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RE: Zonecuts specified in SPF draft

2005-01-14 07:55:23
william(at)elan.net [william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net] wrote:
On Wed, 29 Dec 2004, wayne wrote:
Well, things like the SOA record and the NS records apply to all
subdomains that are within the same zone.

NS and SOA are records have special meaning when they are on the root of
zone - SOA is not used at all except at the zone boundary and NS have
slightly different meaning when not at zone boundary. And in case of NS
and SOA its the name server that provides these records as part of the
answer not application that queries for them (unless specifically
directed to do so).

Alright, after all this heated discussion of the zone cut defaulting
algorithm in the SPF specification, I'd like to make two alternative
proposals on how to make SPF better deployable without SPF clients having
to perform zone cut lookups:

 1. Generally require a MAIL FROM domain to have an MX record.
    Motto: Only a domain that can receive mail should be sending out mail.
    Basically, this would just be a rude deprecation of the implicit MX
    rule, with the effect that domains without an MX record would not have
    to specify an SPF record.  This would be a gross incompatible change
    to SPF and the e-mail system in general, so you probably are not going
    to like this. :-|

 2. Like the name-server-side special handling of NS and SOA records, give
    name-server-side special handling to new SPF-type records.
    Specify the new SPF RR type such that name servers should perform the
    zone cut defaulting internally.  Some would say this is a problem
    because it would require the new RR type to be implemented in name
    servers before the feature could be used.  I would say this could be
    an incentive to actually get the new RR type implemented. :-)