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rfc:rfc2052

Network Working Group A. Gulbrandsen Request for Comments: 2052 Troll Technologies Updates: 1035, 1183 P. Vixie Category: Experimental Vixie Enterprises

                                                          October 1996
     A DNS RR for specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)

Status of this Memo

 This memo defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
 community.  This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any
 kind.  Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested.
 Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

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, 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.

Introductory example

 When a SRV-cognizant web-browser wants to retrieve
    http://www.asdf.com/
 it does a lookup of
    http.tcp.www.asdf.com

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 1] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

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

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 or locally.
      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
      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.
 Class
      Standard DNS meaning.
 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 pseudorandom order.  The range is 0-65535.

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 2] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

 Weight
      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.  The range of
      this number is 1-65535.  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).
 Port
      The port on this target host of this service.  The range is
      0-65535.  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 A records for this name. Implementors are urged, but
      not required, to return the A record(s) in the Additional Data
      section.  Name compression is to be used for this field.
      A Target of "." means that the service is decidedly not
      available at this domain.

Domain administrator advice

 Asking everyone to update their telnet (for example) clients when the
 first internet site adds a SRV RR for Telnet/TCP is futile (even if
 desirable).  Therefore SRV will have to coexist with A record lookups
 for a long time, and DNS administrators should try to provide A
 records to support old clients:
  1. Where the services for a single domain are spread over several

hosts, it seems advisable to have a list of A RRs 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 behaviour is.
  1. Where one service is provided by several hosts, one can either

provide A 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).
  1. 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 A

      records.

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 3] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

  1. Hosts that are referenced by backup A records must use the port

number specified in Assigned Numbers for the service.

 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.asdf.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 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.

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.

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 4] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

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, and move it to the tail of the new list
           For each element in the new list
                query the DNS for A RR's for the Target or use any
                RR's found in the Additional Data secion of the
                earlier SRV query.
                for each A RR found, try to connect to the (protocol,
                address, service).
      else if the service desired is SMTP
           skip to RFC 974 (MX).
      else
           Do a lookup for QNAME=target, QCLASS=IN, QTYPE=A
           for each A RR found, try to connect to the (protocol,
           address, service)

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 5] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

 Notes:
  1. 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).
  1. If a truncated response comes back from an SRV query, and the

Additional Data section has at least one complete RR in it, the

      answer MUST be considered complete and the client resolver
      SHOULD NOT retry the query using TCP, but use normal UDP queries
      for A RR's missing from the Additional Data section.
  1. A client MAY use means other than Weight to choose among target

hosts with equal Priority.

  1. A client MUST parse all of the RR's in the reply.
  1. If the Additional Data section doesn't contain A RR's 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 A RR(s).  (This
      happens quite often when the A RR has shorter TTL than the SRV
      or NS RR's.)
  1. A future standard could specify that a SRV RR whose Protocol was

TCP and whose Service was SMTP would override RFC 974's rules

      with regard to the use of an MX RR.  This would allow firewalled
      organizations with several SMTP relays to control the load
      distribution using the Weight field.
  1. 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 asdf.com, a still-unused domain:
      $ORIGIN asdf.com.
      @               SOA server.asdf.com. root.asdf.com. (
                          1995032001 3600 3600 604800 86400 )
                      NS  server.asdf.com.
                      NS  ns1.ip-provider.net.
                      NS  ns2.ip-provider.net.
      ftp.tcp         SRV 0 0 21 server.asdf.com.
      finger.tcp      SRV 0 0 79 server.asdf.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.asdf.com.

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 6] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

                      SRV 0 3 23 new-fast-box.asdf.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.asdf.com.
                      SRV 1 0 23 server.asdf.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.asdf.com.
                      SRV 10 0 8000 new-fast-box.asdf.com.
      ; since we want to support both http://asdf.com/ and
      ; http://www.asdf.com/ we need the next two RRs as well
      http.tcp.www    SRV 0 0 80 server.asdf.com.
                      SRV 10 0 8000 new-fast-box.asdf.com.
      ; SMTP - mail goes to the server, and to the IP provider if
      ; the net is down
      smtp.tcp        SRV 0 0 25 server.asdf.com.
                      SRV 1 0 25 mailhost.ip-provider.net.
      @               MX  0 server.asdf.com.
                      MX  1 mailhost.ip-provider.net.
      ; NNTP - use the IP providers'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.asdf.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 A 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 A RR for www.asdf.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 "asdf.com." needs an SRV
 lookup of "telnet.tcp.asdf.com." and possibly A lookups of "new-
 fast-box.asdf.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.asdf.com."
    130 bytes for 4 SRV RR's, 20 bytes each plus the lengths of "new-

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 7] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

      fast-box", "old-slow-box", "server" and "sysadmins-box" -
      "asdf.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 A RR's mentioned by the SRV and NS RR's.

Refererences

 RFC 1918: Rekhter, Y., Moskowitz, R., Karrenberg, D., de Groot, G.,
      and E.  Lear, "Address Allocation for Private Internets",
      RFC 1918, February 1996.
 RFC 1916 Berkowitz, H., Ferguson, P, Leland, W. and P. Nesser,
      "Enterprise Renumbering: Experience and Information
      Solicitation", RFC 1916, February 1996.
 RFC 1912 Barr, D., "Common DNS Operational and Configuration
      Errors", RFC 1912, February 1996.
 RFC 1900: Carpenter, B., and Y. Rekhter, "Renumbering Needs Work",
      RFC 1900, February 1996.
 RFC 1920: Postel, J., "INTERNET OFFICIAL PROTOCOL STANDARDS",
      STD 1, RFC 1920, March 1996.
 RFC 1814: Gerich, E., "Unique Addresses are Good", RFC 1814, June
           1995.
 RFC 1794: Brisco, T., "DNS Support for Load Balancing", April 1995.
 RFC 1713: Romao, A., "Tools for DNS debugging", November 1994.
 RFC 1712: Farrell, C., Schulze, M., Pleitner, S., and D. Baldoni,
      "DNS Encoding of Geographical Location", RFC 1712, November
      1994.
 RFC 1706: Manning, B. and R. Colella, "DNS NSAP Resource Records",
      RFC 1706, October 1994.
 RFC 1700: Reynolds, J., and J. Postel, "ASSIGNED NUMBERS",
      STD 2, RFC 1700, October 1994.
 RFC 1183: Ullmann, R., Mockapetris, P., Mamakos, L., and
      C. Everhart, "New DNS RR Definitions", RFC 1183, November
      1990.

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 8] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

 RFC 1101: Mockapetris, P., "DNS encoding of network names and other
      types", RFC 1101, April 1989.
 RFC 1035: Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
      specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.
 RFC 1034: Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and
      facilities", STD 13, RFC 1034, November 1987.
 RFC 1033: Lottor, M., "Domain administrators operations guide",
      RFC 1033, November 1987.
 RFC 1032: Stahl, M., "Domain administrators guide", RFC 1032,
      November 1987.
 RFC 974: Partridge, C., "Mail routing and the domain system",
      STD 14, RFC 974, January 1986.

Security Considerations

 The authors believes this RR to not cause any new security problems.
 Some problems become more visible, though.
  1. 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
      unautorised services, and more important for the router
      operations and DNS operations personnel to cooperate.
  1. 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.
  1. With SRV, DNS spoofers can supply false port numbers, as well as

host names and addresses. The authors do not see any practical

      effect of this.
 We assume that as the DNS-security people invent new features, DNS
 servers will return the relevant RRs in the Additional Data section
 when answering an SRV query.

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 9] RFC 2052 DNS SRV RR October 1996

Authors' Addresses

 Arnt Gulbrandsen
 Troll Tech
 Postboks 6133 Etterstad
 N-0602 Oslo
 Norway
 Phone: +47 22646966
 EMail: agulbra@troll.no
 Paul Vixie
 Vixie Enterprises
 Star Route 159A
 Woodside, CA  94062
 Phone: (415) 747-0204
 EMail: paul@vix.com

Gulbrandsen & Vixie Experimental [Page 10]

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