone.
The contents and representation of catalog zones are described in
Section 3. Nameserver behavior is described in Section 6.
2. Terminology
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.
Catalog zone A DNS zone containing a DNS catalog, that is, a list of
DNS zones and associated properties.
Member zone A DNS zone whose configuration is published inside a
catalog zone.
"$CATZ" Used in examples as a placeholder to represent the domain
name of the catalog zone itself (c.f. $ORIGIN).
Catalog producer An entity that generates and is responsible for the
contents of the catalog zone.
Catalog consumer An entity that extracts information from the
catalog zone (such as a DNS server that configures itself
according to the catalog zone's contents).
Member node The DNS name of the DNS subtree representing a given
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
member zone (two levels below "$CATZ").
3. Description
A catalog zone is a specially crafted DNS zone that contains, as DNS
zone content:
* A list of DNS zones (called "member zones"), plus properties
associated with those zones.
Implementations of catalog zones SHOULD ignore any RR in the catalog
zone which is meaningless or useless to the implementation.
Authoritative servers may be preconfigured with multiple catalog
zones, each associated with a different set of configurations. A
member zone can as such be reconfigured with a different set of
preconfigured settings by removing it as a member of one catalog zone
and making it a member of another.
Although the contents of a catalog zone are interpreted and acted
upon by nameservers, a catalog zone is a regular DNS zone and so must
adhere to the standards for such zones.
A catalog zone is primarily intended for the management of a farm of
authoritative nameservers. It is not expected that the content of
catalog zones will be accessible from any recursive nameserver.
4. Catalog Zone Structure
4.1. SOA and NS Records
As with any other DNS zone, a catalog zone MUST have a syntactically
correct SOA record and at least one NS record at its apex.
The SOA record's SERIAL, REFRESH, RETRY and EXPIRE fields [RFC1035]
are used during zone transfer. A catalog zone's SOA SERIAL field
MUST increase when an update is made to the catalog zone's contents
as per serial number arithmetic defined in [RFC1982]. Otherwise,
secondary nameservers might not notice updates to the catalog zone's
contents.
There is no requirement to be able to query the catalog zone via
recursive nameservers. Implementations of catalog zones MUST ignore
and MUST NOT assume or require NS records at the apex. However, at
least one is still required so that catalog zones are syntactically
correct DNS zones. A single NS RR with a NSDNAME field containing
the absolute name "invalid." is RECOMMENDED [RFC2606].
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
4.2. Catalog Zone Schema Version
The catalog zone schema version is specified by an integer value
embedded in a TXT RR named "version.$CATZ". All catalog zones MUST
have a TXT RRset named "version.$CATZ" with at least one RR. Primary
and secondary nameservers MUST NOT apply catalog zone processing to
zones without the expected value in one of the RRs in the
"version.$CATZ" TXT RRset, but they may be transferred as ordinary
zones. For this memo, the value of one of the RRs in the
"version.CATZ" TXT RRset MUST be set to "2", i.e.
version.$CATZ 0 IN TXT "2"
NB: Version 1 was used in a draft version of this memo and reflected
the implementation first found in BIND 9.11.
4.3. List of Member Zones
The list of member zones is specified as a collection of member
nodes, represented by domain names under the owner name "zones" where
"zones" is a direct child domain of the catalog zone.
The names of member zones are represented on the RDATA side (instead
of as a part of owner names) of a PTR record, so that all valid
domain names may be represented regardless of their length [RFC1035].
This PTR record MUST be the only record in the PTR RRset with the
same name.
For example, if a catalog zone lists three zones "example.com.",
"example.net." and "example.org.", the member node RRs would appear
as follows:
<unique-1>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.com.
<unique-2>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.net.
<unique-3>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.org.
where "<unique-N>" is a label that tags each record in the
collection. "<unique-N>" has an unique value in the collection.
Member node labels carry no informational meaning beyond labeling
member zones. A changed label may indicate that the state for a zone
needs to be reset (see Section 6.5).
Having the zones uniquely tagged with the "<unique-N>" label ensures
that additional RRs can be added below the member node (see
Section 5). Further, if member zones do not share a PTR RRset, the
list of member zones can be split over multiple DNS messages in a
zone transfer.
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
A catalog zone consumer MUST ignore PTR RRsets with more than a
single record.
The CLASS field of every RR in a catalog zone MUST be IN (1).
The TTL field's value is not defined by this memo. Catalog zones are
for authoritative nameserver management only and are not intended for
general querying via recursive resolvers.
5. Properties
Each member zone MAY have one or more additional properties,
described in this chapter. These properties are completely optional
and the catalog zone consumer SHOULD ignore those it does not
understand. Properties are represented by RRsets below the
corresponding member node.
5.1. The Change of ownership (Coo) Property
The 'coo' property facilitates controlled migration of a member zone
from one catalog to another.
A Change Of Ownership is signaled by the 'coo' property in the
catalog zone currently `"owning'' the zone. The name of the new
catalog is in the value of a PTR record in the old catalog. For
example if member "example.com." will migrate from catalog
zone""OLDCATZ` to catalog zone `"NEWCATZ", this appears in
the"$OLDCATZ` catalog zone as follows:
<unique-N>.zones.$OLDCATZ 0 IN PTR example.com.
coo.<unique-N>.zones.$OLDCATZ 0 IN PTR zones.$NEWCATZ
The PTR RRset MUST consist of a single PTR record. A catalog zone
consumer MUST ignore PTR RRsets with more than a single record.
When a catalog zone consumer of catalog zone "$OLDCATZ" receives an
update which adds or changes a "coo" property for a member zone in
"$OLDCATZ" signalling a new owner "$NEWCATZ", it does _not_ migrate
the member zone immediately.
This is because the catalog zone consumer may not have the "<unique-
N>" identifier associated with the member zone in "$NEWCATZ" and
because name servers do not index Resource Records by RDATA, it may
not know wether or not the member zone is configured in "$NEWCATZ" at
all. It may have to wait for an update of "$NEWCATZ" adding or
changing that member zone.
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
When a catalog zone consumer of catalog zone "$NEWCATZ" receives an
update of "$NEWCATZ" which adds or changes a member zone, _and_ that
consumer had the member zone associated with "$OLDCATZ", _and_ there
is a "coo" property of the member zone in "$OLDCATZ" pointing to
"$NEWCATS", _only then_ it will reconfigure the member zone with the
for "$NEWCATZ" preconfigured settings.
All associated state for the zone (such as the zone data, or DNSSEC
keys) is in such case reset, unless the "epoch" property (see
Section 5.3) is supported by the catalog zone consumer and the member
zone in both "$OLDCATZ" and "$NEWCATZ" have an "epoch" property with
the same value.
The new owner is advised to increase the serial of the member zone
after the ownership change, so that the old owner can detect that the
transition is done. The old owner then removes the member zone from
"old.catalog".
5.2. The Group Property
With a "group" property, consumer(s) can be signalled to treat some
member zones within the catalog zone differently.
The consumer MAY apply different configuration options when
processing member zones, based on the value of the "group" property.
The exact handling of configuration referred to by the "group"
property value is left to the consumer's implementation and
configuration. The property is defined by a TXT record in the sub-
node labelled "group".
The producer MAY assign a "group" property to all, some, or none of
the member zones within a catalog zone. The producer MUST NOT assign
more than one "group" property to one member zone.
The consumer MUST ignore either all or none of the "group" properties
in a catalog zone.
The value of the TXT record MUST be at most 255 octets long and MUST
NOT contain whitespace characters. The consumer MUST interpret the
value case-sensitively.
5.2.1. Group Property Example
<unique-1>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.com.
group.<unique-1>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN TXT sign-with-nsec3
<unique-2>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.net.
group.<unique-2>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN TXT nodnssec
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
In this case, the consumer might be implemented and configured in the
way that the member zones with "nodnssec" group assigned will not be
signed with DNSSEC, and the zones with "sign-with-nsec3" group
assigned will be signed with DNSSEC with NSEC3 chain.
By generating the catalog zone (snippet) above, the producer signals
how the consumer shall treat DNSSEC for the zones example.net. and
example.com., respectively.
5.3. The Epoch Property
A "epoch" property allows a producer to trigger, on the consumer, a
reset of all state associated with a zone.
The epoch property is represented by a the "TIMESTAMP" Resource
Record (see Section 5.3.1).
* "epoch.<unique-N>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN TIMESTAMP ..."
When a member zone's epoch changes, the secondary server resets the
member zone's state. The secondary can detect a member zone epoch
change as follows:
* When the epoch changes, the primary will set the TIMESTAMP RR of
the member zone's epoch property to the current time.
* When the secondary processes a member node with an epoch property
that is larger than the point in time when the member zone itself
was last retrieved, then a new epoch has begun.
The steps entailed in the process of resetting the zone state depend
on the operational context of the secondary (e.g. regenerate DNSSEC
keys).
5.3.1. The TIMESTAMP Resource Record
Epoch values (both for the catalog zone and for member zones) are
provided with a TIMESTAMP Resource Record. The Type value for the
TIMESTAMP RR is TBD. The TIMESTAMP RR is class independent. The
RDATA of the resource record consists of a single field: Timestamp.
5.3.1.1. TIMESTAMP RDATA Wire Format
The TIMESTAMP RDATA wire format is encoded as follows:
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Timestamp |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
The wire format is identical to the wire format of the Signature
Expiration and Inception Fields of the RRSIG RR ([RFC4034] section
3.1.5) and follows the same rules with respect to wrapping.
5.3.1.2. TIMESTAMP RDATA Presentation Format
The presentation format is identical to that of the Signature
Expiration and Inception Fields of the RRSIG RR ([RFC4034] section
3.2). Example:
epoch.$CATZ 0 IN TIMESTAMP 20210304124652
epoch.<unique-1>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN TIMESTAMP 20201231235959
5.4. The Serial Property
The serial property helps in increasing reliability of zone update
signaling and may help in reducing NOTIFY and SOA query traffic.
The current default mechanism for prompting notifications of zone
changes from a primary nameserver to the secondaries via DNS NOTIFY
[RFC1996], can be unreliable due to packet loss, or secondary
nameservers temporarily not being reachable. In such cases the
secondary might pick up the change only after the refresh timer runs
out, which might take long time and be out of the control of the
primary nameserver operator. Low refresh values in the zones being
served can alleviate update delays, but burden both the primary and
secondary nameservers with more refresh queries, especially with
larger numbers of secondary nameservers serving large numbers of
zones. To mitigate this, updates of zones MAY be signalled via
catalog zones with the help of a "serial" property.
The serial number in the SOA record of the most recent version of a
member zone MAY be provided by a "serial" property. When a "serial"
property is present for a member zone, implementations of catalog
zones MAY assume this number to be the current serial number in the
SOA record of the most recent version of the member zone.
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
Nameservers that are secondary for that member zone, MAY compare the
"serial" property with the SOA serial since the last time the zone
was fetched. When the "serial" property is larger, the secondary MAY
initiate a zone transfer immediately without doing a SOA query first.
The SOA query may be omitted, because the SOA serial has been
obtained reliably via the catalog zone already.
When a "serial" property is present for a member zone and it matches
the SOA serial of that member zone, implementations of catalog zones
which are secondary for that member zone MAY ignore the refresh time
in the SOA record of the member zone and rely on updates via the
"serial" property of the member zone. A refresh timer of a catalog
zone MUST not be ignored.
Primary nameservers MAY be configured to omit sending DNS NOTIFY
messages to secondary nameservers which are known to process the
"serial" property of the member zones in that catalog. However they
MAY also combine signalling of zone changes with the "serial"
property of a member zone, as well as sending DNS NOTIFY messages, to
anticipate slow updates of the catalog zone (due to packet loss or
other reasons) and to cater for secondaries that do not process the
"serial" property.
All comparisons of serial numbers MUST use "Serial number
arithmetic", as defined in [RFC1982]
5.4.1. The SERIAL Resource Record
The "serial" property value is provided with a SERIAL Resource
Record. The Type value for the SERIAL RR is TBD. The SERIAL RR is
class independent. The RDATA of the resource record consist of a
single field: Serial.
5.4.2. SERIAL RDATA Wire Format
The SERIAL RDATA wire format is encoded as follows:
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Serial |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
5.4.2.1. The Serial Field
The Serial field is a 32-bit unsigned integer in network byte order.
It is the serial number of the member zone's SOA record ([RFC1035]
section 3.3.13).
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
5.4.3. SERIAL Presentation Format
The presentation format of the RDATA portion is as follows:
The Serial fields is represented as an unsigned decimal integer.
5.4.4. SERIAL RR Usage
The "serial" property of a member zone is provided by a SERIAL RRset
with a single SERIAL RR named "serial.<unique-N>.zones.$CATZ".
For example, if a catalog zone lists three zones "example.com.",
"example.net." and "example.org.", and a "serial" property is
provided for each of them, the RRs would appear as follows:
<unique-1>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.com.
serial.<unique-1>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN SERIAL 2020111712
<unique-2>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.net.
serial.<unique-2>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN SERIAL 2020111709
<unique-3>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN PTR example.org.
serial.<unique-3>.zones.$CATZ 0 IN SERIAL 2020112405
5.5. Custom properties
Implementations and operators of catalog zones may choose to provide
their own properties below the label "private-extension.<unique-
N>.zones.$CATZ". "private-extension" is not a placeholder, so a
custom property would have the domain name "<your-label>.private-
extension.<unique-N>.zones.$CATZ"
6. Nameserver Behavior
6.1. General Requirements
As it is a regular DNS zone, a catalog zone can be transferred using
DNS zone transfers among nameservers.
Although they are regular DNS zones, catalog zones contain only
information for the management of a set of authoritative nameservers.
For this reason, operators may want to limit the systems able to
query these zones. It may be inconvenient to serve some contents of
catalog zones via DNS queries anyway due to the nature of their
representation. A separate method of querying entries inside the
catalog zone may be made available by nameserver implementations (see
Section 7).
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
Catalog updates should be automatic, i.e., when a nameserver that
supports catalog zones completes a zone transfer for a catalog zone,
it SHOULD apply changes to the catalog within the running nameserver
automatically without any manual intervention.
As with regular zones, primary and secondary nameservers for a
catalog zone may be operated by different administrators. The
secondary nameservers may be configured to synchronize catalog zones
from the primary, but the primary's administrators may not have any
administrative access to the secondaries.
A catalog zone can be updated via DNS UPDATE on a reference primary
nameserver, or via zone transfers. Nameservers MAY allow loading and
transfer of broken zones with incorrect catalog zone syntax (as they
are treated as regular zones), but nameservers MUST NOT process such
broken zones as catalog zones. For the purpose of catalog
processing, the broken catalogs MUST be ignored.
6.2. Member zone removal
When a member zone is removed from a specific catalog zone, an
authoritative server MUST NOT remove the zone and associated state
data if the zone was not configured from that specific catalog zone.
Only when the zone was configured from a specific catalog zone, and
the zone is removed as a member from that specific catalog zone, the
zone and associated state (such as zone data and DNSSEC keys) MAY be
removed.
6.3. Member zone name clash
If there is a clash between an existing zone's name (either from an
existing member zone or otherwise configured zone) and an incoming
member zone's name (via transfer or update), the new instance of the
zone MUST be ignored and an error SHOULD be logged.
A clash between an existing member zone's name and an incoming member
zone's name (via transfer or update), may be an attempt to migrate a
zone to a different catalog.
6.4. Migrating member zones between catalogs
If all consumers of the catalog zones involved support the "coo"
property, it is RECOMMENDED to perform migration of a member zone by
following the procedure described in Section 5.1. Otherwise a
migration of member zone from a catalog zone "$OLDCATZ" to a catalog
zone "$NEWCATZ" has to be done by: first removing the member zone
from "$OLDCATZ"; second adding the member zone to "$NEWCATZ".
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
If in the process of a migration some consumers of the involved
catalog zones did not catch the removal of the member zone from
"$OLDCATZ" yet (because of a lost packet or down time or otherwise),
but did already see the update of "$NEWCATZ", they may consider the
update adding the member zone in "$NEWCATZ" to be a name clash (see
#nameclash) and as a consequence the member is not migrated to
"$NEWCATZ". This possibility needs to be anticipated with a member
zone migration. Recovery from such a situation is out of the scope
of this document. It may for example entail a manually forced
retransfer of "$NEWCATZ" to consumers after they have been detected
to have received and processed the removal of the member zone from
"$OLDCATZ".
6.5. Zone associated state reset
It may be desirable to reset state (such as zone data and DNSSEC
keys) associated with a member zone. If all consumers of the catalog
zone support the "epoch" property, it is RECOMMENDED to perform a
zone state reset following the procedure described in Section 5.3.
Otherwise a zone state reset has to be done by: first removing the
member zone from the catalog; add the member zone to the catalog
again after having made sure all catalog zone consumers did process
the member zone removal.
If in the process of a zone state reset some consumers of the
involved catalog zone did not catch the removal (because of a lost
packet or down time or otherwise) they will not have the zone
associated state reset. This possibility needs to be anticipated.
Recovery from it is out of the scope of this document. It may for
example entail manual removal of the zone associated state from the
catalog zone consumers that did not catch the removal and re-addition
of the member.
7. Implementation Notes
Catalog zones on secondary nameservers would have to be setup
manually, perhaps as static configuration, similar to how ordinary
DNS zones are configured. Members of such catalog zones will be
automatically synchronized by the secondary after the catalog zone is
configured.
An administrator may want to look at data inside a catalog zone.
Typical queries might include dumping the list of member zones,
dumping a member zone's effective configuration, querying a specific
property value of a member zone, etc. Because of the structure of
catalog zones, it may not be possible to perform these queries
intuitively, or in some cases, at all, using DNS QUERY. For example,
it is not possible to enumerate the contents of a multi-valued
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
property (such as the list of member zones) with a single QUERY.
Implementations are therefore advised to provide a tool that uses
either the output of AXFR or an out-of-band method to perform queries
on catalog zones.
8. Implementation Status
*Note to the RFC Editor*: please remove this entire section before
publication.
In the following implementation status descriptions, "DNS Catalog
Zones" refers to DNS Catalog Zones as described in this document.
* Knot DNS has processing of DNS Catalog Zones since Knot DNS
Version 3.0.0, which was released on September 9, 2020.
* Knot DNS has generation of DNS Catalog Zones on a development
branch (https://gitlab.nic.cz/knot/knot-dns/-/tree/
catalog_generate).
* PowerDNS has a proof of concept external program called PowerCATZ
(https://github.com/PowerDNS/powercatz/), that can process DNS
Catalog Zones.
* Proof of concept python scripts (https://github.com/IETF-
Hackathon/NSDCatZ) that can be used for both generating and
consuming DNS Catalog Zones with NSD have been developed during
the hackathon at the IETF-109.
Interoperability between the above implementations has been tested
during the hackathon at the IETF-109.
9. Security Considerations
As catalog zones are transmitted using DNS zone transfers, it is key
for these transfers to be protected from unexpected modifications on
the route. So, catalog zone transfers SHOULD be authenticated using
TSIG [RFC8945]. A primary nameserver SHOULD NOT serve a catalog zone
for transfer without using TSIG and a secondary nameserver SHOULD
abandon an update to a catalog zone that was received without using
TSIG.
Use of DNS UPDATE [RFC2136] to modify the content of catalog zones
SHOULD similarly be authenticated using TSIG.
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
Zone transfers of member zones SHOULD similarly be authenticated
using TSIG [RFC8945]. The TSIG shared secrets used for member zones
MUST NOT be mentioned anywhere in the catalog zone data. However,
key identifiers may be shared within catalog zones.
Catalog zones reveal the zones served by the consumers of the catalog
zone. It is RECOMMENDED to limit the systems able to query these
zones. It is RECOMMENDED to transfer catalog zones confidentially
[RFC9103].
Administrative control over what zones are served from the configured
name servers shifts completely from the server operator (consumer) to
the "owner" (producer) of the catalog zone content.
10. IANA Considerations
10.1. TIMESTAMP RR type
This document defines a new DNS RR type, TIMESTAMP, in the "Resource
Record (RR) TYPEs" subregistry of the "Domain Name System (DNS)
Parameters" registry:
+===========+=======+===========+=================+
| TYPE | Value | Meaning | Reference |
+===========+=======+===========+=================+
| TIMESTAMP | TBD | Timestamp | [this document] |
+-----------+-------+-----------+-----------------+
Table 1
10.2. SERIAL RR type
This document defines a new DNS RR type, SERIAL, in the "Resource
Record (RR) TYPEs" subregistry of the "Domain Name System (DNS)
Parameters" registry:
+========+=======+===========================+===========+
| TYPE | Value | Meaning | Reference |
+========+=======+===========================+===========+
| SERIAL | TBD | Version number of the | [this |
| | | original copy of the zone | document] |
+--------+-------+---------------------------+-----------+
Table 2
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
11. Acknowledgements
Our deepest thanks and appreciation go to Stephen Morris, Ray Bellis
and Witold Krecicki who initiated this draft and did the bulk of the
work.
Catalog zones originated as the chosen method among various proposals
that were evaluated at ISC for easy zone management. The chosen
method of storing the catalog as a regular DNS zone was proposed by
Stephen Morris.
The initial authors discovered that Paul Vixie's earlier [Metazones]
proposal implemented a similar approach and reviewed it. Catalog
zones borrows some syntax ideas from Metazones, as both share this
scheme of representing the catalog as a regular DNS zone.
Thanks to Brian Conry, Tony Finch, Evan Hunt, Patrik Lundin, Victoria
Risk, Carsten Strotmann, Peter Thomassen and Kees Monshouwer for
reviewing draft proposals and offering comments and suggestions.
Thanks to Klaus Darilion who came up with the idea for the "serial"
property during the hackathon at the IETF-109. Thanks also to Shane
Kerr, Petr Spacek, Brian Dickson for further brainstorming and
discussing the "serial" property and how it would work best with
catalog zones.
12. Normative References
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, DOI 10.17487/RFC1035,
November 1987, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1035>.
[RFC1982] Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Serial Number Arithmetic", RFC 1982,
DOI 10.17487/RFC1982, August 1996,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1982>.
[RFC1996] Vixie, P., "A Mechanism for Prompt Notification of Zone
Changes (DNS NOTIFY)", RFC 1996, DOI 10.17487/RFC1996,
August 1996, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1996>.
[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>.
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
[RFC2136] Vixie, P., Ed., Thomson, S., Rekhter, Y., and J. Bound,
"Dynamic Updates in the Domain Name System (DNS UPDATE)",
RFC 2136, DOI 10.17487/RFC2136, April 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2136>.
[RFC2606] Eastlake 3rd, D. and A. Panitz, "Reserved Top Level DNS
Names", BCP 32, RFC 2606, DOI 10.17487/RFC2606, June 1999,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2606>.
[RFC4034] Arends, R., Austein, R., Larson, M., Massey, D., and S.
Rose, "Resource Records for the DNS Security Extensions",
RFC 4034, DOI 10.17487/RFC4034, March 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4034>.
[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>.
[RFC8945] Dupont, F., Morris, S., Vixie, P., Eastlake 3rd, D.,
Gudmundsson, O., and B. Wellington, "Secret Key
Transaction Authentication for DNS (TSIG)", STD 93,
RFC 8945, DOI 10.17487/RFC8945, November 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8945>.
[RFC9103] Toorop, W., Dickinson, S., Sahib, S., Aras, P., and A.
Mankin, "DNS Zone Transfer over TLS", RFC 9103,
DOI 10.17487/RFC9103, August 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9103>.
13. Informative References
[Metazones]
Vixie, P., "Federated Domain Name Service Using DNS
Metazones", 2005, <http://ss.vix.su/~vixie/mz.pdf>.
Appendix A. Change History (to be removed before final publication)
* draft-muks-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-00
| Initial public draft.
* draft-muks-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-01
| Added Witold, Ray as authors. Fixed typos, consistency issues.
| Fixed references. Updated Area. Removed newly introduced custom
| RR TYPEs. Changed schema version to 1. Changed TSIG requirement
| from MUST to SHOULD. Removed restrictive language about use of
| DNS QUERY. When zones are introduced into a catalog zone, a
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
| primary SHOULD first make the new zones available for transfers
| first (instead of MUST). Updated examples, esp. use IPv6 in
| examples per Fred Baker. Add catalog zone example.
* draft-muks-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-02
| Addressed some review comments by Patrik Lundin.
* draft-muks-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-03
| Revision bump.
* draft-muks-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-04
| Reordering of sections into more logical order. Separation of
| multi-valued properties into their own category.
* draft-toorop-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-00
| New authors to pickup the editor pen on this draft
|
| Remove data type definitions for zone properties Removing
| configuration of member zones through zone properties altogether
|
| Remove Open issues and discussion Appendix, which was about zone
| options (including primary/secondary relationships) only.
* draft-toorop-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-01
| Added a new section "The Serial Property", introducing a new
| mechanism which can help with disseminating zones from the primary
| to the secondary nameservers in a timely fashion more reliably.
|
| Three different ways to provide a "serial" property with a member
| zone are offered to or the workgroup for discussion.
|
| Added a new section "Implementation Status", listing production
| ready, upcoming and Proof of Concept implementations, and
| reporting on interoperability of the different implementations.
* draft-toorop-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-02
| Adding the "coo" property for zone migration in a controlled
| fashion
|
| Adding the "group" property for reconfigure settings of member
| zones in an atomic update
|
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
| Adding the "epoch" property to reset zone associated state in a
| controlled fashion
* draft-toorop-dnsop-dns-catalog-zones-03
| Big cleanup!
|
| Introducing the terms catalog zone consumer and catalog zone
| producer
|
| Reorganized topics to create a more coherent whole
|
| Properties all have consistent format now
|
| Try to assume the least possible from implementations w.r.t.:
|
| 1) Predictability of the <unique-N> IDs of member zones
|
| 2) Whether or not fallback catalog zones can be found for a member
|
| 3) Whether or not a catalog zone consumer can maintain state
Authors' Addresses
Peter van Dijk
PowerDNS
Den Haag
Netherlands
Email: peter.van.dijk@powerdns.com
Libor Peltan
CZ.NIC
Czechia
Email: libor.peltan@nic.cz
Ondrej Sury
Internet Systems Consortium
Czechia
Email: ondrej@isc.org
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft dns-catalog-zones August 2021
Willem Toorop
NLnet Labs
Science Park 400
1098 XH Amsterdam
Netherlands
Email: willem@nlnetlabs.nl
Leo Vandewoestijne
Netherlands
Email: leo@dns.company
van Dijk, et al. Expires 26 February 2022 [Page 20]