The 112th conference of the Internet Engineering Task Force, an organization that develops basic network standards, took place online on November 8-12. The event included meetings of various thematic working groups, including those involved in the development of DNS standards.
The Adaptive DNS Discovery working group discussed Discovery of Designated Resolvers (DDR) and related standards for DNS clients to use DNS records to find encrypted DNS resolvers. This mechanism can be used to move from unencrypted DNS to encrypted DNS (DoH, DoT, DoQ).
The Registration Protocols Extensions working group discussed draft standards for EPP and RDAP extensions. Those included the draft Registry Maintenance Notification for the EPP, an extension used by EPP servers to notify EPP clients and allow EPP clients to query EPP servers regarding maintenance or updating events; EPP Secure Authorization Information for Transfer, a draft standard that increases the security of authentication information transmitted during domain transfer; and Finding the Authoritative Registration Data (RDAP) Service, a method to find which RDAP server is authoritative to answer queries for a requested scope, such as domain names, IP addresses or Autonomous System Numbers (ASN), which provides reliable information about their registrants and owners.
The Use of Internationalized Email Addresses in EPP protocol deserves special mention. It is a draft standard for an EPP extension that permits usage of Internationalized Email Addresses in the EPP protocol. Independent expert Dmitry Belyavsky and James Gould, a fellow at Verisign Labs, have contributed to the draft. James Gould announced at the conference that the draft is close to completion and will soon go to last call, which means the community will have the last opportunity to comment on it.
A new draft standard, DNS Data Dictionary, was also presented at IETS112. It involves creating a unified public list of data elements used in the DNS.
The DNS Operations Working Group, which develops standards and guidelines for the operation of DNS software and services and for the administration of DNS zones, presented DNSSEC automation tools: the DNSSEC Multi-Signer automation algorithm and protocol (RFC 8901); the Survey of Domain Verification Techniques using DNS, a document that surveys various techniques in use today for verifying ownership or control of domains in the DNS through adding or editing DNS records within the domain; and Structured Data for Filtered DNS, a mechanism to provide detail to end users and explain the reason for the DNS filtering.
The next conference, IETF 113, will be held on March 19-25, 2022. The attendance format is yet to be determined.
