| Internet-Draft | DNS Resource Records for DTN Overlays | June 2024 |
| Johnson | Expires 27 December 2024 | [Page] |
Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are typically characterized by high latency and lack of constant end to end connectivity, consistent with their use in deep space communications. This, however, is not the limit of application of Bundle Protocol (BP) and related DTN enabling technologies. Through a collection of Convergance Layer Adapters (CLAs), deployment overlaying the terrestrial Internet is a core component of DTN implementations. IPN is a integer based naming scheme for DTN networks. Notwithstanding cryptographic considerations, three basic components are necessary to enable a BP node to use the underlying Internet to communicate with another BP node: the IP address of the node, the CBHE Node Number (component of any ipn-scheme URI identifying a BP endpoint of which that node is a member), and the CLA which provides IP connectivity to that node. This document describes RRTYPE additions to DNS to enable terrestrial BP resource look-up.¶
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Terrestrial use of DTNs across reliable, low latency paths introduces the opportunity to leverage the existing DNS infrastructure to distribute connectivity related data. While is it not technically feasible to ensure delivery of non-stale data to spaceborne DTN nodes in response to a DNS lookup request, there is no such barrier to deploying DNS records which describe those core datasets necessary to enable connection of DTN nodes overlaying IPv4 or IPv6 networks.¶
One barrier to BP native application authoring which has been identified is lack of an API. This is being explored in multiple directions, including userspace and kernel API implementations. It is highly useful, when operating over the underlying Internet, for an application to be able to collect all necessary connectivity data via DNS query. A web browser, for example, does a DNS lookup before making a http request. At a minimum, this means Node Number and available CLA(s) in addition to IP address when making a BP connection. If BPSEC is deployed, additional RRTYPES, such as a security context identifier (CTX) and public key (BSEC) records might be appropriate to negotiate such a connection, but they are out of scope of this draft. If the application then transmits that information via an API to the BPA, the BPA can take action in the contact graph to perfect the connection. This draft, and the RRTYPEs it describes, enable a preferred component of an API structure to encourage application development.¶
A popular naming scheme for BP nodes is the IPN naming scheme, a URI scheme defined in [RFC7116]. URIs composed in this scheme identify BP endpoints. The scheme-specific part of a BP ipn-scheme Endpoint Identifier (EID) comprises two 64 bit unsigned integers separated by single '.'character as described in section 4.2.5.1.2 of [RFC9171]. Of these two components of an EID, only the first component termed the (node-nbr), identifies the node, while thsecond e (service-nbr) component generally is analogus to the port number bound to an IP socket. Therefore, a DNS RRTYPE, IPN, is requested by which the (node-nbr) component of a Bundle Protocol EID is represented. Wire format encoding shall be an unsigned 64-bit integer in network order. Presentation format for these resource records are either a 64 bit unsigned decimal integer, or two 32 bit unsigned decimal integers delimited by a period with the most significant 32 bits first and least significant 32 bits last. Values are not to be zero padded.¶
BP supports a wide range of CLAs; some are IP based while others interface at different layers or via different network layer protocols. Those treated here represent the subset designed to utilize underlying IP networks, and hence have DNS services generally constantly available in a low latency environment. Primary among these are TCP, UDP and LTP over UDP CLAs operating over both IPv4 and IPv6 links. A DNS RRTYPE, CLA, is requested to represent Convergence Layer Adapters on a node. Table 1 describes an initial list of of valid values for a CLA RRTYPE, to be encoded for presentation as space separated, unquoted, unescaped ASCII. The format for this RRTYPE is defined as [CLA protocol]-[IP Version]-[BP Version]. The first field describes the packet or datagram type for transmission, the second the version of IP (v4 or v6) and the third describes the version BP (v6 or v7) of the service(s) offered on the node. Wire format encoding is identical to TXT format, with values restricted to Letters, Digits and interior Hyphens. It is possible for a node to deploy multiple CLAs using a single Node Number and IP address; TCP-v4-v6 and UDP-v4-v6 can work side by side on the same node, for example. To address this capability in the CLA RRTYPE, records may be expressed as a lone entry (i.e TCP-v6-v7) or in a space delimited format, expressing multiple values (i.e. TCP-v4-v7 TCP-v6-v7 LTP-v6-v7).¶
| Valid CLA RRTYPE Values |
|---|
| TCP-v4-v6 |
| UDP-v4-v6 |
| LTP-v4-v6 |
| STCP-v4-v6 |
| BSSP-v4-v6 |
| IPND-v4-v6 |
| TCP-v4-v7 |
| TCP-v6-v7 |
| UDP-v4-v7 |
| UDP-v6-v7 |
| LTP-v4-v7 |
| LTP-v6-v7 |
| STCP-v4-v7 |
| STCP-v6-v7 |
| BSSP-v4-v7 |
| BSSP-v6-v7 |
| IPND-v4-v7 |
| IPND-v6-v7 |
IANA is requested to create CLA and IPN RRTYPES in the Domain Name System (DNS) Resource Record (RR) TYPEs registry.¶
This document should not affect the security of the Internet.¶
Thanks to Mark Andrews and Scott Burleigh for their contributions to this document.¶