A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)
RFC 2052
| Document | Type |
RFC - Experimental
(October 1996; No errata)
Obsoleted by RFC 2782
Was draft-gulbrandsen-dns-rr-srvcs (individual)
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|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
| Stream | Legacy | ||
| Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
| Stream | Legacy state | (None) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 2052 (Experimental) | |
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) | ||
Network Working Group A. Gulbrandsen
Request for Comments: 2052 Troll Technologies
Updates: 1035, 1183 P. Vixie
Category: Experimental Vixie Enterprises
October 1996
A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)
Status of this Memo
This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any
kind. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This document describes a DNS RR which specifies the location of the
server(s) for a specific protocol and domain (like a more general
form of MX).
Overview and rationale
Currently, one must either know the exact address of a server to
contact it, or broadcast a question. This has led to, for example,
ftp.whatever.com aliases, the SMTP-specific MX RR, and using MAC-
level broadcasts to locate servers.
The SRV RR allows administrators to use several servers for a single
domain, to move services from host to host with little fuss, and to
designate some hosts as primary servers for a service and others as
backups.
Clients ask for a specific service/protocol for a specific domain
(the word domain is used here in the strict RFC 1034 sense), and get
back the names of any available servers.
Introductory example
When a SRV-cognizant web-browser wants to retrieve
http://www.asdf.com/
it does a lookup of
http.tcp.www.asdf.com
Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 1]
RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996
and retrieves the document from one of the servers in the reply. The
example zone file near the end of the memo contains answering RRs for
this query.
The format of the SRV RR
Here is the format of the SRV RR, whose DNS type code is 33:
Service.Proto.Name TTL Class SRV Priority Weight Port Target
(There is an example near the end of this document.)
Service
The symbolic name of the desired service, as defined in Assigned
Numbers or locally.
Some widely used services, notably POP, don't have a single
universal name. If Assigned Numbers names the service
indicated, that name is the only name which is legal for SRV
lookups. Only locally defined services may be named locally.
The Service is case insensitive.
Proto
TCP and UDP are at present the most useful values
for this field, though any name defined by Assigned Numbers or
locally may be used (as for Service). The Proto is case
insensitive.
Name
The domain this RR refers to. The SRV RR is unique in that the
name one searches for is not this name; the example near the end
shows this clearly.
TTL
Standard DNS meaning.
Class
Standard DNS meaning.
Priority
As for MX, the priority of this target host. A client MUST
attempt to contact the target host with the lowest-numbered
priority it can reach; target hosts with the same priority
SHOULD be tried in pseudorandom order. The range is 0-65535.
Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 2]
RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996
Weight
Load balancing mechanism. When selecting a target host among
the those that have the same priority, the chance of trying this
one first SHOULD be proportional to its weight. The range of
this number is 1-65535. Domain administrators are urged to use
Weight 0 when there isn't any load balancing to do, to make the
RR easier to read for humans (less noisy).
Port
The port on this target host of this service. The range is
0-65535. This is often as specified in Assigned Numbers but
need not be.
Target
As for MX, the domain name of the target host. There MUST be
one or more A records for this name. Implementors are urged, but
not required, to return the A record(s) in the Additional Data
section. Name compression is to be used for this field.
A Target of "." means that the service is decidedly not
available at this domain.
Domain administrator advice
Asking everyone to update their telnet (for example) clients when the
first internet site adds a SRV RR for Telnet/TCP is futile (even if
desirable). Therefore SRV will have to coexist with A record lookups
for a long time, and DNS administrators should try to provide A
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