Network Working Group                                       P. Faltstrom
Internet-Draft                                                    Netnod
Intended status: Informational                           August 11, 2016
Expires: February 12, 2017


                How to use URI Resource Records for HTTP
                     draft-faltstrom-httpbis-dns-01

Abstract

   This document describes the reasons why it would be a good thing to
   use SRV [RFC2782] or URI [RFC7553] resource records for HTTP protocol
   instead of (as of today) just relying on redirects and other
   mechanisms in the HTTP protocol itself.  It also explains how to do
   it as there are conflicting instructions on how to do it.

Status of This Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on February 12, 2017.

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   Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  URI resource Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  HTTP of today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  The URI Resource Record . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  HTTP using URI Resource Records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   6.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   8.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   9.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     9.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     9.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7

1.  Introduction

   The HTTP protocol has historically been a relatively simple protocol,
   based on TCP by which a client opens a connection to an IP address,
   sends a request and get a response.  Further evolution of the HTTP
   protocol has introduced the ability to carry multiple transactions
   over the same TCP connection and further evolution has made the use
   of the TCP connection even more efficient.  Experimental deployment
   also exists where UDP is the protocol used.

   So far, the IP address used for the peer of the connection has been
   discovered through a lookup of the hostname in the URI that
   identifies the resource to be accessed, and similarly the hostname in
   URIs refered to in the HTTP datastream has been used to locate the
   host serving these resources (or of course in the HTML or similar
   formatting in the data returned via HTTP).

   This simple model causes a number of issues in deploying HTTP based
   services; issues that do not exist in other popular protocols like
   SMTP (for electronic mail) and SIP (for VoIP).

   This document tries to explain a few of these weaknesses and why
   usage of URI and SRV resource record types as a first step before the
   HTTP connection is established would make deployment, especially at
   scale, easier and because of that not only life easier for the domain
   name holder, but also make the connection faster and the experience
   better.

   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 BCP 14, [RFC2119].





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2.  URI resource Record

   After an expert review in February 2011 (see Appendix A in RFC7553
   [RFC7553]) IANA allocated RRTYPE 256 for the URI Resource Record Type
   in the registry named Resource Record (RR) TYPEs and QTYPEs as
   defined in BCP 42 (at the time [RFC6195]), located at
   http://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters.

   Later, in June 2015, [RFC7553] was published explaining how the URI
   resource record could be used.

3.  HTTP of today

   HTTP is a protocol that originally was very simple with single
   transactions over a TCP connection.  The client opened the
   connection, requested a resource and got information back.  This has
   evolved over time and the new HTTP/2 protocol has even more ability;
   for example multiple resources can be fetched over the same TCP flow
   using a mechanism that can be regarded as asynchronous.

   The basic functionality, though, is the same.  A URI is used as an
   identifier for the resource to be fetched.  From the URI a hostname
   is extracted, an address record (AAAA or A) is fetched and a TCP
   connection is opened to the address in question.  So called Happy
   Eyeballs mechanisms are sometimes used to open multiple connections
   in parallel and select the one that works best (from the clients
   perspective) to maximize the end users experience.

   In many cases, though, the resource that is actually to be fetched is
   not the one that is named with the original URI.  In such cases, the
   HTTP response is a 3xx for a redirect to a different URI, which is
   then fetched over the same (if possible) or a different TCP
   connection.

   The reasons for such redirects vary, but some common ones are:

      The URI in question does not end with a '/' but the resource (or
      web server) requires it.

      The URI in question does not start with 'www' but the user did
      type it (or the other way around).  This becomes important in
      cases where the software serving the content must have one unique
      hostname component in the URIs it creates and responds to.

      The resource is in reality hosted by some cloud service, and
      instead of a reverse proxy, a HTTP-level redirect is used to
      indicate the actual resource location within the cloud service.




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      The exact URI for the resource is not known, but the
      identification of the resource is sufficiently known that a so
      called "well known URI" can be used to explicitly trigger a
      redirect to the resource itself.

      The resource was initially requested using HTTP while the resource
      is accessible only over HTTPS.

      The resource is hosted by a 2nd party and a CNAME is used for the
      hostname in question.  But, as CNAME can not be used at DNS nodes
      names that already have data, a CNAME can't exist at a zone apex,
      a limitation not shared by AAAA or A records, necessitating their
      use.  Often address records then go missing at the apex (while the
      "www.example.com" record is changed into a CNAME for some reason)
      or the address record is later not updated when the IP address
      changes.  Such situations frequently require multiple address
      lookups and HTTP redirects before the resource is fetched using
      the correct intended URI.

   In most cases described above, the remembered entry point for human
   interaction is a string that mostly resembles a domain name,
   sometimes fully qualified, like "example.com" or "www.example.com".
   If the string indeed is a domain name it would be beneficial to be
   able to directly couple it to a complete URI.  The URI resource
   record provides this direct mapping.  (If the string is not a domain
   name, enter the search engines, which are out of scope here.)

4.  The URI Resource Record

   The URI resource record was approved by the IETF using the then new
   approval mechanism that did not require an RFC.  Later an
   informational RFC was created that explains the format and usage.

   A few things to note:

      It might semm that the URI resource record uses the same format
      for text in RDATA as the TXT resource record, but it does not.
      The text in the RDATA (the actual URI pointed to) is not a length
      prefixed string.  Such a string would have a too constrained
      length; 256 octets per . Instead it is defined as the rest of the
      RDATA field from where the URI starts.

      URI inherits prefix label definitions from the ENUM Registry
      hosted by IANA.  This registry, like the registry for ports and
      services, is not unique, which makes the prefix label to prepend
      to find "web services" too loosely defined.. This document is
      clarifying this, see below.




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      The priority field is used for ordering in what order URIs should
      be fetched.  If the first (lowest number) is not reachable, the
      2nd is to be tried etc.

      The weight is very seldom used and if not, SHOULD have value 0.

5.  HTTP using URI Resource Records

   There are multiple ways to set the prefix for the URI resource record
   by looking at the various tables IANA maintains.  There are
   initiatives to create an ultimate table, like
   [I-D.ietf-dnsop-attrleaf].  This document clarifies what prefix to
   use when fetching web pages using the HTTP protocol, as the URI
   specification is ambigious.

   The URI record to look up for the domain example.com is:

      _web._http.example.com.

   When resolving a URI for the web before the HTTP protocol
   specification is applied to the URI, the URI MUST be rewritten
   according to the RDATA in the response to the lookup of the URI
   resource record.  If the RRSet returned contains more than one
   resource record, the records MUST be sorted and tried in accordance
   with the URI resource record specification.

   If no resource record is returned when the URI record is looked up,
   the HTTP client MUST continue to resolve the URI as it is, without it
   being rewritten.

   Note that whether for example TCP or UDP is to be used is explicitly
   not specified by setting prefix labels.  The decision is instead made
   according to the HTTP specification in force.  The URI resource
   record only says what the correct URI is to fetch if the goal is to
   get the web page related to example.com using http.

6.  IANA Considerations

   Given the registry discussed in [I-D.ietf-dnsop-attrleaf] is created,
   the value _web._http is to be registered for use for normal web
   services using the HTTP protocol.

7.  Security Considerations

   Using the URI resource record together with security mechanisms that
   rely on verification of authentication of hostnames, like TLS, makes
   it important to choose the correct domain name when doing the
   comparison, and that the change in what hostname to use is secured by



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   DNSSEC so that it can be trusted in a similar way as a redirect in
   HTTP using TLS.

   It is specifically the case that although HTTP and HTTPS are
   different ENUM Service Registrations, only _web._http MUST be used
   for the lookup of the URI resource record for a domain.  If HTTPS is
   the preferred protocol to use, a HTTPS URI is to be returned to the
   lookup and not a HTTP URI.

8.  Acknowledgements

   People that have helped me with this document include Daniel Stenberg
   and Mans Nilsson.

9.  References

9.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC7553]  Faltstrom, P. and O. Kolkman, "The Uniform Resource
              Identifier (URI) DNS Resource Record", RFC 7553,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7553, June 2015,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7553>.

9.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.ietf-dnsop-attrleaf]
              Crocker, D., "DNS Scoped Data Through '_Underscore'
              Attribute Leaves", draft-ietf-dnsop-attrleaf-00 (work in
              progress), March 2016.

   [RFC2782]  Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for
              specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2782, February 2000,
              <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2782>.

   [RFC6195]  Eastlake 3rd, D., "Domain Name System (DNS) IANA
              Considerations", RFC 6195, DOI 10.17487/RFC6195, March
              2011, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6195>.








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Author's Address

   Patrik Faltstrom
   Netnod

   Email: paf@netnod.se













































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