1) During the MARID interim meeting, Ted Hardie suggested a dual record
type approach whereby TXT would be used in servers incapable of
supporting a new record type, but more capable servers would use a new
record type (specifically defined for MARID). Do you feel this is a
workable solution?
No. TXT-only is the best solution for several years to come. New RR types are
unfortunately too immature. Even when DNS servers support it, the libraries on
some platforms cannot query them.
2) Do you feel a MARID solution needs the capability of DNS wildcards?
It would be very helpful.
4) If you answered "no" to either (1) or (2), then do you feel it is
acceptable for TXT reuse to specify a prefix and that environments
needing DNS wildcard behavior may do so at the risk of collision or
other side-effects?
No prefix is needed if the syntax is sufficiently concise (like SPF).
Less concise syntax (like XML) will require a prefix.
TXT records are unused by the vast majority of domains. Most of the TXT records
that do exist can be removed without functionality loss (because they are
either: comments to humans, often unnecessary; or lame attempts to comment out
parts of their configuration). And of those fraction of a fraction that would
not or could not be removed, none of them seem to conflict with use by MARID.
Michael R. Brumm