DNS Resolver Information

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Historically, DNS stub resolvers communicated with recursive resolvers without needing to know anything about the features supported by these recursive resolvers. As more and more recursive resolvers expose different features that may impact delivered DNS services, means to help stub resolvers to identify the capabilities of resolvers are valuable. Typically, stub resolvers can discover and authenticate encrypted DNS servers provided by a local network, for example, using the techniques specified in [I-D.ietf-add-dnr] and [I-D.ietf-add-ddr]. However, these stub resolvers need a mechanism to retrieve information from the discovered recursive resolvers about their capabilities.¶

This document fills that void by specifying a method for stub resolvers to retrieve such information. To that aim, a new resource record (RR) type is defined for stub resolvers to query the recursive resolvers. The information that a resolver might want to expose is defined in Section 5.¶

Retrieved information can be used to feed the server selection procedure. However, that selection procedure is out of scope.¶

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.¶

This document makes use of the terms defined in [RFC8499].¶

'Encrypted DNS' refers to a DNS scheme where DNS exchanges are transported over an encrypted channel between a DNS client and server (e.g., DNS- over-HTTPS (DoH) [RFC8484], DNS-over-TLS (DoT) [RFC7858], or DNS- over-QUIC (DoQ) [RFC9250]).¶

3. Retrieving Resolver Information

A stub resolver that wants to retrieve the resolver information may use the RR type "RESINFO" defined in this document.¶

The content of the RDATA in a response to RR type query is defined in Section 5. If the resolver understands the RESINFO RR type, the RRSet in the Answer section MUST have exactly one record.¶

A DNS client can retrieve the resolver information using the RESINFO RR type and QNAME of the domain name that is used to authenticate the DNS server (referred to as ADN in [I-D.ietf-add-dnr]).¶

If the special use domain name "resolver.arpa" defined in [I-D.ietf-add-ddr] is used to discover the encrypted DNS server, the client can retrieve the resolver information using the RESINFO RR type and QNAME of the designated resolver.¶

4. Format of the Resolver Information

The resolver information uses the same format as DNS TXT records. The intention of using the same format as TXT records is to convey a small amount of useful information about a DNS resolver. As a reminder, the format rules for TXT records are defined in Section 3.3.14 of the DNS specification [RFC1035] and further elaborated in Section 6.1 of the DNS-based Service Discovery (DNS-SD) [RFC6763]. The recommendations to limit the TXT record size are discussed in Section 6.2 of [RFC6763].¶

Similar to DNS-SD, the RESINFO RR type uses "key/value" pairs to convey the resolver information. Each "key/value" pair is encoded using the format rules defined in Section 6.3 of [RFC6763]. Using standardized "key/value" syntax within the RESINFO RR type makes it easier for future keys to be defined. If a DNS client sees unknown keys in a RESINFO RR type, it MUST silently ignore them. The same rules for the keys as those defined in Section 6.4 of [RFC6763] MUST be followed for RESINFO.¶

Keys MUST either be defined in the IANA registry (Section 7.2) or begin with the substring "temp-" for names defined for local use only.¶

5. Resolver Information Keys/Values

The following resolver information keys are defined:¶

qnamemin:

If the DNS resolver supports QNAME minimisation [RFC9156] to improve DNS privacy, the key is present. Note that, as per the rules for the keys defined in Section 6.4 of [RFC6763], if there is no '=' in a key, then it is a boolean attribute, simply identified as being present, with no value.¶

This is an optional attribute.¶

exterr:

If the DNS resolver supports extended DNS errors (EDE) [RFC8914] to return additional information about the cause of DNS errors, the value of this key lists the possible extended DNS error codes that can be returned by this DNS resolver. When multiple values are present, these values MUST be comma-separated.¶

This is an optional attribute.¶

infourl:

An URL that points to the generic unstructured resolver information (e.g., DoH APIs supported, possible HTTP status codes returned by the DoH server, how to report a problem) for troubleshooting purpose.¶

The server MUST support the content-type 'text/html'. The DNS client MUST reject the URL if the scheme is not "https". The URL SHOULD be treated only as diagnostic information for IT staff. It is not intended for end user consumption as the URL can possibily provide misleading information. A DNS client MAY choose to display the URL to the end user, if and only if the encrypted resolver has sufficient reputation, according to some local policy (e.g., user configuration, administrative configuration, or a built-in list of respectable resolvers).¶

This is a an optional attribute. For example, a DoT server may not want to host an HTTPS server.¶

New keys can be defined as per the procedure defined in Section 7.2.¶

Figure 1 shows an example of a published resolver information record:¶

resolver.example.net. 7200 IN RESINFO qnamemin exterr=15,16,17
                      resinfourl=https://resolver.example.com/guide

6. Security Considerations

Unless a DNS request to retrieve the resolver information is encrypted (e.g., sent over DoT or DoH), the response is susceptible to forgery. The DNS resolver information can be retrieved before or after the encrypted connection is established to the DNS server by using local DNSSEC validation.¶

7. IANA Considerations

• Note to the RFC Editor: Please update "[RFCXXXX]" occurences with the RFC number to be assigned to this document.¶

Type: RESINFO
Value: TBD
Meaning: Resolver Information as Key/Value Pairs
Reference: [RFCXXXX]

Acknowledgments

This specification leverages the work that has been documented in [I-D.pp-add-resinfo].¶

Thanks to Tommy Jensen, Vittorio Bertola, Vinny Parla, Chris Box, Ben Schwartz, Tony Finch, Daniel Kahn Gillmor, Eric Rescorla, Shashank Jain, Florian Obser, and Richard Baldry for the discussion and comments.¶

Thanks to Mark Andrews, Joe Abley, Paul Wouters, Tim Wicinski, and Steffen Nurpmeso for the discussion on the RR formatting rules.¶

Authors' Addresses