A. Submission Date: 6/11/08 update by expert 2008-12-24 B. Submission Type: [x] New RRTYPE [ ] Modification to existing RRTYPE C. Contact Information for submitter: Name: Jim Reid Email Address: jim at telnic.org International telephone number: +44 20 7467 6474 Other contact handles: none (Note: This information will be publicly posted) D. Motivation for the new RRTYPE application? There is a need to provide a mechanism in the DNS to publish descriptive information about the status of the zone, particularly for zones holding real-time contact data. At present a variety of ad-hoc schemes and conventions are used. These approaches are confusing and impractical since an arbitrary DNS client needs a priori knowledge of which of these schemes, if any, has been used by a zone administrator. Assigning a new RRtype for a resource record to hold this information will provide a simple, standardised way of publishing and retrieving zone status information. E. Description of the proposed RR type. The proposed RRtype is essentially identical to a TXT record: the zone status information contained as free text in the RDATA. Further details about the record format and its potential applications is given in draft-reid-dnsext-zs-01.txt. [Note from experts: draft was last description as of RRTYPE approval.] F. What existing RRTYPE or RRTYPEs come closest to filling that need and why are they unsatisfactory? The TXT record is the closest RRtype to the one proposed here. However TXT records are already used in many zones for a variety of purposes. This makes it awkward and impractical to differentiate a TXT record containing zone status information from other TXT records that may exist for a domain name. Allocating a new, dedicated RRtype for zone status is the cleanest way to deal with this issue. It would also prevent further mission creep by overloading the already overloaded TXT RRtype. G. What mnemonic is requested for the new RRTYPE (optional)? Note: this can be left blank and the mnemonic decided after the template is accepted. NINFO [Note from experts: originally requested as ZS, but NINFO approved.] H. Does the requested RRTYPE make use of any existing IANA Registry or require the creation of a new IANA Sub-registry and in DNS Parameters? No. I. Does the proposal require/expect any changes in DNS servers/resolvers that prevent the new type from being processed as an unknown RRTYPE (see [RFC3597])? No. J. Comments: None.