Network Working Group M.M. Mealling
Internet-Draft Network Solutions, Inc.
Expires: January 12, 2001 July 14, 2000
URI Resolution using the Dynamic Delegation Discovery System
draft-ietf-urn-uri-res-ddds-00.txt
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts.
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."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on January 12, 2001.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
A specification for taking a URI and locating an authoritative
server for information about that URI. The method used to locate
that authoritative server is the Dynamic Delegation Discovery
System.
This document, along with [10] and [9], obsoletes RFC 2168[12] and
updates RFC 2276[8].
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. The Distinction between URNs and URLs . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. The URI and URN Resolution Application Specifications . . . 6
4.1 Application Unique String . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2 First Well Known Rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.3 Flags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.4 Services Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.4.1 Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.4.2 protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.5 Valid Databases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.1 An example using a URN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5.2 CID URI Scheme Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3 Resolving an HTTP URI Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
9. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
A. Pseudo Code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
1. Introduction
Uniform Resource Locators have been a significant advance in
retrieving Internet-accessible resources. However, their brittle
nature over time has been recognized for several years. The Uniform
Resource Identifier working group proposed the development of
Uniform Resource Names[3] to serve as persistent,
location-independent identifiers for Internet resources in order to
overcome most of the problems with URLs. RFC 1737[1] sets forth
requirements on URNs.
During the lifetime of the URI-WG, a number of URN proposals were
generated. The developers of several of those proposals met in a
series of meetings, resulting in a compromise known as the Knoxville
framework. The major principle behind the Knoxville framework is
that the resolution system must be separate from the way names are
assigned. This is in marked contrast to most URLs, which identify
the host to contact and the protocol to use. Readers are referred to
[2]for background on the Knoxville framework and for additional
information on the context and purpose of this proposal.
Separating the way names are resolved from the way they are
constructed provides several benefits. It allows multiple naming
approaches and resolution approaches to compete, as it allows
different protocols and resolvers to be used. There is just one
problem with such a separation - how do we resolve a name when it
can't give us directions to its resolver?
For the short term, DNS is the obvious candidate for the resolution
framework, since it is widely deployed and understood. However, it
is not appropriate to use DNS to maintain information on a
per-resource basis. First of all, DNS was never intended to handle
that many records. Second, the limited record size is inappropriate
for catalog information. Third, domain names are not appropriate as
URNs.
Therefore our approach is to use the DDDS to locate "resolvers" that
can provide information on individual resources, potentially
including the resource itself. To accomplish this, we "rewrite" the
URI into a Key following the rules found in the Dynamic Delegation
Discovery System (DDDS). This document describes URI Resolution as
an application of the DDDS and specifies the use of at least one
Database based on DNS.
This document, along with [10] and [9], obsoletes RFC 2168[12] and
updates RFC 2276[8].
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in
this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.
All capitalized terms are taken from the vocabulary found in the
DDDS algorithm specification found in [9].
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
3. The Distinction between URNs and URLs
From the point of view of this system, there is no theoretical
difference between resolving URIs in the general case and URNs in
the specific case. Operationally however, there is a difference that
stems from URI resolution possibly not becoming of widespread use.
If URN resolution is collapsed into generic URI resolution, URNs may
suffer by the lack of adoption of URI resolution.
The solution is to allow for shortcutting for URN resolution. In the
following specification generic URI resolution starts by inserting
rules for known URI schemes into the 'uri.arpa' registry. For the
'URN:' URI scheme, one of the rules found in 'uri.arpa' would be for
the 'urn' URI scheme. This rule would simply delegate to the
'urn.arpa' zone for additional NAPTRs based on the URN namespace.
Essentially, the URI Resolution Rewrite Rule for 'URN:' is the URN
Resolution Application's First Well Known Rule.
Therefore, this document specifies two DDDS Applications. One is for
URI Resolution and the other is for URN Resolution. Both are
technically identical but by separating the two URN Resolution can
still proceed without the dependency.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 5]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
4. The URI and URN Resolution Application Specifications
4.1 Application Unique String
The Application Unique String is the Uniform Resource Identifier or
Uniform Resource Name for which an authoritative server is being
located. This URI or URN MUST be canonicalized and hex encoded
according to the "absolute-uri" production found in the Collected
ABNF from RFC 2396[13].
4.2 First Well Known Rule
In the URI case, the first known key is created by taking the URI
scheme. In the URN case, the first known key is the Namespace
Identifier. For example, the URI 'http://www.foo.com/' would have a
'http' as its Key. The URN 'urn:foo:foospace' would have 'foo' as
its first Key.
4.3 Flags
At this time only four flags, "S", "A", "U", and "P", are defined.
The "S", "A" and "U" flags are for a terminal lookup. This means
that the Rule is the last one and that the flag determines what the
next stage should be. The "S" flag means that the output of this
Rule is a domain-name for which one or more SRV[4] records exist.
See Section 5 for additional information on how URI and URN
Resolution use the SRV record type. "A" means that the output of the
Rule is a domain-name and should be used to lookup A records for
that domain. The "U" flag means that the output of the Rule is a
URL[13].
The "P" flag says that the remainder of the DDDS Algorithm is
ignored and that the rest of the process is application specific and
outside the scope of this document. An application can use the
Protocol part found in the Services field to identify which
Application specific set of rules that should be followed next. The
record that contains the 'P' flag is the last record that is
interpreted by the rules in this document.
The remaining alphabetic flags are reserved for future versions of
this specification. The numeric flags may be used for local
experimentation. The S, A, U and P flags are all mutually exclusive,
and resolution libraries MAY signal an error if more than one is
given. (Experimental code and code for assisting in the creation of
Rewrite Rules would be more likely to signal such an error than a
client such as a browser). It is anticipated that multiple flags
will be allowed in the future, so implementers MUST NOT assume that
the flags field can only contain 0 or 1 characters. Finally, if a
client encounters a record with an unknown flag, it MUST ignore it
and move to the next Rule. This test takes precedence over any
ordering since flags can control the interpretation placed on
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 6]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
fields. A novel flag might change the interpretation of the regexp
and/or replacement fields such that it is impossible to determine if
a record matched a given target.
The "S", "A", and "U" flags are called 'terminal' flags since they
halt the looping rewrite algorithm. If those flags are not present,
clients may assume that another Rule exists at the Key produced by
the current Rewrite Rule.
4.4 Services Parameters
Service Parameters for this Application take the form of a string of
characters that follow this ABNF:
service_field = [ [protocol] *("+" rs)]
protocol = ALPHA *31ALPHANUM
rs = ALPHA *31ALPHANUM
; The protocol and rs fields are limited to 32
; characters and must start with an alphabetic.
In other words, an optional protocol specification followed by 0 or
more resolution services. Each resolution service is indicated by an
initial '+' character.
The empty string is also valid. This will typically be seen at the
beginning of a series of Rules, when it is impossible to know what
services and protocols will be offered at the end of a particular
delegation path.
4.4.1 Services
The service identifiers that make up the 'rs' production are generic
for both URI and URN resolution since the input value types itself
based on the URI scheme. The list of valid services are defined in
[6].
Examples of some of these services are:
I2L: given a URI return one URL that identifies a location where the
original URI can be found
I2Ls: given a URI return one or more URLs that identify multiple
locations where the original URI can be found
I2R: given a URI return one instance of the resource identified by
that URI.
I2Rs: given a URI return one or more instances of the resources
identified by that URI.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 7]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
I2C: given a URI return one instance of a description of that
resource.
I2N: given a URI return one URN that names the resource (Caution:
equality with respect to URNs is non-trivial. See [1]for examples
of why.)
4.4.2 protocols
The protocol identifiers that are valid for the 'protocol'
production are defined by the protocol specifications themselves. At
present the THTTP[5] protocol is the only such specification. Simply
specifying any protocol in the services field is insufficient since
there are additional semantics surrounding URI resolution that are
not defined within the protocols.
For example, if Z39.50 were to be specified as a valid protocol it
would have to define how it would encode requests for specific
services, how the URI is encoded, and what information is returned.
4.5 Valid Databases
At present only one DDDS Database is specified for this Application.
"A DDDS Database Using The Domain Name System"[10] specifies a DDDS
Database that uses the NAPTR DNS resource record to contain the
rewrite rules. The Keys for this database are encoded as
domain-names.
The output of the First Well Known Rule for the URI Resolution
Application is the URI's scheme. In order to convert this to a
unique key in this Database the string 'uri.arpa.' is appended to
the end. This domain-name is used to request NAPTR records which
produces new keys in the form of domain-names.
The output of the First Well Known Rule of the URN Resolution
Application is the URN's namespace id. In order to convert this to a
unique key in this Database the string 'urn.arpa.' is appended to
the end. This domain-name is used to request NAPTR records which
produces new keys in the form of domain-names.
DNS servers MAY interpret Flag values and use that information to
include appropriate SRV and A records in the Additional Information
portion of the DNS packet. Clients are encouraged to check for
additional information but are not required to do so.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 8]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
5. Examples
5.1 An example using a URN
Consider a URN that uses the hypothetical DUNS namespace. DUNS
numbers are identifiers for approximately 30 million registered
businesses around the world, assigned and maintained by Dunn and
Bradstreet. The URN might look like:
urn:duns:002372413:annual-report-1997
The first step in the resolution process is to find out about the
DUNS namespace. The namespace identifier[3], "duns", is extracted
from the URN and prepended to 'urn.arpa', producing 'duns.urn.arpa'.
The DNS is queried for NAPTR records for this domain which produces
the following results:
duns.urn.arpa.
;; order pref flags service regexp replacement
IN NAPTR 100 10 "s" "dunslink+I2L+I2C" "" dunslink.udp.dandb.com.
IN NAPTR 100 20 "s" "rcds+I2C" "" rcds.udp.dandb.com.
IN NAPTR 100 30 "s" "thttp+I2L+I2C+I2R" "" thttp.tcp.dandb.com.
The order field contains equal values, indicating that no order has
to be followed. The preference field indicates that the provider
would like clients to use the special 'dunslink' protocol, followed
by the RCDS protocol, and that THTTP is offered as a last resort.
All the records specify the "s" flag which means that the record is
terminal and that the next step is to retrieve an SRV record from
DNS for the given domain-name.
The service fields say that if we speak dunslink, we will be able to
issue either the I2L or I2C requests to obtain a URL or ask some
complicated questions about the resource. The Resource Cataloging
and Distribution Service (RCDS)[7] could be used to get some
metadata for the resource, while THTTP could be used to get a URL
for the current location of the resource.
Assuming our client does not know the dunslink protocol but does
know the RCDS protocol, our next action is to lookup SRV RRs for
rcds.udp.dandb.com, which will tell us hosts that can provide the
necessary resolution service. That lookup might return:
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 9]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
;; Pref Weight Port Target
rcds.udp.dandb.com IN SRV 0 0 1000 defduns.dandb.com.
IN SRV 0 0 1000 dbmirror.com.au.
IN SRV 0 0 1000 ukmirror.com.uk.
telling us three hosts that could actually do the resolution, and
giving us the port we should use to talk to their RCDS server. (The
reader is referred to the SRV specification[4] for the
interpretation of the fields above).
There is opportunity for significant optimization here. We can
return the SRV records as additional information for terminal NAPTRs
(and the A records as additional information for those SRVs). While
this recursive provision of additional information is not explicitly
blessed in the DNS specifications, it is not forbidden, and BIND
does take advantage of it. This is a significant optimization. In
conjunction with a long TTL for *.urn.arpa records, the average
number of probes to DNS for resolving DUNS URNs would approach one.
Therefore, DNS server implementors SHOULD provide additional
information with NAPTR responses. The additional information will be
either SRV or A records. If SRV records are available, their A
records should be provided as recursive additional information.
Note that the example NAPTR records above are intended to represent
the reply the client will see. They are not quite identical to what
the domain administrator would put into the zone files.
Also note that there could have been an additional first step where
the URN was resolved as a generic URI by looking up urn.uri.arpa.
The resulting rule would have specified that the NID be extracted
from the URN and 'urn.arpa' appended to it resulting in the new key
'duns.urn.arpa' which is the first step from above.
5.2 CID URI Scheme Example
Consider a URI scheme based on MIME Content-Ids. The URI might look
like this:
cid:199606121851.1@mordred.gatech.edu
(Note that this example is chosen for pedagogical purposes, and
does not conform to the CID URL scheme.)
The first step in the resolution process is to find out about the
CID scheme. The schem is extracted from the URI, prepended to
'uri.arpa', and the NAPTR for 'cid.uri.arpa' looked up in the DNS.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 10]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
It might return records of the form:
cid.uri.arpa.
;; order pref flags service regexp replacement
IN NAPTR 100 10 "" "" "!cid:.+@([^\.]+\.)(.*)$!\2!i" .
We have only one NAPTR response, so ordering the responses is not a
problem. The replacement field is empty, so we check the regexp
field and use the pattern provided there. We apply that regexp to
the entire URI to see if it matches, which it does. The \2 part of
the substitution expression returns the string "gatech.edu". Since
the flags field does not contain "s" or "a", the lookup is not
terminal and our next probe to DNS is for more NAPTR records at the
domain-name 'gatech.edu'.
Note that the rule does not extract the full domain name from the
CID, instead it assumes the CID comes from a host and extracts its
domain. While all hosts, such as 'mordred', could have their very
own NAPTR, maintaining those records for all the machines at a site
that large would be an intolerable burden. Wildcards are not
appropriate here since they only return results when there is no
exactly matching names already in the system.
The record returned from the query on "gatech.edu" might look like:
gatech.edu.
;; order pref flags service regexp replacement
IN NAPTR 100 50 "s" "z3950+I2L+I2C" "" z3950.tcp.gatech.edu.
IN NAPTR 100 50 "s" "rcds+I2C" "" rcds.udp.gatech.edu.
IN NAPTR 100 50 "s" "thttp+I2L+I2C+I2R" "" thttp.tcp.gatech.edu.
Continuing with our example, we note that the values of the order
and preference fields are equal in all records, so the client is
free to pick any record. The flags field tells us that these are the
last NAPTR patterns we should see, and after the rewrite (a simple
replacement in this case) we should look up SRV records to get
information on the hosts that can provide the necessary service.
Assuming we prefer the Z39.50 protocol, our lookup might return:
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 11]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
;; Pref Weight Port Target
z3950.tcp.gatech.edu IN SRV 0 0 1000 z3950.gatech.edu.
IN SRV 0 0 1000 z3950.cc.gatech.edu.
IN SRV 0 0 1000 z3950.uga.edu.
telling us three hosts that could actually do the resolution, and
giving us the port we should use to talk to their Z39.50 server.
5.3 Resolving an HTTP URI Scheme
Even if URN systems were in place now, there would still be a
tremendous number of URLs. It should be possible to develop a URI
resolution system that can also provide location independence for
those URLs.
Assume we have the URL for a very popular piece of software that the
publisher wishes to mirror at multiple sites around the world:
http://www.foo.com/software/latest-beta.exe
We extract the prefix, "http", and lookup NAPTR records for
'http.uri.arpa'. This might return a record of the form:
http.uri.arpa. IN NAPTR
;; order pref flags service regexp replacement
100 90 "" "" "!http://([^/:]+)!\1!i" .
This expression returns everything after the first double slash and
before the next slash or colon. (We use the '!' character to delimit
the parts of the substitution expression. Otherwise we would have to
use backslashes to escape the forward slashes, and would have a
regexp in the zone file that looked like this:
"/http:\\/\\/([^\\/:]+)/\\1/i").
Applying this pattern to the URL extracts "www.foo.com". Looking up
NAPTR records for that might return:
www.foo.com.
;; order pref flags service regexp replacement
IN NAPTR 100 100 "s" "thttp+L2R" "" thttp._tcp.foo.com.
IN NAPTR 100 100 "s" "ftp+L2R" "" ftp._tcp.foo.com.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 12]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
Looking up SRV records for thttp.tcp.foo.com would return
information on the hosts that foo.com has designated to be its
mirror sites. The client can then pick one for the user.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 13]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
6. Notes
o Registration procedures for the 'urn.arpa' and 'uri.arpa' DNS
zones are specified in "Assignment Procedures for URI Resolution
using DNS"[11].
o If a record at a particular order matches the URI, but the client
doesn't know the specified protocol and service, the client
SHOULD continue to examine records that have the same order. The
client MUST NOT consider records with a higher value of order.
This is necessary to make delegation of portions of the namespace
work. The order field is what lets site administrators say "all
requests for URIs matching pattern x go to server 1, all others
go to server 2". A match is defined as:
1. The NAPTR provides a replacement domain name
2. or the regular expression matches the URI
o When multiple RRs have the same "order", the client should use
the value of the preference field to select the next NAPTR to
consider. However, because of preferred protocols or services,
estimates of network distance and bandwidth, etc. clients may use
different criteria to sort the records.
o If the lookup after a rewrite fails, clients are strongly
encouraged to report a failure, rather than backing up to pursue
other rewrite paths.
o When a namespace is to be delegated among a set of resolvers,
regexps must be used. Each regexp appears in a separate NAPTR RR.
Administrators should do as little delegation as possible,
because of limitations on the size of DNS responses.
o Note that SRV RRs impose additional requirements on clients.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 14]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
7. IANA Considerations
The use of the "urn.arpa" and "uri.arpa" zones requires registration
policies and procedures to be followed and for the operation of
those DNS zones to be maintained. These policies and procedures are
spelled out in a "Assignment Procedures for the URI Resolution using
DNS"[11]. The operation of those zones imposes operational and
administrative responsibilities on the IANA.
The registration methods used for specifying values for the Services
(both protocols and services) and Flags fields that are specific to
URI resolution is for a specification to be published as an RFC and
approved by the IESG.
The registration policies for URLs and URNs are also specified
elsewhere and thus those impacts on the IANA are spelled out there.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 15]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
8. Security Considerations
The use of "urn.arpa" and "uri.arpa" as the registry for namespaces
is subject to denial of service attacks, as well as other DNS
spoofing attacks. The interactions with DNSSEC are currently being
studied. It is expected that NAPTR records will be signed with SIG
records once the DNSSEC work is deployed.
The rewrite rules make identifiers from other namespaces subject to
the same attacks as normal domain names. Since they have not been
easily resolvable before, this may or may not be considered a
problem.
Regular expressions should be checked for sanity, not blindly passed
to something like PERL.
This document has discussed a way of locating a resolver, but has
not discussed any detail of how the communication with the resolver
takes place. There are significant security considerations attached
to the communication with a resolver. Those considerations are
outside the scope of this document, and must be addressed by the
specifications for particular resolver communication protocols.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 16]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
9. Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank Keith Moore for all his
consultations during the development of this draft. We would also
like to thank Paul Vixie for his assistance in debugging our
implementation, and his answers on our questions. Finally, we would
like to acknowledge our enormous intellectual debt to the
participants in the Knoxville series of meetings, as well as to the
participants in the URI and URN working groups.
Specific recognition is given to Ron Daniel who was co-author on the
original versions of these documents. His early implementations and
clarity of thinking was invaluable in clearing up many of the
potential boundary cases.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 17]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
References
[1] Sollins, K. and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
Uniform Resource Names", RFC 1737, December 1994.
[2] Arms, B., "The URN Implementors, Uniform Resource Names: A
Progress Report", D-Lib Magazine, February 1996.
[3] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
[4] Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P. and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for
specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782,
February 2000.
[5] Danie1, R., "A Trivial Convention for using HTTP in URN
Resolution", RFC 2169, June 1997.
[6] Mealling, M., "URI Resolution Services Necessary for URN
Resolution", RFC 2483, January 1999.
[7] Moore, K., Browne, S., Cox, J. and J. Gettler, "Resource
Cataloging and Distribution System", Technical Report
CS-97-346, December 1996.
[8] Sollins, K., "Architectural Principles of Uniform Resource Name
Resolution", RFC 2276, January 1998.
[9] Mealling, M.M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS)", ,
May 2000.
[10] Mealling, M.M., "A DDDS Database Using The Domain Name
System", Internet-Draft
draft-ietf-urn-dns-ddds-database-00.txt, May 2000.
[11] Mealling, M., "Assignment Procedures for DDDS Rules in
URI.ARPA and URN.ARPA", Internet-Draft
draft-ietf-uri.arpa-procedures-03.txt, February 2000.
[12] Danie1, R. and M. Mealling, "Resolution of Uniform Resource
Identifiers using the Domain Name System", RFC 2168, June 1997.
[13] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R.T. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August
1998.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 18]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
Author's Address
Michael Mealling
Network Solutions, Inc.
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 22070
US
Phone: +1 770 935 5492
EMail: michaelm@netsol.com
URI: http://www.netsol.com
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 19]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
Appendix A. Pseudo Code
For the edification of implementers, pseudocode for a client routine
using NAPTRs is given below. This code is provided merely as a
convenience, it does not have any weight as a standard way to
process NAPTR records. Also, as is the case with pseudocode, it has
never been executed and may contain logical errors. You have been
warned.
//
// findResolver(URN)
// Given a URN, find a host that can resolve it.
//
findResolver(string URN) {
// prepend prefix to urn.arpa
sprintf(key, "%s.urn.arpa", extractNS(URN));
do {
rewrite_flag = false;
terminal = false;
if (key has been seen) {
quit with a loop detected error
}
add key to list of "seens"
records = lookup(type=NAPTR, key); // get all NAPTR RRs for 'key'
discard any records with an unknown value in the "flags" field.
sort NAPTR records by "order" field and "preference" field
(with "order" being more significant than "preference").
n_naptrs = number of NAPTR records in response.
curr_order = records[0].order;
max_order = records[n_naptrs-1].order;
// Process current batch of NAPTRs according to "order" field.
for (j=0; j < n_naptrs && records[j].order <= max_order; j++) {
if (unknown_flag) // skip this record and go to next one
continue;
newkey = rewrite(URN, naptr[j].replacement, naptr[j].regexp);
if (!newkey) // Skip to next record if the rewrite didn't
match continue;
// We did do a rewrite, shrink max_order to current value
// so that delegation works properly
max_order = naptr[j].order;
// Will we know what to do with the protocol and services
// specified in the NAPTR? If not, try next record.
if(!isKnownProto(naptr[j].services)) {
continue;
}
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 20]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
if(!isKnownService(naptr[j].services)) {
continue;
}
// At this point we have a successful rewrite and we will
// know how to speak the protocol and request a known
// resolution service. Before we do the next lookup, check
// some optimization possibilities.
if (strcasecmp(flags, "S")
|| strcasecmp(flags, "P"))
|| strcasecmp(flags, "A")) {
terminal = true;
services = naptr[j].services;
addnl = any SRV and/or A records returned as additional
info for naptr[j].
}
key = newkey;
rewriteflag = true;
break;
}
} while (rewriteflag && !terminal);
// Did we not find our way to a resolver?
if (!rewrite_flag) {
report an error
return NULL;
}
// Leave rest to another protocol?
if (strcasecmp(flags, "P")) {
return key as host to talk to;
}
// If not, keep plugging
if (!addnl) { // No SRVs came in as additional info, look them up
srvs = lookup(type=SRV, key);
}
sort SRV records by preference, weight, ...
foreach (SRV record) { // in order of preference
try contacting srv[j].target using the protocol and one of the
resolution service requests from the "services" field of the
last NAPTR record.
if (successful)
return (target, protocol, service);
// Actually we would probably return a result, but this
// code was supposed to just tell us a good host to talk to.
}
die with an "unable to find a host" error;
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 21]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
}
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 22]
Internet-Draft DDDS Based URI Resolution July 2000
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implmentation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph
are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Mealling Expires January 12, 2001 [Page 23]