


Applications Area                                       Arnt Gulbrandsen
INTERNET-DRAFT                                        Troll Technologies
<draft-ietf-dnsind-rfc2052bis-02.txt>                         Paul Vixie
Obsoletes: RFC 2052                         Internet Software Consortium
                                                            January 1999

       A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft.  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."

   To view the entire list of current Internet-Drafts, please check the
   "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
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   Europe), ftp.nis.garr.it (Southern Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific
   Rim), ftp.ietf.org (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).

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 [RFC 2219], 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.




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   Note that where this document refers to "address records", it means A
   RR's, AAAA RR's, or their most modern equivalent.

Introductory example

   If a SRV-cognizant web-browser wants to retrieve

      http://www.example.com/

   it does a lookup of

      _http._tcp.www.example.com

   and retrieves the document from one of the servers in the reply.  The
   example zone file near the end of this memo contains answering RRs
   for this query.

Definitions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT" and "MAY"
   used in this document are to be interpreted as specified in BCP 14.
   Other terms used in this document are defined in the DNS
   specification, RFC 1034.


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 [STD 2] or locally.  An underscore (_) is prepended to
        the service identifier to avoid collisions with DNS labels that
        occur in nature.

        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
        The symbolic name of the desired protocol, with an underscore
        (_) prepended to prevent collisions with DNS labels that occur



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        in nature.  _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 [RFC 1035].

   Class
        Standard DNS meaning [RFC 1035].   SRV records occur in the IN
        Class.

   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 an order defined by the weight field.  The
        range is 0-65535.  This is a 16 bit binary integer in network
        byte order.

   Weight
        A 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, as specified
        below.  Larger weights lead to a higher probability of being
        selected.  The range of this number is 0-65535.  This is a 16
        bit binary integer in network byte order.  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).  In
        the presence records containing weights greater than 0, records
        with weight 0 have a very small chance of being selected.

        To choose the target, the client SHOULD implement the effect of
        this algorithm.  This permits administrators to plan weights to
        achieve the load distribution desired.  Each time a target is
        needed, the client should order the remaining (not previously
        used) SRV RRs at the current priority in any random fashion,
        except placing all those with weight 0 at the beginning of the
        list.  Compute the sum of the weights of those RRs, and with
        each RR associate the running sum in the selected order.  Then
        choose a random number (not necessarily of integral value)
        between 0 and the sum computed (inclusive), and select the RR
        whose running sum value is the first in the selected order which



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        is greater than or equal to the random number selected.


   Port
        The port on this target host of this service.  The range is
        0-65535.  This is a 16 bit binary integer in network byte order.
        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 address records for this name, the name MUST NOT be
        an alias (in the sense of RFC 1034 or RFC 2181).  Implementors
        are urged, but not required, to return the address record(s) in
        the Additional Data section.  Unless and until permitted by
        future standards action, name compression is not to be used for
        this field.

        A Target of "." means that the service is decidedly not
        available at this domain.

Applicability Statement

   In general, it is expected that SRV records will be used by clients
   for applications where the relevant protocol specification indicates
   that clients should use the SRV record.   The examples in this
   document use familiar protocols as an aid in understanding.  It is
   not intended that those protocols will necessarily use SRV records.

Domain administrator advice

   Expecting everyone to update their client applications when the first
   internet site adds a SRV RR for some server is futile (even if
   desirable).  Therefore SRV would have to coexist with address record
   lookups for existing protocols, and DNS administrators should try to
   provide address records to support old clients:

      - Where the services for a single domain are spread over several
        hosts, it seems advisable to have a list of address records at
        the same DNS node as the SRV RR, listing reasonable (if perhaps
        suboptimal) fallback hosts for Telnet, NNTP and other protocols
        likely to be used with this name.  Note that some programs only
        try the first address they get back from e.g. gethostbyname(),
        and we don't know how widespread this behavior is.

      - Where one service is provided by several hosts, one can either
        provide address records for all the hosts (in which case the
        round-robin mechanism, where available, will share the load
        equally) or just for one (presumably the fastest).



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      - If a host is intended to provide a service only when the main
        server(s) is/are down, it probably shouldn't be listed in
        address records.

      - Hosts that are referenced by backup address records must use the
        port number specified in Assigned Numbers for the service.

      - Designers of future protocols for which "secondary servers" is
        not useful (or meaningful) may choose to not use SRV's support
        for secondary servers.  Clients for such protocols may use or
        ignore SRV RRs with Priority higher than the RR with the lowest
        Priority for a domain.

   Currently there's a practical limit of 512 bytes for DNS replies.
   Until all resolvers can handle larger responses, domain
   administrators are strongly advised to keep their SRV replies below
   512 bytes.

   All round numbers, wrote Dr. Johnson, are false, and these numbers
   are very round: A reply packet has a 30-byte overhead plus the name
   of the service ("_telnet._tcp.example.com" for instance); each SRV RR
   adds 20 bytes plus the name of the target host; each NS RR in the NS
   section is 15 bytes plus the name of the name server host; and
   finally each A RR in the additional data section is 20 bytes or so,
   and there are A's for each SRV and NS RR mentioned in the answer.
   This size estimate is extremely crude, but shouldn't underestimate
   the actual answer size by much.  If an answer may be close to the
   limit, using a DNS query tool (e.g. "dig") to look at the actual
   answer is a good idea.


The "Weight" field

   Weight, the load balancing field, is not quite satisfactory, but the
   actual load on typical servers changes much too quickly to be kept
   around in DNS caches.  It seems to the authors that offering
   administrators a way to say "this machine is three times as fast as
   that one" is the best that can practically be done.

   The only way the authors can see of getting a "better" load figure is
   asking a separate server when the client selects a server and
   contacts it.  For short-lived services like SMTP an extra step in the
   connection establishment seems too expensive, and for long-lived
   services like telnet, the load figure may well be thrown off a minute
   after the connection is established when someone else starts or
   finishes a heavy job.





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The Port number

   Currently, the translation from service name to port number happens
   at the client, often using a file such as /etc/services.

   Moving this information to the DNS makes it less necessary to update
   these files on every single computer of the net every time a new
   service is added, and makes it possible to move standard services out
   of the "root-only" port range on unix.


Usage rules

   A SRV-cognizant client SHOULD use this procedure to locate a list of
   servers and connect to the preferred one:

        Do a lookup for QNAME=_service._protocol.target, QCLASS=IN,
        QTYPE=SRV.

        If the reply is NOERROR, ANCOUNT>0 and there is at least one SRV
        RR which specifies the requested Service and Protocol in the
        reply:

             If there is precisely one SRV RR, and its Target is "."
             (the root domain), abort.

             Else, for all such RR's, build a list of (Priority, Weight,
             Target) tuples

             Sort the list by priority (lowest number first)

             Create a new empty list

             For each distinct priority level
                  While there are still elements left at this priority
                  level
                       Select an element randomly, with probability
                       Weight, as specified above, and move it to the
                       tail of the new list

             For each element in the new list

                  query the DNS for address records for the Target or
                  use any such records found in the Additional Data
                  section of the earlier SRV response.

                  for each address record found, try to connect to the
                  (protocol, address, service).



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        else if the service desired is SMTP (and SMTP has been defined
        elsewhere to expect SRV lookups)

             skip to RFC 974 (MX).

        else

             Do a lookup for QNAME=target, QCLASS=IN, QTYPE=A

             for each address record found, try to connect to the
             (protocol, address, service)


   Notes:

      - Port numbers SHOULD NOT be used in place of the symbolic service
        or protocol names (for the same reason why variant names cannot
        be allowed: Applications would have to do two or more lookups).

      - If a truncated response comes back from an SRV query, the rules
        described in [RFC2181] shall apply.

      - A client MAY use means other than Weight to choose among target
        hosts with equal Priority.

      - A client MUST parse all of the RR's in the reply.

      - If the Additional Data section doesn't contain address records
        for all the SRV RR's and the client may want to connect to the
        target host(s) involved, the client MUST look up the address
        record(s).  (This happens quite often when the address record
        has shorter TTL than the SRV or NS RR's.)

      - Future protocols could be designed to use SRV RR lookups as the
        means by which clients locate their servers.


Fictional example

   This is (part of) the zone file for example.com, a still-unused
   domain:

        $ORIGIN example.com.
        @               SOA server.example.com. root.example.com. (
                            1995032001 3600 3600 604800 86400 )
                        NS  server.example.com.
                        NS  ns1.ip-provider.net.
                        NS  ns2.ip-provider.net.



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        _ftp._tcp       SRV 0 0 21 server.example.com.
        _finger._tcp    SRV 0 0 79 server.example.com.
        ; telnet - use old-slow-box or new-fast-box if either is
        ; available, make three quarters of the logins go to
        ; new-fast-box.
        _telnet._tcp    SRV 0 1 23 old-slow-box.example.com.
                        SRV 0 3 23 new-fast-box.example.com.
        ; if neither old-slow-box or new-fast-box is up, switch to
        ; using the sysdmin's box and the server
                        SRV 1 0 23 sysadmins-box.example.com.
                        SRV 1 0 23 server.example.com.
        ; HTTP - server is the main server, new-fast-box is the backup
        ; (On new-fast-box, the HTTP daemon runs on port 8000)
        _http._tcp      SRV 0 0 80 server.example.com.
                        SRV 10 0 8000 new-fast-box.example.com.
        ; since we want to support both http://example.com/ and
        ; http://www.example.com/ we need the next two RRs as well
        _http._tcp.www  SRV 0 0 80 server.example.com.
                        SRV 10 0 8000 new-fast-box.example.com.
        ; SMTP - mail goes to the server, and to the IP provider if
        ; the net is down
        _smtp._tcp      SRV 0 0 25 server.example.com.
                        SRV 1 0 25 mailhost.ip-provider.net.
        @               MX  0 server.example.com.
                        MX  1 mailhost.ip-provider.net.
        ; NNTP - use the IP provider's NNTP server
        _nntp._tcp      SRV 0 0 119 nntphost.ip-provider.net.
        ; IDB is an locally defined protocol
        _idb._tcp SRV  0 0 2025 new-fast-box.example.com.
        ; addresses
        server          A   172.30.79.10
        old-slow-box    A   172.30.79.11
        sysadmins-box   A   172.30.79.12
        new-fast-box    A   172.30.79.13
        ; backup address records - new-fast-box and old-slow-box are
        ; included, naturally, and server is too, but might go
        ; if the load got too bad
        @               A   172.30.79.10
                        A   172.30.79.11
                        A   172.30.79.13
        ; backup address record for www.example.com
        www             A       172.30.79.10
        ; NO other services are supported
        *._tcp         SRV  0 0 0 .
        *._udp         SRV  0 0 0 .

   In this example, a telnet connection to "example.com." needs an SRV
   lookup of "_telnet._tcp.example.com." and possibly A lookups of "new-



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   fast-box.example.com." and/or the other hosts named.  The size of the
   SRV reply is approximately 365 bytes:

      30 bytes general overhead
      20 bytes for the query string, "_telnet._tcp.example.com."
      130 bytes for 4 SRV RR's, 20 bytes each plus the lengths of "new-
        fast-box", "old-slow-box", "server" and "sysadmins-box" -
        "example.com" in the query section is quoted here and doesn't
        need to be counted again.
      75 bytes for 3 NS RRs, 15 bytes each plus the lengths of "server",
        "ns1.ip-provider.net." and "ns2" - again, "ip-provider.net." is
        quoted and only needs to be counted once.
      120 bytes for the 6 address records (assuming IPv4 only) mentioned
        by the SRV and NS RR's.


IANA Considerations

   The IANA has assigned RR type value 33 to the SRV RR.  No other IANA
   services are required by this document.


Changes from RFC 2052

   This document obsoletes RFC 2052.   The major change from that
   previous, experimental, version of this specification is that now the
   protocol and service labels are prepended with an underscore, to
   lower the probability of an accidental clash with a similar name used
   for unrelated purposes.  Aside from that, changes are only intended
   to increase the clarity and completeness of the document.

Security Considerations

   The authors believes this RR to not cause any new security problems.
   Some problems become more visible, though.

      - The ability to specify ports on a fine-grained basis obviously
        changes how a router can filter packets.  It becomes impossible
        to block internal clients from accessing specific external
        services, slightly harder to block internal users from running
        unauthorized services, and more important for the router
        operations and DNS operations personnel to cooperate.

      - There is no way a site can keep its hosts from being referenced
        as servers (as, indeed, some sites become unwilling secondary
        MXes today).  This could lead to denial of service.

      - With SRV, DNS spoofers can supply false port numbers, as well as



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        host names and addresses.   Because this vunerability exists
        already, with names and addresses, this is not a new
        vunerability, merely a slightly extended one, with little
        practical effect.

References

   STD 2: Reynolds, J., Postel, J., "Assigned Numbers", STD 2, RFC 1700,
        October 1994 (as currently updated by the IANA).

   RFC 1034: Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
        STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.

   RFC 1035: Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - Implementation and
        Specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.

   RFC 974: Partridge, C., "Mail routing and the domain system", RFC
        974, January 1986.

   BCP 14: Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
        Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

   RFC 2181: Elz, R., Bush, R., "Clarifications to the DNS
        Specification", RFC 2181, July 1997

   RFC 2219: Hamilton, M., Wright, R., "Use of DNS Aliases for Network
        Services", BCP 17, RFC 2219, October 1997

Acknowledgements

   The algorithm used to select from the weighted SRV RRs of equal
   priority is adapted from one supplied by Dan Bernstein.

Authors' Addresses

   Arnt Gulbrandsen              Paul Vixie
      Troll Tech                    Internet Software Consortium
      Postboks 6133 Etterstad            950 Charter Street
      N-0602 Oslo, Norway                Redwood City, CA 94063
      +47 22646966                       +1 650 779 7001
      <agulbra@troll.no>                 <paul@vix.com>










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