"Asynchronous" makes no sense to me. In what way is an AXFR "asynchronous"?
"Authoritative transfer"? As opposed to what? Non-authoritative transfer?
"Authoritative" seems rather redundant in that phrase -- AXFRs are always
comprised of authoritative data, aren't they?
The reference to "full zone transfer" in RFC 6168 doesn't appear to be an
attempt to explain the acronym; it's just a reference to the mechanism. Plus --
to state the obvious -- there is no "a" in the word "full".
I did a little RFC spelunking, and the earliest reference I could find to AXFR
is (obsolete) RFC 883, where QTYPE 252 is defined as " A request for a transfer
of an entire zone of authority". So, this is circumstantial evidence that the
"A" in "AXFR" actually stands for "Authority", and this complements the meaning
of "A" in "SOA" (which I've always thought would have been better called a zone
"header" or "control", as in "control record" for the zone). Back in those
days, the concept of a zone seemed to be of a blob of "authority" stuff, not
necessarily defined within a separate file or as a separate element of the
nameserver config, which could nevertheless be treated as a single
administrative/operational unit for purposes of delegation, replication, etc.
It wasn't until later that "zone" became a full-fledged concept in its own
right, with "authoritativeness" of its data being presumed, thus all of the
references to "authority" were seen as redundant and passed into relative disu
se (at least, until DNSSEC came along and the distinction between
authoritative and non-authoritative data became vitally important again).
But, is the question for this ID a) what was *intended* by the AXFR acronym, as
a matter of IETF history, or b) what we *want* "AXFR" to mean *now*? If the
latter, I vote for re-interpreting the "A" in "AXFR" as standing for "ancient"
:-)
- Kevin
-----Original Message-----
From: DNSOP [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Willem Toorop
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2015 9:06 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [DNSOP] Fwd: New Version Notification for
draft-hoffman-dns-terminology-00.txt
Maybe this document can give a decisive answer on the expansion of AXFR as
well? In the RFC Editor Abbreviations List (
https://ftp.rfc-editor.org/rfc-style-guide/abbrev.expansion.txt ), this
is expanded as either - Asynchronous Full Transfer (AXFR) or
- Authoritative Transfer or
- full zone transfer (AXFR) (RFC 6168)
Op 28-11-14 om 16:28 schreef Paul Hoffman:
> Greetings. Andrew and Kazunori and I have prepared the first draft of what
> will hopefully be a useful document collecting definitions that useful in the
> DNS community. We fully admit that this is quite rough, and didn't even try
> to do definitions for some of the terms that we expect to be filled in before
> we are done.
>
> The idea is that this will be an IETF consensus document, if possible, but we
> are not yet asking for adoption in the DNSOP WG, and we might not even later.
> For now, we'd like to hear what additional terms should be added, what
> clarifications to the terms we already have would be helpful, and so on.
>
> --Paul Hoffman
>
>> A new version of I-D, draft-hoffman-dns-terminology-00.txt
>> has been successfully submitted by Paul Hoffman and posted to the
>> IETF repository.
>>
>> Name: draft-hoffman-dns-terminology
>> Revision: 00
>> Title: DNS Terminology
>> Document date: 2014-11-28
>> Group: Individual Submission
>> Pages: 9
>> URL:
>> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-hoffman-dns-terminology-00.txt
>> Status:
>> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hoffman-dns-terminology/
>> Htmlized: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hoffman-dns-terminology-00
>>
>>
>> Abstract:
>> The DNS is defined in literally dozens of different RFCs. The
>> terminology used in by implementers and developers of DNS protocols,
>> and by operators of DNS systems, has sometimes changed in the decades
>> since the DNS was first defined. This document gives current
>> definitions for many of the terms used in the DNS in a single
>> document.
>
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>
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